Thank You Very Much

You can't say the telecom companies didn't appreciate the Democrats' free pass.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

La-La-La, La-La-La, We're Not Lisssstening

FISA Debate: The Senate Has Nearly Sucked Out My Soul.

Seriously, if one more senator talks about the need for immunity for future cooperation, I’m going to throw my computer out the window. For the 582nd time, FISA requires that telecommunications be legally compelled to hand over information if the proper legal requirements are met.

  Blog of Rightgs

SAdly, I guess that wasn't enough. It never is for the Gestapo.

Bullshit Walks While Money Talks

Last night I posted a blog suggesting that Obama supporters who are angry about his about-face on the upcoming FISA legislation should take the money they would have given Obama this month and give it instead to Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), who is carrying on the fight that Obama walked away from. Apparently the idea struck a chord. The Feingold campaign told me at midday that money was pouring in. Campaign manager George Aldrich was reluctant to give out precise numbers, but reported that the morning's donations were "not a little blip but a massive spike" up from the norm.

  Bob Ostertag – Huffington Post

Spoilers.

Sending money to Feingold instead of Obama the week of the FISA vote is a reasonable and powerful step to take. Remember the election is in November and this is only July. We have months in which to give Obama more money. We are not so tightly boxed in that we cannot make this statement on behalf of the Constitution now.

[...]

That's a big chunk of change that should have gone to Obama. Predictably, this infuriated many Obama supporters, but those of us who redirected our donations to Fiengold are Obama supporters too. My interest is not to derail Obama's campaign from within, but to keep a place at the table for his activist base now that the chairs are being reshuffled to accommodate the heavy hitters of national American politics. This is the point in presidential campaigns where activists usually get sent to the kitchen to eat with the staff. But maybe with this new tool we have in the Internet, we can hold on to our seat in the dining room.

Well, we can try. I won’t hold my breath.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

It's Official

Another arm band for the police state.

The Democratic-led Congress this afternoon voted to put an end to the NSA spying scandal by approving a bill to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, terminate all pending lawsuits against them, and vest whole new warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President. The vote in favor of the new FISA bill was 69-28. Barack Obama joined every Senate Republican (and every House Republican other than one) by voting in favor of it, while his now-vanquished primary rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, voted against it.

[...]

Prior to final approval, the Senate, in the morning, rejected three separate amendments which would have improved the bill but which the White House had threatened would have prompted a presidential veto.

[...]

The Senators […] voted for "cloture" on the underlying FISA bill -- the procedure that allows the Senate to overcome any filibusters -- and it passed by a vote of 72-26. Obama voted along with all Republicans for cloture. Hillary Clinton voted with 25 other Democrats against cloture. And with cloture approved, the bill itself then proceeded to pass by a vote of 69-28 (roll call vote here), thereby immunizing telecoms and legalizing warrantless eavesdropping.

[...]

Obama voted for cloture on the bill -- the exact opposition of supporting a filibuster -- and then voted for the bill itself. A more complete abandonment of a clear campaign promise is difficult [to] imagine.

[...]

With their vote today, the Democratic-led Congress has covered-up years of deliberate surveillance crimes by the Bush administration and the telecom industry, and has dramatically advanced a full-scale attack on the rule of law in this country.

[...]

The bill will now be sent to an extremely happy George Bush, who already announced that he enthusiastically supports it, and he will sign it into law very shortly.

[...]

What is most striking is that when the Congress was controlled by the GOP -- when the Senate was run by Bill Frist and the House by Denny Hastert -- the Bush administration attempted to have a bill passed very similar to the one that just passed today. But they were unable to do so. The administration had to wait until Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats took over Congress.

  Salon – Glenn Greenwald

The Senate overwhelmingly approved a new federal wiretapping law this afternoon by a vote of 69-28.

[...]

The bill approved includes sweeping and retroactive immunity for telecom companies that provided information about customers to government officials without a warrant as part of the Bush Administration's surveillance program imposed after September 11, 2001.

[...]

