FISA Update #4 - Don't Let the Fat Lady - Or The Fat Corporate Cats - Sing!

SIGN THIS PETITION!

We did two posts yesterday (that you can see here and here) on the collapse of our democracy, with the U.S. Senate caving in to give the Bush Grindhouse their Stay Out of Jail Card, passing the Protect American Act, which included immunity for the telecommunication companies that bought the "It's legal" bullshit.

Scarecrow, from Firedoglake, gets our spotlight today;

"The Fourth Amendment has been handed down to us unchanged for over two centuries:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Almost none of that is left if today's bill stands. In an age in which "bipartisan" has come to mean weak Democrats joining unanimous Republicans to vote against the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment would be eviscerated by a bill that provides a virtual blank check for the executive to invade the privacy of Americans ..."

In the post, Scarecrow offers a link to a petition that Firedoglake has started, to urge the House of Representatives to reverse this action by their cowardly brothers, when the two houses meet in conference to bang it out.

Tell House Members to Stand Firm Behind the RESTORE Act!

The FISA bill passed by the Senate is a disgrace. By legalizing warrantless spying on Americans and granting retroactive amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms, the Senate seeks to ensure that the Bush administration's illegal spying programs are never investigated or subjected to the rule of law. The Senate bill is a profound betrayal of the votes of millions of Americans who voted in 2006 to put Democrats in control of Congress in order to increase, not eliminate, checks and oversight on this administration, and to restore the rule of law to our country.

The House's RESTORE Act is an infinitely superior bill. It provides real safeguards on the President's spying powers while providing him with the surveillance powers he needs to protect the country. It enables the issue of the legality of the President's spying programs to be decided where it belongs -- in a court of law. And it preserves the crucial balance that has existed for decades between enabling necessary surveillance on Americans and ensuring that our political leaders do not abuse that power.

In the wake of the discovery of the Watergate crimes and decades of surveillance abuses, the Congress of the mid-1970s acted on a bipartisan basis to put into place safeguards to ensure that even our highest political officials must adhere to the law and can only exercise eavesdropping powers with real safeguards. The RESTORE Act continues that tradition, while the Senate bill eviscerates it. We urge Democratic House members to stand firm behind the bill they passed and not capitulate once again to the bullying, manipulative demands of the Bush administration for ever-greater unchecked power, as embodied by the warrantless eavesdropping and telecom immunity provisions of the Senate bill.

Go here, to Firedoglake, and sign the petition and take part in, hopefully, getting this thing straight.

SIGN THIS PETITION!

FISA Update #2 - Who Are These Men That Sold Out Our Democracy Today!

Rather than add a rather long "Update #2", to Today's Must Read - Glenn Greenwald's "Amnesty Day for Bush and lawbreaking telecoms" posted earlier today, a separate post is warranted.

As you can imagine, an avalanche of reaction, to this dark, dark day our elected U.S. Senate has put upon this country.

Who Are These Men That Sold Out Our Democracy Today!

U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 110th Congress - 2nd Session; Question: On the Amendment (Dodd Amdt. No. 3907 ); Statement of Purpose: To strike the provisions providing immunity from civil liability to electronic communication service providers for certain assistance provided to the Government.


Paul Kiel, from TPMmuckraker

"Let there be no doubt: a majority of senators, and a large number of Democrats, think the telecoms should not suffer the hazard of accountability for cooperating with the administration's warrantless wiretapping program. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) took to the floor last night to give a speech asking, "This is our defining question, the question that confronts every generation: The rule of law, or the rule of men?" The resounding answer: the rule of men."

Steve Benen, from The Carpetbagger Report

"For the 18 Dems who went along with this nonsense, I’d love to hear an explanation. For the Republicans, not even one GOP senator was willing to take a stand for the rule of law. Not one ...

And what arguments were presented by the other side? Not much — a few lies about the cooperation coming in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and a basic understanding that Republicans had to go along with the wishes of Mr. 28% at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue."

Presidential candidates Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Barack Obama (D-IL) were present for the vote – voting nay and yea, respectively ... Hillary Clinton and Lindsey Graham did not vote."

Taylor Marsh

"What a shell Congress is from its former greatness ... Bush gets away with illegal wiretapping and so do the companies that helped him do it ... Bush gets away with the Iraq war, all without any consequences whatsoever ... No wonder more and more people are registering as Independents"

Kagro X, on Daily Kos - "US Senate commits suicide on national television"


Update #3

"The Senate had "just sanctioned" the "single largest invasion of privacy in the history of the country,"

Paul Kiel from TPMmuckraker - Dodd: It's up to The House

"The Senate had "just sanctioned" the "single largest invasion of privacy in the history of the country," he said. When asked why he thought so many Dem senators had crossed over, he replied: "Unfortunately, those who are advocating this notion that you have to give up liberties in order to be more secure are apparently prevailing. They seem to be convincing people that you're at risk politically or we're at risk as a nation if we don't give up rights."

Today's Must Read - Glenn Greenwald's "Amnesty Day for Bush and lawbreaking telecoms"

What if Spartacus was voting in the Senate today, on the Protect America Act, the FISA bill update?

