mandysee_mandydo | Eat Spam from a can, watch late night C-SPAN and rock out to old-school Duran Duran.

There was a time when I would gag at C-SPAN and instead opt to watch a sitcom like "Full House" or "Family Ties." Oh, the follies of youth. Now I gag at sitcoms and love watching C-SPAN. What an odd flip-flop, but certainly for the better.

I watched the House hearings on the Patriot Act and the rallying for and against the sixteen sunsetting provisions. Last night I watched a special hearing called by the Democrats that disgusted me. Not because of the Democrats or their witnesses (although I have to admit they frequently went off-topic and discussed many things outside the scope of the Patriot Act renewal which was somewhat aggravating) but because the Republican chiar Rep. Sennsenberger who would constantly ignore points of order and adjourned the meeting while there was a point of order being requested. He claimed to want to follow the rules strictly by declaring anything not in the scope claimed in the letter to him by the Democrats as being struck from the record yet he blatantly disregarded the rules to ignore points of order or to cut others off to give himself the floor. I even suspect he went over his five-minute limit once or twice, but of course ignored the points of order that I believe would have elucidated this point.

One contrasting difference I noticed between the hearing the Republicans called with Deputy AG James Comey and this special hearing called by Democrats was that the questions asked by the Republicans of Comey and Comey's responses seemed so scripted and rehearsed. While it was obvious the opening statements of the witnesses in the Democrat hearing were scripted, they were asked honest, on-the-fly questions by all members of the House Judiciary Committee and gave honest, unscripted answers.

Mr. Pitts, Chair of the Amnesty International USA Board of Directors, offered as evidence against Section 215 (the library record provision that has no judicial review) the fact that librarians were receiving real requests such as in Seattle where the FBI demanded records of all persons checking out Osama Bin Laden's biography post-9/11. The Republicans pushed for real names and cases. Pitts explained that he had some names, but gag orders established in Section 215 made it very difficult to get extensive accounts of specific instances. He had some from librarians who were willing to go against the gag orders, which would potentially land these librarians in jail for "violations of national security." The Republicans demanded a list. Sennsenberger ordered Pitts at the end of the hearing to produce the list within one week for the record. Gee, I wonder what they want to do with that list? Can you say Gestapo (a Nazi police force able to investigate matters "dangerous to the State" without judicial review and able to hold suspects in "protective custody" in concentration camps indefinitely)? Can you say McCarthyism (hand us that list of terrorist sympathisers, please)?

I knew you could.

I found it very telling that Rep. Pence admitted he used Amnesty International USA reports about Saddam's regime to prove the need to invade Iraq because they were extensive and well-researched, but yet joined the rest of the Republicans in damning Amnesty International USA for their reports about civil liberty violations in the United States as poorly researched and irresponsible.

I strongly recommend you watch C-SPAN and see these hearings for yourself.