Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances (PRCB) today called upon Congress to hold open, substantive oversight hearings examining the President's authorization of the National Security Agency (NSA) to violate domestic surveillance requirements outlined in the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, chairman of PRCB, was joined by fellow conservatives Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR); David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Paul Weyrich, chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation and Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, in urging lawmakers to use NSA hearings to establish a solid foundation for restoring much needed constitutional checks and balances to intelligence law.

Fellow Conservatives,

I'm writing to ask you to join me in doing something effective against the leftist organizations and liberal media who have launched truly vicious attacks on U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

They attack Tom DeLay for just one reason: Congressman DeLay is one of the most effective fighters for conservative principles.

Time and again, Majority Leader Tom DeLay manages the strategy which wins for conservatives in the narrowly divided House of Representatives.

I know personally that Tom Delay is almost obsessively careful to get good legal advice before he takes any step which might conceivably be questioned under the law or suspected as an infraction of House rules. None of the leftist uproar has contains any evidence he has done anything illegal or violated the House rules.

The only fire under all that smoke generated by the leftist attacks is their burning hatred of a good man.

Conservatives must respond with a richly deserved attack on leftist groups and liberal media trying to lynch Tom DeLay. That's why I'm writing to you.

And you and I must do all we can to make sure any politician who hopes to have conservative support in the future had better be in the forefront as we attack those who attack Tom DeLay.

Media and organizations who would let left wingers get away with almost anything are trying to generate a feeding frenzy against DeLay. No matter what he does, they attack him. Not content to make mountains out of mole hills, they invent mole hills to make mountains.

If Tom DeLay preferred Fords to Chevrolets or Chevrolets to Fords, the leftists would gin up reasons to attack his preference either way.

Unscrupulous leftist media will huff and puff to breath life into any trivial or phony leftist complaint against any act of any powerful conservative, no matter how upright and innocent. And they'll keep doing this until a public reaction begins to embarrass and damage those spreading the propaganda.

You've seen this all your life.

Hillary will do this stuff anyway. It's not the present NSA intercepts you have to fear, they were checked and vetted even through the opposition, and no one balked at the program.

Like stated earlier, we don't need to commit suicide to keep our rights.

Hillary et al are corrupt, and they will do anything (and already have) to maintain their power base. She and her ilk are the dangerous ones. Gore and these so-called conservatives are way off base.

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But Barr won't be complaining when or if it happens anymore than the NY Times will be upset about past or future Clinton spying on their enemies, i.e., conservatives, right wingers, political enemies as defined by the Clintons, meaning any Republican, because Barr will not be drawing a paycheck anymore if he does. It's real simple even if many of you are unable to grasp the facts - the Clintons were doing this before the Patriot Act, before Bush was elected, and they will do it again if given the chance and to hell with the constitution or any law passed or not passed by congress because NONE OF IT APPLIES TO DEMOCRATS or in those immortal words of Al Gore, "There is no controlling legal authority."

"So you are okay with warrant less wiretaps? I'm not"

Nor am I.

And I’m pretty astounded by the number of conservatives who are willing to surrender unlimited power to whoever happens to sit in the oval office for the duration of a possibly endless war (can you imagine a time when there is no one who wishes the US harm?)

My wife's desk is in the Sears Tower - now the tallest building in the country, and presumably short listed by possible terrorists – so I’ve though about this a lot. And my conclusion that in terms of what really matters long term ultimately she's safer there – at least as long as this is a country where there are judicial checks on the legal powers of the executive branch - than in a country where the Maximum Leader makes whatever rules she or she prefers as tribal War-Lord.

At the moment, it’s often hard to get this point across – some people are willing go to just about any length to avoid facing the question of possible abuse of such power.

But IMO when you see people such as Paul Weyrich being derided as liberal lap-dogs, you know the argument is off the rails - the problem with this sort of approach is that you have dismiss the opinions of ever larger numbers of thoughtful conservative commentators; if they are elected they are RINOs, if unelected, “who do they represent?”, if current members of government they are said to be “disloyal”, if they have left government service they are attacked as “traitors”, and so on.

Still, at the moment I’m in the minority, and can only hope that a majority of voters come to their senses before such power is vested in someone really inimical to our traditional freedoms.