Moments before the final vote, a handful of senators voted to filibuster the vote, including Sens. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and Tom Harkin of Iowa.

Sen Hillary Clinton (D-NY) voted against the filibuster and then voted against the law a few moments later.

  TPM Muckraker

So her votes against cloture and against the law were actually just bullshit. A filibuster might have done something. A vote against the law (and against cloture) was assured to be meaningless.

The U.S. Senate Wednesday defeated an attempt by Democratic senators to remove legal immunity for telephone companies from a bill reauthorizing the federal government's warrantless surveillance program.

The amendment only needed 50 votes to carry, but its proponents, which include most of the senior ranks of Senate Democrats, were unable to muster the requisite support.

The vote was 66-32 against the amendment.

  CNN Money

Glenn Greenwald suggests you watch this if you have any lingering doubts.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

ACLU, EFF will challenge FISA update in court

And good luck.

Can They Be Stopped? - Part 2

Sorry I didn't find this article sooner. My emails went to John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchinson. I'm sure they were moved.

From Daniel Ellsberg:

Please do the following: How I ask you to spend 60 seconds

1. ALL AMERICANS: Go to the EFF website here and put in your zipcode to find your Senator’s phone number. Call them and read the short script on the same page. If no answer, click the link at the bottom of the page to e-mail them. (Tell others verbally to go to “www.eff.org” and click “take action”)

2. OBAMA SUPPORTERS: Go to My.BarackObama.com here and join the group requesting he oppose (as he did earlier) the amendment. This takes about 30 seconds. I suggest changing “ListServ” in the bottom right to “Do not receive e-mails.” (Tell others verbally to search “obama please vote no” on Google and My.BarackObama.com will be in the top 3 results, currently #1)

  Antiwar.com

A video of Daniel Ellsberg is on that page, answering questions about the FISA issue. Or, you can read the Q&A.

Can They Be Stopped?

Click picture for the ad running in the Washington Post.

The votes in the Senate on various amendments to the FISA "compromise" bill and to the underlying bill itself were originally scheduled for today, but have been postponed until tomorrow (Wednesday, July 9) to enable Senators to attend the funeral of Jesse Helms. Rejection of the amendments -- including the Dodd-Feingold-Leahy amendment to strip telecom immunity from the bill -- is all but certain, and final passage of the bill (with the support of both presidential candidates) is guaranteed.

Once passed by the Senate, the FISA bill will then immediately be sent by the Democratic Congress to an eagerly awaiting and immensely pleased President Bush, who will sign it into law, thereby putting a permanent and happy end to the scandal that began when -- in December, 2005 -- he was caught spying on the communications of American citizens in violation of the law.

[...]

[The] reality is that the Government and the telecoms broke the law not for weeks or months, but for years -- well into 2007. They continued to do so even after the NYT exposed what they were doing. They could have brought their spying activities into a legal framework at any time, but chose instead to spy on Americans in exactly the way our laws criminalize. Manifestly, then, national security had nothing to do with why they did it. The Bush administration chose to do so because they wanted to eavesdrop without oversight and to establish that neither Congress nor the courts can limit what the President does, and telecoms did not want to jeopardize the massive government surveillance contracts they have by refusing.

[...]

One of the pending Senate amendments -- the only one with any remote chance of passing -- is an amendment sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (co-sponsored by GOP Sen. Arlen Specter and Democratic Sen. Bob Casey). The Bingaman amendment would merely postpone the granting of telecom immunity until 90 days after Congress receives the Inspector General's audits of the President's NSA spying program which the new FISA bill mandates, and would freeze the telecom lawsuits in place until then.

The rationale behind the amendment is clear and simple: namely, members of Congress, the vast majority of whom know virtually nothing about what the telecoms did, shouldn't grant immunity unless they know what this illegal spying program entailed. If the IG Report reveals that the program (even though illegal) was devoted to a benign and proper purpose, then Congress (if it is so inclined) can grant immunity then. But if the IG Report reveals the spying program to be something other than what the President and the telecoms claim it to be -- if it entails far more invasive surveillance of Americans or was abused for improper purposes -- then immunity would obviously be wildly inappropriate.

