Sorry, busy July. I see nobody missed me...yet.

So, did you see the news as of about 15 minutes ago (10pm CDT)? The Democrat-controlled Senate passed a measure allowing the President to perform warrantless wiretaps.

Did you catch that?

The United States Senate, controlled by DEMOCRATS, passed a measure that, if passed in the U.S. House, would allow the PRESIDENT to perform WARRANTLESS WIRETAPS! Hopefully the caps and exclamation point helped that time.

Now, do you understand the significance of that statement? Think about it.

The Democratic Party has been roundly crawling up George W. Bush's tailpipe ever since he was running against former, and late, Gov. Ann Richards waaaaaay back in 1994. Now, Texas politics are one thing, and national politics quite another. But that was a significant election when you think about it.

Gov. Richards was one of the darlings of the Democratic Party back then. Then along comes "little Bush" (as the Chinese so affectitately refer to the POTUS as), and defeats the sitting Democratic Governor of the nation's second (then third?) most populous state. With eyes on the White House just as soon as Republican nemesis Bill Clinton was out, Bush became public enema...er, enemy number one in Democratic eyes.

This continued in the 2000 election, and as the results of that affair went to the Supreme Court, the Democrats found a new slogan to describe Bush and their disdain for him: "Not MY President!"

One thing after the other has followed, with Democrats sometimes bashing Bush just to be ugly and besmirch his name, and nothing more.

Now admittedly, Pres. Bush has at times done his fair share to make it difficult to like him, even for Republicans and conservatives like myself who have voted for him four times. Events like the Dubai Ports deal, the Harriet Miers appointment mess, and the continuing inability to balance the Federal budget, not to mention the recent handling of the matter of illegal immigration, have Republicans at times wondering what the President is thinking, and up to?

But Democrats have been relentlessly ugly for 13 years!

Other matters that Democrats have been relentless on include "Bush lied, they died," in reference to the justificatiton used to go to war in Iraq, and my personal favorite, the warrantless wiretapping issue.

Now, personally, I have absolutely NO problem with my International emails and phone calls being tracked. I have a business brokering wood products and have dealings with people in Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Israel, the UAE, and China. Now, that may look suspicious to some spook at Langley, so if they think that my little venture in International free enterprise necessitates some "Jack Ryan" wannabe looking over my shoulder, then go for it. Just don't let me find out about it.

But the matter of warrantless wiretapping has NEVER been about American citizens like myself, born here, whose families trace back over a century! Who cares what American citizens do. Timothy McVeigh is the concern there, and that's why we have the ATF and others.

Warrantless wiretapping involved the CIA and NSA tapping NON-CITIZENS' foreign telephone and other conversations. And the last time I checked, you have to be an American citizen to be able to claim rights under the Constitution of the United States of America. Remember when Sadham Hussein attempted to salvage his life by applying for an appeal of his death sentence to the U.S. Federal Courts system? Please. Die. Sucker.

Warrantless wiretapping is, in my estimation, a non-issue. Actually, more accurately stated, it is simply a political issue. One that the handlers of the Democratic representatives in Washington, D.C. get to use to bash Bush and annoy the Republicans with relentlessly in the press, but that amounts to nothing. Sen. Harry Reid's own personal soapbox, and that's about it.

If a non-citizen is communicating with people on phones that, say, INTERPOL knows to be radicals, wouldn't you want those phone conversations to be monitored? And if a phone traced to, say, the tribal lands of Pakistan or the mountains of Afganistan is found to be routinely communicating with Islamic students in New York City whose visas expired three years ago, wouldn't you like to know who is saying what to whom?

Well, until today, the Democrats in the United States Senate, led by Majority Leader Harry Reid-D, Nevada, didn't want the President to perform such "invasions of privacy."

But today, and I cannot stress this enough, the United States Senate chose recess and vacation over principle. And I just wanted to point it out to any of you who happen across my humble blog.

Cheers! And say hi to your Senator for me this weekend if you see them!