I was listening to NPR yesterday when I heard a snippet about Connecticut’s 5th Congressional District race between Nancy Johnson, the Republican incumbent, and Chris Murphy, a Democratic state senator. It seems that Nancy Johnson is resorting to the same tactics that we should all expect to see in the run-up to the November Mid-terms: Fear ads.

Her latest ad centers on the Domestic Wiretapping that the Bush Administration illegally put in place “to help catch terra-ists”. The problem with it, like most attack ads, is that it’s flat-out wrong. First of all, let me state that I HATE attack ads. They’re dishonest and play to people’s emotions without addressing the facts (which makes them great for the candidate running them).

In it, she claims that Democrat Chris Murphy wants to get a court order before intercepting a call to a known terrorist. Seeing this kind of bullshit pisses me off. Apparently, Nancy Johnson, throughout her 12 years in Congress, has never heard of the 1978 Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. Here’s where she really gets it wrong:

(4) notwithstanding paragraphs (1), (2), and (3), with respect to any electronic surveillance approved pursuant to section 1802(a) of this title, procedures that require that no contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party shall be disclosed, disseminated, or used for any purpose or retained for longer than 72 hours unless a court order under section 1805 of this title is obtained or unless the Attorney General determines that the information indicates a threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person.(my emphasis)

So that means that either Nancy Johnson is just plain stupid, or that she’s illiterate. I realize that these are not the only options here, but for the sake of argument, which is it?

Once again the All Fear, All the Time party is trying to scare us into voting Republican in November. Good luck with that, Ms. Johnson. I almost wish I lived in Connecticut just so I could vote against you and Lieberman. For those of you who DO live in Connecticut, here’s the link to Chris Murphy’s Act Blue page.

If you haven’t done so already, please take some time to familiarize yourself with FISA and the FISA court by clicking this LINK. The link goes to the Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute page documenting US Code, in this case, specifically Chapter 36 – Foreign Intelligence Surveillance. You got questions concerning US Code, check it out.

And finally, please do your part to donate to worthy Democratic candidates, like Chris Murphy, for the November mid-terms and don’t forget to get out and vote!