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Old 06-21-2008, 09:12 AM   #1 (permalink)
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Obama & Dem Leaders Act Same As Bush: Lying Corporatist, Stealing Our Bill of Rights

So, people....as of yesterday, we are on our own. There is no "campaign for change", "campaign of unity"....just greedy, power groping, cynical politicians from both major parties, attempting to control us via a message of fear, as they consolidate our power, our protections from the excesses and abuses of our own government, from us....to them.

Obama and his party allies on capitol hill, yesterday demonstrated he [...and they are...] is willing to lie to us for the purpose of making his anticipated presidency as powerful, unaccountable, and as supportive of corporatism as Bush's presidency.

My take on what happened is that, once Obama got what he wanted from supporters, confirmation that he would be the democratic nominee to run for US president in november, he and democratic congressional leaders decided to gamble on a strategy of using house republicans to grab executive power for Obama that will be in force during his entire, if he wins, first presidential term.

Democrats knew that, if they gave republicans everything they demanded...almost guaranteed retroactive immunity for telecomms that accepted a letter of presidential authorization instead of search warrants signed by a judge to permit government spying on their voice and data customers and their billing records, as well as language that says, in effect, if the president says something is legal, then it is....and immunity for anyone aiding "an intelligence agency", republicans would have to vote for it.

Democrats, gambling that Obama will be elected in november, by passing this horrible FISA "reform" bill, extend to Bush, from August, when present authorization for surveillance expires, to next January, a legalization of formerly illegal surveillance of calls and data of US persons. President Obama, however, will have the authority granted in the bill, for four years, since the bill does not sunset for 4-1/2 years.

All it cost the democrats to do this was retroactive telecomm immunity, my political support, (and I hope the support of everyone disgusted by what Obama and the party's leaders have done....), more of our constitutional protections, and it gained them the support and the trust of their corporatist masters!

Below are the criticisms of some of those who were supportive of Obama's candidacy....

Quote:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...ostid-updateA7
UPDATE VII: Barack Obama got around to issuing a statement and -- citing what he calls "the grave threats that we face" -- he just announced that he supports this warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty "compromise":

Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. . . .

After months of negotiation, the House today passed a compromise that, while far from perfect, is a marked improvement over last year's Protect America Act. . . 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.

It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives -– and the liberty –- of the American people.

Telling Americans that we have to give up basic constitutional rights -- and allow rampant lawbreaking -- if we want to save ourselves from "the grave threats we face" sounds awfully familiar.
He says he will work to remove amnesty from the bill, but once that fails, will vote for the "compromise." Obama has obviously calculated that sacrificing the rule of law and the Fourth Amendment is a worthwhile price to pay to bolster his standing a tiny bit in a couple of swing states. The full Obama statement is here

UPDATE VIII: Nobody should be fooled by Obama's vow to work to remove telecom amnesty from this bill. Harry Reid is already acknowledging that this "effort" is likely to fail and is just pure political theater: Reid said: "Probably we can't take that out of the bill, but I'm going to try." The article continued: "Reid said the vote would allow those opposed to the liability protection to 'express their views.'"

We should continue to demand that amnesty is removed from the bill -- and fight it to the bitter end -- but this whole separate vote they'll have in the Senate on whether to remove amnesty is principally designed to enable Obama, once he votes to enact this bill, to say: "Well, I tried to get immunity out, and when I couldn't, I decided to support the compromise." It's almost certainly the case that Hoyer secured Obama's support for the bill before unveiling it.

Either way, Obama -- if amnesty isn't removed -- is going to vote for warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty, and his statement today all but sealed the fate of this bill. There is no point in sugarcoating that, though we ought to continue to fight its enactment with a focus on removing amnesty in the Senate. Greg Sargent makes several good points about Obama's statement.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...ama/index.html
Saturday June 21, 2008 09:53 EDT
Obama's support for the FISA "compromise"

In the past 24 hours, specifically beginning with the moment Barack Obama announced that he now supports the Cheney/Rockefeller/Hoyer House bill, there have magically arisen -- in places where one would never have expected to find them -- all sorts of claims about why this FISA "compromise" isn't really so bad after all. People who spent the week railing against Steny Hoyer as an evil, craven enabler of the Bush administration -- or who spent the last several months identically railing against Jay Rockefeller -- suddenly changed their minds completely when Barack Obama announced that he would do the same thing as they did. What had been a vicious assault on our Constitution, and corrupt complicity to conceal Bush lawbreaking, magically and instantaneously transformed into a perfectly understandable position, even a shrewd and commendable decision, that we should not only accept, but be grateful for as undertaken by Obama for our Own Good.