[...]

Bush DNI Mike McConnell (who previously worked on behalf of the telecom industry to increase their government surveillance contracts) and Attorney General Michael Mukasey sent a joint letter to the Senate yesterday vowing that the President would veto the entire FISA bill if the Bingaman amendment were included.

[...]

Manipulative appeals to "national security" are, of course, exactly what has enabled the Bush administration to bully Congress into giving them everything they want for years -- "give us the powers we want and immunize our lawbreaking or be killed by Terrorists." That's how our country has been "governed" in the Bush era -- with heavy-handed, authoritarian decrees that we must comply with our Leader's secretly-formed judgments if we want to survive -- and it's likely how it will continue to be governed.

[...]

Those who support this bill, by definition, support both warrantless eavesdropping on Americans and the right of the President and private corporations to break our laws with impunity.

[...]

The political class has made as clear as can be that it is intent on supporting a limitless erosion of core constitutional liberties and the creation of a two-tiered justice system that exempts the political elite from the rule of law. Neither the "opposition party" nor the establishment media are the slightest bit interested in, or capable of, stopping any of that. Battling against that is the responsibility of citizens who find these political trends dangerous and intolerable.

  Salon – Glenn Greenwald

Calling Out Obama

Back in August, when he was seeking the Democratic nomination, Obama voted against the Protect America Act. Therefore, had Obama had his way, there never would have been any PAA in the first place, and therefore, there never would have been any PAA orders possible. Having voted against the PAA last August, how can Obama now claim that he considers it important that the PAA orders not expire? How can he be eager to avoid the expiration of surveillance orders which he opposed authorizing in the first place?

I asked [Obama adviser Greg] Craig that question several times and received completely incoherent replies, after which he started insisting that he already answered me and had nothing else to add (he then changed the subject to talk about the "improvements" the current bill achieves over the Rockefeller Senate bill). The fact is that there is no answer. In the past, Obama has opposed the type of warrantless eavesdropping which those PAA orders authorize. He's repeatedly said that the FISA court works and there's no need to authorize eavesdropping without individual warrants. None of that can be reconciled with his current claim that he supports this FISA "compromise" because National Security requires that those PAA orders not expire and that there be massive changes to FISA.

  Salon- Glenn Greenwald

....but hey, say what you want....you will anyway.

The Criminal Class

A Bush-41-appointed Federal District Judge yesterday became the third judge -- out of three who have ruled on the issue -- to reject the Bush administration's claim that Article II entitles the President to override or ignore the provisions of FISA. Yesterday's decision by Judge Vaughn Walker of the Northern District of California also guts the central claims for telecom immunity and gives the lie to the excuses coming from Congress as to why the new FISA bill is some sort of important "concession." More than anything else, this decision is but the most recent demonstration that, with this new FISA bill, our political establishment is doing what it now habitually does: namely, ensuring that the political and corporate elite who break our laws on purpose are immune from consequences.

  Salon - Glenn Greenwald

And as my dear She-Bean says: It will ever be thus.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Late to the Party

Although I read TPM daily, a couple of years ago I was much more impressed with Josh Marshall. The past couple of years he seems to me to have left critical reporting on Democrats behind him. In fact, I have been waiting for him to post anything about Obama's recent list of right-leaning maneuvers. At last, TPM at least takes up the FISA issue, but it's not Marshall doing the posting. It's David Kurtz. And Greg Sargent and Eric Kleefield lay out a timeline of Obama's statements on FISA at TPM Election Central.

Get FISA Right

Barack Obama supporters urging the Illinois senator to vote against a pending surveillance law have formed the largest group on the Democratic presidential candidate's social networking Web site, my.barackobama.com.

The group, "Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right," had more than 14,500 members as of Thursday morning. The group formed last Wednesday, June 25, making it perhaps the fastest growing user-generated group on the page. Sometime around 8 p.m. Wednesday, the group became No. 1 in overall membership, surpassing "Action Wire," the campaign-created group that is designed to fight smears and rumors hurled at Obama.