We suspect that Spartacus wouldn't bend over the American people, and violently sodomize them, the way our elected U.S. Senate is about to do today.

We believe Spartacus would rise to the occasion (no pun intended) to protect, not persecute, to do what is right, to follow and protect the Constitution and, lastly, he would buck and revolt against the Emperor, for attempting this hijacking of the laws of the country.

When the sun sets today, it may well install a permanent darkness on the U.S. Senate, marking it, for decades to come, as the august chamber's saddest day.

Glenn Greenwald, of Salon, has a most sobering, depressing account of the whole sordid affair, in "Amnesty Day for Bush and lawbreaking telecoms";

"All sorts of "controversy" erupted from that story. Democrats everywhere expressed dramatic, unbridled outrage, vowing that this would not stand. James Risen and Eric Lichtblau were awarded Pulitzer Prizes for exposing this serious lawbreaking. All sorts of Committees were formed, papers written, speeches given, conferences convened, and editorials published to denounce this extreme abuse of presidential power. This was illegality and corruption at the highest level of government, on the grandest scale, and of the most transparent strain."

And Greenwald than asks, rhetorically, "What was the outcome of all of that sturm und drang? What were the consequences for the President for having broken the law so deliberately and transparently?"

"Absolutely nothing. To the contrary, the Senate is about to enact a bill which has two simple purposes: (1) to render retroactively legal the President's illegal spying program by legalizing its crux: warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, and (2) to stifle forever the sole remaining avenue for finding out what the Government did and obtaining a judicial ruling as to its legality: namely, the lawsuits brought against the co-conspiring telecoms. In other words, the only steps taken by our political class upon exposure by the NYT of this profound lawbreaking is to endorse it all and then suppress any and all efforts to investigate it and subject it to the rule of law."

And this, as Greenwald notes, is happening in a Democrat-led, Democrat-majority Senate!

Maybe I missed the MoveOn.Org memo, that the 2006 elections, of having the Democrats take back the Congress, was all about greenlighting, aiding and abetting the Bush Grindhouse, and their executive power-grab.

And we have Harry "Give'em What They Want" Reid, the Senate Majority Leader (now there's a deafening oxymoron) to thank for this.

Greenwald closes with this;

"From Frank Church and the bipartisan oversight protections of the post-Watergate abuses in the mid-1970s to Jay Rockefeller, Dick Cheney, legalized warrantless eavesdropping and retroactive telecom amnesty in 2008 -- that vivid collapse into the sewer illustrates as potently as anything could what has happened to this country over the last eight years."

Update! Update!

Just as I am posting this, news is breaking on the voting

From Jane Hamsher, over on Firedoglake;

"Update: Woo hoo! You lose. Dodd's amendment to strip retroactive immunity fails spectacularly, 31-67. I have to say that what constantly amazes me is just how damn little it costs corporate America to buy our elected officials. Pennies on the dollar, really, for what they get."

From KBusch on BlueMassGroup;

The following Democratic Senators just voted for telecom immunity.

Jay Rockefeller WV
Evan Bayh IA
Daniel Inouye HI
Tim Johnson SD
Herb Kohl WI
Mary Landrieu LA
Claire McCaskill MO
Mark Pryor AR
Blanche Lincoln AR
Dianne Feinstein CA
Ken Salazar CO
Tom Carper DE
Barbara Mikulski MD
Jim Webb VA

Read the Greenwald piece anyway, it's very good ... And, it's playing out, pretty much, as he foresaw

As we stated above, a very, very dark day!

And, just late last month, The Garlic gave the Senate all the advise they would need in this fight

Was The Mukasy Vote Part Of That Rovian New Math?

When throwing someone out of the room can often be called giving them the "bum's rush", what kind of bum or rush is it when they're rammed through the door?

Many a Senate Democrat called for giving New Attorney Crony Michael Mukasey the bum's rush, but, as has been their habit, they caved (thank you again Chuck Schumer and Diane Feinstein), while their Republican colleagues rammed him home - and without their pet 60-vote rule;

Senate Confirms Mukasey By 53-40

Salon's Glenn Greenwald showed up the MSM, with his post today "What happened to the Senate's "60-vote requirement"?"

"The so-called "60-vote requirement" applies only when it is time to do something to limit the Bush administration. It is merely the excuse Senate Democrats use to explain away their chronic failure/unwillingness to limit the President, and it is what the media uses to depict the GOP filibuster as something normal and benign. There obviously is no "60-vote requirement" when it comes to having the Senate comply with the President's demands, as the 53-vote confirmation of Michael Mukasey amply demonstrates. But as Mukasey is sworn in as the highest law enforcement officer in America, the Democrats want you to know that they most certainly did stand firm and "registered their displeasure."

And Greenwald uses a great quote from Steve Benen, of The Carpetbagger Report, in his post "The GOP — Grand Obstructionist Party".

I won't spoil it for you here, but there's another great line from it;

"In April, Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said, “The strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail … and so far it’s working for us.”

So much for those great Republican leadership qualities.

It's a good read, and it nails the caving Democratic Congress to a cross.












The Cavingcrats