Expose the Left (or the blogger formerly known as The Political Teen) has the video of 9/11 family member Debra Burlingame’s appearance on Hannity & Colmes yesterday talking about the NSA wiretaps and the Patriot Act.

Someone just emailed me this joke.

A driver is stuck in a traffic jam on the highway.

Nothing is moving.

Suddenly a man knocks on the window.

The driver rolls down his window and asks, “What happened?”

“Terrorists have kidnapped Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton. They are asking for a $10 million ransom; otherwise, they are going to douse them with gasoline and set them on fire!

We are going from car to car, taking up a collection.”

The driver asks, “How much is everyone giving, on average?”

“About a gallon.”

I still haven’t stopped lauging.

Please welcome Associate Justice Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court. Someone get Kennedy some smelling salts.

Coretta Scott King, wife of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, passed away last night at the age of 78. While many disagreed with some of her politics of late, most everyone agrees she was a class act and a symbol of inspiration for many, many people.

Did Michael Rogers’ latest antic violate D.C. criminal code? It sure looks like it did to me. Rob at Say Anything has picked up on an NRO post regarding a threat Michael Rogers has made against a Republican senator to “out” him for not voting the way Rogers believes he should.

Mr. Senator:

Tomorrow you will be faced with a vote that may have the longest aftereffects of any other you have cast in your Senate career.

Tomorrow you will decide if your political position is worth more than doing what is right for others like you. For others like you, Mr. Senator, who engage in oral sex with other men. (Although, Mr. Senator, most of us don’t do in the bathrooms of Union Station!) Your fake marriage, by the way, will NOT protect you from the truth being told on this blog.

How does this blog decide who to report on? It’s simple. We report on hypocrites. In this case, hypocrites who vote against the gay and lesbian community while engaging in gay sex themselves*.

When you cast that vote, Mr. Senator, represent your own…it’s the least you could do.

Michael Rogers
blogACTIVE.com

*While votes on many matters are considered, votes “FOR” either the Alito nomination and the Federal Marriage Amendment are enough to qualify legislators for reporting on this site.

Why, that sounds an awful lot like blackmail, doesn’t it? Well, it sounds that way to a few other people too:

The post on BlogActive may constitute blackmail under the criminal law of Washington, D.C. As set forth on Lexis - Nexis, section 22-3252 of the District Columbia Code provides:

(a) A person commits the offense of blackmail, if, with intent to obtain property of another or to cause another to do or refrain from doing any act, that person threatens:

(1) To accuse any person of a crime;

(2) To expose a secret or publicize an asserted fact, whether true or false, tending to subject any person to hatred, contempt, or ridicule; or

(3) To impair the reputation of any person, including a deceased person.

(b) Any person convicted of blackmail shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or both.

It appears the author of the BlogActive post has threatened, with “intent to . . . cause another to do or refrain from doing any act,” to “expose a secret or publicize an asserted fact, whether true or false, tending to subject any person to hatred, contempt, or ridicule.”

I’m assuming the D.C. Code applies because the BlogActive website lists a D.C. post office box for contributions.

I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know if threatening an unnamed person constitutes blackmail. But it could….

I hope someone has made a phone call to the D.C. police. Michael Rogers is scum and he may have just gone too far. We’ll see.

It is your duty. Do it now.

9/11 Family Member, Take Back the Memorial cohort, and dear friend Debra Burlingame has an extensive must-read op-ed in today’s Opinion Journal on “The Wall”, FISA, and the duplicitous coverage of the NSA “syping” controversy.

Ms. Burlingame is simply brilliant, and dead-on. Here’s just a sampling:

NBC News aired an “exclusive” story in 2004 that dramatically recounted how al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, the San Diego terrorists who would later hijack American Airlines flight 77 and fly it into the Pentagon, received more than a dozen calls from an al Qaeda “switchboard” inside Yemen where al-Mihdhar’s brother-in-law lived. The house received calls from Osama Bin Laden and relayed them to operatives around the world. Senior correspondent Lisa Myers told the shocking story of how, “The NSA had the actual phone number in the United States that the switchboard was calling, but didn’t deploy that equipment, fearing it would be accused of domestic spying.” Back then, the NBC script didn’t describe it as “spying on Americans.” Instead, it was called one of the “missed opportunities that could have saved 3,000 lives.”

[...]

The old laws that would prevent FBI agents from stopping the next al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were built on the bedrock of a 35-year history of dark, defeating mistrust. More Americans should not die because the peace-at-any-cost fringe and antigovernment paranoids still fighting the ghost of Nixon hate George Bush more than they fear al Qaeda. Ask the American people what they want. They will say that they want the commander in chief to use all reasonable means to catch the people who are trying to rain terror on our cities. Those who cite the soaring principle of individual liberty do not appear to appreciate that our enemies are not seeking to destroy individuals, but whole populations.

[...]

The public has listened to years of stinging revelations detailing how the government tied its own hands in stopping the devastating attacks of September 11. It is an irresponsible violation of the public trust for members of Congress to weaken the Patriot Act or jeopardize the NSA terrorist surveillance program because of the same illusory theories that cost us so dearly before, or worse, for rank partisan advantage. If they do, and our country sustains yet another catastrophic attack that these antiterrorism tools could have prevented, the phrase “connect the dots” will resonate again–but this time it will refer to the trail of innocent American blood which leads directly to the Senate floor.

My empahsis. Read the whole thing.

If Cindy Sheehan actually does challenge Diane Feinstein and she wins, we are SOOO outta here.

I will say this bit is really hilarious though:

Sheehan accused Feinstein of being out of touch with Californians on the issue.

As opposed to, say, out of touch with REALITY like that Sheehan is. She may carry San Francisco because, let’s face it, SF is just one 7-square mile piece of land that pretty much operates in another dimension than the rest of us. But Feinstein’s district is a lot bigger than just San Francisco and the rest of us aren’t freakin’ nuts!

The contest isn’t stupid, the people are. I just don’t know which one is more stupid (the subjects of the posts, not the authors of the blogs).

Happy 2nd Blog Birthday to MJ @ Impossible Scissors!