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The Progressive Political Blog for Colorado
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The problem is not the Telecoms. The CEOs at the offending companies were not sitting around and then suddenly one day say "let's go spy on the people!"
They were asked to by their government, specifically by George W. Bush.
It's not the job of telecoms to accuse the President of the United States of breaking the law.
The illegal wire-tapping of U.S. Citizens by the Bush Administration should not be adjudicated in the courts, especially when you're really only holding proxies accountable.
In fact, our system of government has a remedy for such things.
The Bush Administrations crimes need to be settled by the political body-the co-equal branch.
The way you deal with a President who is breaking the law is through Impeachment, or at least a strong, vocal opposition.
Legal recourses against the telecoms would still leave the real criminal free.
Should I worry about the precedent of sending an ex-President to jail from crimes he committed during his regime?
(the 4th amendment? Are we still using that thing? BTW, I moved page two of the ad. - promoted by johne)
There'll be a bit of a delay in the trashing of your 4th Amendment rights, while a memorial service for a former senator takes place.
But tomorrow, back to it. I hope that the good amendments'll pass during the Senate's consideration of the FISA rdeform legislation, but it's not likely they will. The easiest to pass would be an amendment offered by Sen. Bingaman (D-NM), cosponsored by Sens. Specter and Casey. About this amendment, Greenwald says:
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.
Meanwhile, there's an ad in the A-section of the Washington Post today:
That's something you may be used to hearing about a Democratic candidate in other states, but here in Utah, this is truly a first. We have but one Democrat in our federal delegation, and on FISA, Matheson has proven himself a true Bush Dog. Now it appears a new candidate is ready to step up and show true leadership on a key issue.
Morgan is the Democratic candidate for Utah's first congressional district, a seat currently held by school voucher supporting, "drill here, drill now" parroting, warrantless wiretap backing Rob Bishop. In addition to the 2/1 odds Morgan faces unseating the corporate funded incumbent, he also faces a battle with in-state leadership as a result of Rep. Jim Matheson, our only sitting Democrat, and faithful Blue Dog.
[T]here is an even more important reason not to hyperventilate about the latest statement or vote Barack Obama may have made that is not fully in keeping with our vision of progressive politics and electoral strategy. That reason is the Overton Window.
For those unfamiliar with it from my previous writings and from my panel on the subject at last year's YearlyKos, the Overton Window is a method for shifting public policy that takes a universe of policy outcomes on a certain topic, lists them in order from progressive to conservative, assesses the political acceptability of each, and deliberately encourages friendly think tanks and media organizations to promote the solutions that fall just outside current acceptability in order to "shift the window" in the public discourse.
To shift that window in the Progressive direction, we need to give our elected officials room "in the middle" and push the frame to the left. A good case of Concerned Women of America using this technique in that group's attack on birth control [not abortion, birth control!] gives their elected supporters a centrist position while making their extreme position more "acceptable" to the opinion leaders and the population.
A Colorado example could be the centrist positioning of or representatives and our pushing the window toward revenues for the commons or moving alliances toward support of health care for kids or keeping our lands and water habitable.
Please the read the post and comments on Kos, and let's give our office holders and candidates some slack as we work on shifting that widow frame. Meaningful change takes a not insignificant effort. Any thoughts?
So I finally finished reading the new FISA bill last night. I didn't really like the ending. The good news, is it appears the report ordered to be written by various Inspectors General, etc. of the various three letter agencies of what happened will be a public report (expect for any sensitive redactions).
FINAL REPORT.-Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Inspectors General of the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Agency, the Department of Defense, and any other Inspector General required to conduct a review under subsection (b)(1), shall submit to the appropriate committees of Congress, in a manner consistent with national security, a comprehensive report on such reviews that includes any recommendations of any such Inspectors General within the oversight authority and responsibility of any such Inspector General with respect to the reviews.
...
A report under this subsection shall be submitted in unclassified form, but may include a classified annex.
In terms of immunity it only applies to spying from September 11th. As Qwest CEO Nachio said the NSA approached his company before that date, if there was any hanky panky that started before 9-11-01, those suits are still on. Parties who are already suing telecom companies get to submit anything they have (which likely isn't much) as part of this investigation. Otherwise, I can only see this section of the bill as not getting what we wanted. The FISA court will still get to review this. The bill also says nothing about criminal trials. Looking back at this by a week or so, I have to think the Bush administration was going to put up every road block to these suits anyway, state secrets, etc. With this there's at least a procedure by which to review what happened. It's not like the CEO's of AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint were going to be frog-marched off to jail anyway. In my case, I guess the desire for vengeance burns brightly but quickly.
TPM is reporting that the FISA vote in the Senate has been delayed until July. This can't be good news for proponents of telecom immunity and warrantless spying on American citizens.
Sen. Feingold's objections have caused the delay ... I don't know the procedural details.