  Raw Story

Yeah, well, good luck guys.

Keith Olbermann Defends Himself

Against Glenn Greenwald's column.

And suggests that Obama may have supported the FISA mess because of a loophole which may allow for future prosecution of the telecom culprits.

You think Obama's that clever? I'm skeptical.

"Better Than McCain" Isn't Good Enough: The FISA Sham

So that you don't accuse me of being racist, I’m going to change my opening sentence from: “Let’s call a spade a spade,” to “Let’s call a wanker a wanker.”

Disappointed over [Barack Obama’s] position on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the online activists feel jilted and betrayed and have taken to questioning his progressive credentials. One prominent blogger, Atrios, has even given him the moniker “Wanker of the Day.”

“He broke faith,” said Matt Stoller, a political consultant and blogger at OpenLeft.com. “Obama pledged to filibuster, and he is part of that old politics, in this case, that he said he wasn’t. It will spur us to challenge him.”

[...]

“I don’t want to hear him talk about leadership. I don’t want to hear him talk about defending the Constitution. I want to see him do it,” [Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of Daily Kos] said. “If he does, it will increase the intensity and level of support he gets from base Democrats. If he doesn’t, we may worry he is just another one of these spineless Democrats who are more afraid of controversy in doing the right thing than they are in actually doing the right thing.”

[...]

Obama’s statement was viewed as a reversal from a pledge last year to oppose any bill with retroactive immunity for telecom companies.

  CBS

Seen that way because that’s pretty much what it is.

Over the weekend, Barack Obama announced that -- although not in favor of the idea of retroactive immunity for the shady corporatations that helped our own government spy on us -- he supports the FISA legislation that the Senate is about to pass that will magically make all the illegal wire-tapping that the White House did legal after all.

But it's all alright, because he super double-dog swears that, as president, he won't take advantage of the power to watch over all of America like Big Brother...

  Indecision 2008

Glenn Greenwald goes after Keith Olbermann (and others) for giving Obama a pass on the issue:

Those who spent the last five years mauling Bush for "shredding the Constitution" and approving of lawbreaking -- only to then praise Obama for supporting a bill that endorses and protects all of that -- are displaying exactly the type of blind reverence that is more dangerous than any one political leader could ever be.

Amen.

Julian [Sanchez] goes through the changes to the bill one by one, and demonstrates what an absurd, and even insulting, farce it's been for the Democrats to call this some kind of victory. They opposed the original FISA bill because it allowed for warrantless surveillance of Americans and legal immunity for telecom companies who turn over information to the government. The revised FISA bill, as Julian explains, allows for warrantless surveillance of Americans and legal immunity for telecom companies who turn over information to the government. So there are two options here: Either the Democrats were lying about why they opposed the bill in the first place, or they're lying about having extracted meaningful concessions on the bill now. Whichever you choose, it's been a shameful, saddening performance.

  Ezra Klein

At least we still have Russ Feingold.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said he opposed language in the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that likely would give retroactive immunity from lawsuits to telephone companies that complied with warrantless surveillance requests from the government, The Hill reported Thursday.

Because Feingold wants more time to delay consideration until after the Independence Day recess, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said, "(it) doesn't look like" the Senate will consider the FISA bill this week.

  UPI

[W]iretapping is so classified, and the language of the bill so opaque, that no one without a "top secret" clearance can say with any authority just how much surveillance the proposal will authorize the government to do. (The best assessment yet comes from former Justice Department official David Kris, who deems the legislation "so intricate" that it risks confusing even "the government officials who must apply it.")

  Slate

Feel better?

Read that Slate article. It explains “five myths” about the bill.

Myth No. 1: This bill is a compromise.

Myth No. 2: We need the bill to intercept our enemies abroad.

Myth No. 3: The courts will still review the telecom cases.

Myth No. 4: The Democrats must fold because of the November election.

