Eye on Congress

Well, it's official:  Rep. Adam Smith is not the least bit concerned about the wishes of the majority of his 9th District constituents (Federal Way, Bellevue, Mercer Island, Newcastle, Renton, Kent, Tukwila, SeaTac and N.E. Tacoma, among others), or the 2014 Congressional election and candidate and challenger Mark Greene , as Smith voted against the Amendment by Rep. Justin Amash (R/Michigan) to rein in part of the overreaching, totalitarian-like NSA surveillance programs.  Unfortunately, the amendment failed by a fairly close margin, 217 - 205, as Smith voted with the "Big Brother 217" in Congress [several Congresspersons did not vote on the Amendment for one reason or another, including Rep. Herrera-Beutler (R) from Washington State].  Hastings (R), Reichert (R), Larsen (D), Kilmer (D) and Heck (D) from the Washington delegation joined Smith in voting down the Amash Amendment.  As you can see, the Democratic Party is as much a problem in not protecting the Constitutio

As we promised in our previous post, Commoner researched Rep. Adam Smith's (WA - 9th District) votes on the various so-called Patriot Acts, and as we suspected, he is a reliable lackey for overbearing government intrusion and overreach, the sort of surveillance that author George Orwell warned about in his book about the future of fascism, "1984."  Some political commentators, that are more well versed about the technical aspects of the Obama govt.'s dragnet and spying on virtually all American citizens than we are, have said that the current apparatus that is in place now makes Orwell's imaginations look almost tame, believe it or not.  Orwell, after all, is the author who first came up with the term Big Brother through his "1984" best-seller.  Also, lest we forget, Smith is one of Obama's biggest supporters.  Smith did manage to vote right in '05, not coincidentally the year following the last time that Mark Greene challenged hi