This gives more time for the Strange Bedfellows campaign to take off, more time to pressure our senators, and more time to raise the public profile of the issue. Strange Bedfellows is already running ads and robocalls in Steny Hoyer's district, and has raised a few hundred thousand bucks. The goal has now been set at $500,000.
( - promoted by johne)
If you haven't been following the ins and outs of the whole FISA debate, you'd be hard-pressed to see what the big deal is, and why so many folks -- including me -- are up in arms about it.
FISA stands for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The act, passed in 1978, essentially dictates how intelligence is gathered -- both physically and electronically -- by our government when it comes to "foreign powers" and "agents of foreign powers". There's a special court, called a FISA Court, made up of 3 judges, which reviews and approves warrants which authorize the collection of that intelligence.
The court's been around since 1979. Between 1979 and 2006, 22,990 warrants were applied for. 22,985 were approved.
That's right -- in 27 years, only 5 warrants have been definitively rejected.
Let's just say that getting a warrant from the FISA Court isn't that hard.
The issue at question is that, starting after 9/11, and possibly even before then, the Executive Branch essentially ordered America's telecommunications companies -- including Verizon and AT&T -- to cooperate with the National Security Agency (the intelligence agency responsible for signal gathering) in a massive warrantless spying and search program, involving telephone calls, emails, Internet activity, and text messages.
"We'll be requiring key procedural votes, and also taking some time on the floor this week, to indicate the problems of this legislation," Russ Feingold , D-Wis., said Monday of himself and Christopher J. Dodd , D-Conn., speaking at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank. "We're not just going to let it quickly pass."
Barack Obama:
"I think what is clear is that the way the program operated broke the law that was existing at the time," Obama said Monday at a news conference in Jacksonville, Fla. "On the other hand, what I've also seen and learned is the degree to which the underlying program itself is, in fact, necessary to help prevent terrorist attacks."
..............
UPDATE 1
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a senior member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, announced today that he would oppose new legislation amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) due to his continued opposition to a provision that would grant blanket retroactive immunity to any telecommunications company that participated in the President's warrantless wiretapping program.
It's very sad to see such a promising congressman as Ed Perlmutter and such a promising congressman and senatorial candidate as Mark Udall sell out their constituents, their constitution, and their country, but that is exactly what they have done. Ed Perlmutter along with Mark Udall voted to allow retroactive immunity to the telecoms who knowingly and willingly aided and abetted the criminal actions of the Bush Administration as it illegally wiretapped and spied on it's own citizens.
(Is there anything more vital to a democracy than our 4th amendment rights to being secure in our phone calls and emails? -promoted by johne)
The latest on the FISA/telecom amnesty fiasco is that Majority Leader Hoyer is moving the bill, almost certainly this week. Emptywheel reports at FDL that the vote will come tonight (Thursday) or tomorrow, unless it's linked with the supplemental appropriation for the war, in which case it's likely to come today.
As she says, the time to act is very short. My suggestions:
- 3rd CD folks need to get on the phone to John Salazar pronto.
- 1st CD folks -- Diana DeGette is chief deputy whip, right? She needs calls, too.
- I suspect Rep. Udall and Rep. Perlmutter will vote the right way. Let's support them on that with phone calls from those in the 2nd and 7th CDs.
- Donate to run ads in the districts of three key supporters of telcom amnesty: Majority Leader Hoyer, John Barrow (GA-12), and Chris Carney (PA-10). Read up on what Glenn Greenwald is saying about why, and how, these Reps. are being targeted.
- House leadership decides what comes to the floor for a vote ... period. Hoyer and Pelosi, at least, are allowing this travesty to occur. Call 'em both.
All representatives can be reached at 202-224-3121 ... ask for the office by first and last name.
Nobody'll be surprised to hear that Sen. Jay Rockefeller, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and co-conspirators are once again working their tails off to hand Bush cart blanche to spy on American citizens, immunize the telecoms for their illegal participation in same, and generally put our civil rights in the same league as those in Zimbabwe.
Regarding the telecoms, wasn't it Hoyer who signed a letter asking Bush not to pardon Scooter Libby because equal treatment under the law is so fundamentally important to our judicial system?
This time around, a coalition of Left & liberty-embracing Right blogs*, plus the ACLU, are working together on a joint project. Click the link at left for Glenn Greenwald's usual excellent explanation, but the short version is ads to target Steny Hoyer for his enabling of the legislation. You, too, can help. And it's already becoming a very big deal: nearly 2500 donors have raised about $140K since 1:30 p.m. this (Tuesday) afternoon. [correction -- Greenwald is saying $60k, so the ActBlue page I link to must have had a previous life. This means fewer than 2500 donors, too. Still, very impressive for less than 24 hours]
Our well-known "conservative" Democrat John Salazar voted for this bill preventing Telecom Amnesty.
Let's hope he talks to Ken and gets him in line.
The rest of the Democratic delegation from Colorado voted for the bill preventing Telecom Amnesty. Both Tancredo and Musgrave were absent from the vote, and Lamborn voted for Telecom Amnesty.