Myth No. 5: The law will be the "exclusive means" for surveillance.

I'm sorry, but not particularly surprised, that Keith Olbermann is lock-stepping the Democratic candidate. Josh Marshall seems to be taking the tack to just not talk about it. The subject is conspicuously missing from today's posts.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

MoveOn Hasn't Forgotten

On Friday, House Democrats caved to the Bush administration and passed a bill giving a get-out-of-jail-free card to phone companies that helped Bush illegally spy on innocent Americans.

This Monday, the fight moves to the Senate. Senator Russ Feingold says the "deal is not a compromise; it is a capitulation." Barack Obama announced his partial support for the bill, but said, "It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses.”

Last year, after phone calls from MoveOn members and others, Obama went so far as to vow to "support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies." We need him to honor that promise.

Can you call Senator Obama today and tell him you're counting on him to keep his word?

Well, you probably can. And if you want to, MoveOn has a number right here.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Politics As Usual?

What Obama has said about his support of the FISA "compromise", and what some people think of what he said.

Congress, Paring Down Your Right to Privacy

The House passed that FISA bill giving Telecommunications companies immunity.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

House Just Says No

The House voted to pass a FISA bill that does not provide retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies who illegally provided customer information to the government. Now we await the veto.

FISA

Where do we stand on telecom immunity, and why is the Bush Administration really so hot on providing it?

Nearly 40 lawsuits, consolidated into five groups, are pending before a San Francisco judge. The various plaintiffs, a mix of nonprofit civil liberties advocates and private attorneys, are seeking to prove that the Bush administration engaged in illegal massive surveillance of Americans' e-mails and phone calls after the Sept. 11, 2001.

[...]

If the lawsuits go forward, sensitive details about the scope and methods of the Bush administration's surveillance efforts could be divulged for the first time.

[...]

[D]isclosures in the lawsuits could [...] establish whether, as the plaintiffs allege, it involved the massive interception of purely domestic communications with the help of the nation's largest providers: AT&T, Cingular Wireless, BellSouth, Sprint and MCI/Verizon.

"I think the administration would be very loath for folks to realize that ordinary people were being surveilled," said Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the lead lawsuit, against AT&T.

  WaPo

And this will not surprise you….

There were a couple different indications this weekend that the Dems were getting close to a compromise that would result in retroactive immunity.

  TPM Muckraker

Enablers.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

How's That FISA Bill Coming?

The Bush administration said on Saturday U.S. telecommunications companies have agreed to cooperate "for the time being" with spy agencies' wiretaps, despite an ongoing battle between the White House and Congress over new terrorism surveillance legislation.

  Reuters

Wait just a minute. I thought the House Democrats had signed our death warrants by not rubber-stamping the telecom immunity aspect of the FISA bill. It was Democrats, right?

As congressional aides worked furiously on Thursday to broker a deal on controversial electronic surveillance legislation, there was only one thing missing from the talks: Republicans.

Democratic staffers from both chambers have been meeting throughout the week, trying to reach a compromise on an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and invited their Republican counterparts to participate.

However, Republican lawmakers have instructed their staffers to boycott the talks, saying they are unnecessary.

  CBS

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Protection Insurance

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has joined with her Senate colleague [Harry Reid], scheduling two pro forma sessions for the House this week so that Bush cannot call Congress back into special session to take up the now-expired Protect America Act, an enhanced surveillance bill that lapsed over the weekend, or the Senate-passed amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

[...]

Since neither chamber goes out for more than three days, Bush cannot take the dramatic step of calling the Congress back for the first special session since Harry Truman did it in 1948.

And for all you progressives out there, the non-Republican senator you most love to hate – Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) – will be presiding over one of the pro forma sessions this week. So, you better keep an eye on him

  Politico

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Catch 22

The Supreme Court has essentially ratified the Bush Administration position that no one has standing to sue for having their electronic communications monitored illegally, i,e., without a warrant, unless they can show that their communications were in fact monitored -- which is classified information that the Bush Administration refuses to divulge.

  TPM

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.