Your bank records may be in the hands of the NSA...your cell calls monitored...your emails scanned...your blog posts analyzed for subversive words. Big brother is bigger than we could've ever imagined.
All this under leaders who say they want to keep big government out of your life.
Amy OLIVER- KFKA: What can we expect; what's on the agenda for next week?
(Allard flack): Well, I think top priority is FISA reauthorization. I just cannot believe theHouse Democrats allowed FISA to expire last Saturday. I mean, we're a country at war..... And the House has just simply said, we're not going to accept this, because we want to have, you know, terrorists be able to sue phone companies if they're listening to our conversations. It's insane.
OLIVER: Yeah --
And this would be the spot where a principled member of the highly principled and non-partisan II would reiterate some kind of Constitutional principle about illegal searches by the government. But of course, Amy didn't:
Sometimes I get interesting feedback on the calls and emails that I send to my Senators and Representative.
Considering the heated nature of the FISA fight, it is interesting to see how the legislators that voted in favor of retroactive immunity and of legalizing the government's ability to spy on its citizens justify their votes.
In this case, as is probably often the case in controversial issues, Senator Ken Salazar provides some pretty weak rationales for his vote supporting the unmodified Senate version of FISA that passed in the upper house.
Let's journey through his excuse letter and evaluate the truthiness that abounds therein below.
From NPR we see why the Bush Republicans refused to renew the Protect America Act:
NPR: (Senate Minority Leader and Republican) Mr. McConnell, the Bush administration says that if the Protect America Act isn't made permanent, it will tie your hands, intelligence hands, especially when it comes to new threats. But isn't it true that any surveillance underway does not expire, even if this law isn't renewed by tomorrow?
MCCONNELL: Well, Renee it's a very complex issue. It's true that some of the authorities would carry over to the period they were established for one year. That would put us into the August, September time-frame. However, that's not the real issue. The issue is liability protection for the private sector.
It's not just so that AT&T and Verison aren't held accountable. It's to prevent legal action going forward that, in the discovery process, would expose the full extent of the administration's illegal activity.
Keith Olbermann called it out in a Special Comment last night.
If immunity is in the final legislation - and Bush has said he'd veto any bill that doesn't include it - it would kill the 40-plus lawsuits that have been filed against telecoms in federal court. The litigation challenges the legality of the program and the actions of telecoms that cooperated with the government.
If the lawsuits don't move forward, we may never learn if some telecoms compromised the privacy of innocent Americans. A grant of immunity could also set a dangerous precedent for other businesses when federal agents or local cops who don't have a court order demand private or confidential information about their customers....
And then there's Ken Salazar's vote on Dodd's Amendment to strip out immunity.
Who would ever think that one could say something positive about former Qwest CEO, Joe Nacchio? But I have to give him credit for saying no to the Bush administration when they asked him to approve an illegal program designed to spy on Americans without court approval. Now the U.S. Senate, with the help of both of Colorado's senators, Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar, has voted to uphold this illegal operation and give retroactive immunity to the telephone companies who went along with it. I must admit I'm not surprised about Wayne Allard's vote. He's been a Bush rubber stamp for the past seven years on every single issue. But Ken Salazar is another story. Not only is he a member of the opposition party (remember Ken, you're a Democrat), but he's also a former Colorado Attorney General. More than most people, he ought to know that he voted to cover up an illegal program that clearly violates the fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In addition, he has potentially become an accomplice to a charge of obstruction of justice for his role in covering up the illegal activities of the Bush administration over the past six years. This amnesty program for the telecom companies is really a carefully designed plan to protect members of our executive branch from potential criminal charges that could arise in the future. I may not be a lawyer, but I know enough to know that both of our senators should be ashamed of themselves for not voting to uphold our Constitution and the rule of law.
(Our Junior Senator embarrasses himself yet again. - promoted by pacified)
Well, all your phone calls, letters and faxes to Ken Salazar on FISA and telecomm immunity went for naught. His admin actually told me once that he was getting just as many calls that supported immunity for illegal spying:
Voting with the Republicans were the following eighteen Democrats (rough count): Bayh, Inouye, Johnson, Landrieu, McCaskill, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Stabenow, Feinstein, Kohl, Pryor, Rockefeller, Salazar, Carper, Mikulski, Conrad, Webb, and Lincoln.
Joe Lieberman also voted against stripping retroactive immunity.
Not present and voting was Senator Hillary Clinton, the only presidential candidate serving in the Senate to miss the vote. Before the vote, Senator Dodd raised a very interesting point that I haven't previously seen discussed: Three out of of four congressional committees that looked at FISA reform legislation were opposed to retroactive immunity.
Ken likes to vote on the official Senate record, or so it seems. He also likes to play it safe, way too safe. This is a nation of laws, not men. But hey, we can all trust George Bush and the Republicans with our civil rights, right? That's what Ken Salazar thinks.
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