Accompanying those claims are a whole array of factually false statements about the bill, deployed in service of defending Obama's indefensible -- and deeply unprincipled -- support for this "compromise."
Numerous individuals stepped forward to assure us that there was only one small bad part of this bill -- the part which immunizes lawbreaking telecoms -- and since Obama says that he opposes that part, there is no basis for criticizing him for what he did. Besides, even if Obama decided to support an imperfect bill, it's our duty to refrain from voicing any criticism of him, because the Only Thing That Matters is that Barack Obama be put in the Oval Office, and we must do anything and everything -- including remain silent when he embraces a full-scale assault on the Fourth Amendment and the rule of law -- because every goal is now subordinate to electing Barack Obama our new Leader.

It is absolutely false that the only unconstitutional and destructive provision of this "compromise" bill is the telecom amnesty part. It's true that most people working to defeat the Cheney/Rockefeller bill viewed opposition to telecom amnesty as the most politically potent way to defeat the bill, but the bill's expansion of warrantless eavesdropping powers vested in the President, and its evisceration of safeguards against abuses of those powers, is at least as long-lasting and destructive as the telecom amnesty provisions. The bill legalizes many of the warrantless eavesdropping activities George Bush secretly and illegally ordered in 2001. Those warrantless eavesdropping powers violate core Fourth Amendment protections. And Barack Obama now supports all of it, and will vote it into law. Those are just facts.

The ACLU specifically identifies the ways in which this bill destroys meaningful limits on the President's power to spy on our international calls and emails. Sen. Russ Feingold condemned the bill on the ground that it "fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home" because "the government can still sweep up and keep the international communications of innocent Americans in the U.S. with no connection to suspected terrorists, with very few safeguards to protect against abuse of this power." Rep. Rush Holt -- who was actually denied time to speak by bill-supporter Silvestre Reyes only to be given time by bill-opponent John Conyers -- condemned the bill because it vests the power to decide who are the "bad guys" in the very people who do the spying........
Quote:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/20...542/779/539258
Obama's Statement on FISA Hotlist
by mcjoan
Fri Jun 20, 2008 at 01:08:23 PM PDT

Via e-mail.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Obama's Statement
"Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. There is also little doubt that the Bush Administration, with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, has abused that authority and undermined the Constitution by intercepting the communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or the required court orders.

"That is why last year I opposed the so-called Protect America Act, which expanded the surveillance powers of the government without sufficient independent oversight to protect the privacy and civil liberties of innocent Americans. I have also opposed the granting of retroactive immunity to those who were allegedly complicit in acts of illegal spying in the past.

"After months of negotiation, the House today passed a compromise that, while far from perfect, is a marked improvement over last year's Protect America Act.

"Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President's illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance – making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people. It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future. 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. But this compromise guarantees a thorough review by the Inspectors General of our national security agencies to determine what took place in the past, and ensures that there will be accountability going forward. By demanding oversight and accountability, a grassroots movement of Americans has helped yield a bill that is far better than the Protect America Act.

"It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives – and the liberty – of the American people."
In an interview today on Bloomberg's "Political Capital with Al Hunt" (no link yet), Sen. Reid said he would attempt to remove the amnesty provision in the bill.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bloomberg News Service
Reid said the Senate may try to remove a provision from the bill that shields telephone companies from privacy lawsuits. Holding a separate vote on that issue next week may provide political cover for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. Even though the attempt may fail, Reid said the vote would allow those opposed to the liability protection to "express their views."

"I'm going to try real hard to have a separate vote on immunity," Reid said in an interview to be aired this weekend on Bloomberg Television's "Political Capital with Al Hunt."

"Probably we can't take that out of the bill, but I'm going to try."
That effort should be helped by Obama's opposition to the provision. His support of the remainder of the bill is disappointing, but that would be in large part offset if he can help kill immunity.
Quote:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/20...989/473/539564
Apparently, Even Barack Obama Thinks You're Stupid Hotlist
by Hunter
Sat Jun 21, 2008 at 08:45:08 AM PDT

We'll include Barack Obama in the mix of politicians that apparently think all you who were following the FISA debates are as dumb as day-old pill bugs, and it's depressing as hell to have to do so. He may be the Democratic nominee, but he can still write a milquetoast, self-congratulatory justification for choosing the easy way out with the best of them.

You know, I don't mind politicians not agreeing with me much of the time. Or most of the time. And at this point, I'm more than used to various parts of our Constitution being considered strictly optional, and being given away like beads at Mardi Gras.

But it does grate, immeasurably, when they feed us bull and tell us it's candy. I had hoped that, given the length of time it took Obama to come up with a statement, they were going to come up with something substantive. Instead, it appears they were using that time to come up with an assortment of logic-insulting bunk.
Quote:
Originally Posted by From Obama's Statement
[...] Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President's illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over.
No. It will not be "over", it will just be made retroactively legal so that it can continue. I suppose technically the "illegal" part of it will be over, so it isn't technically the baldfaced lie it sounds like -- so kudos for bending the language like Beckham, but that's not really what most people would consider that phrase to mean.
Quote:
Originally Posted by From Obama's Statement
It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance – making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people. It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future.
No, it really doesn't. Because FISA never went away -- it doesn't need "restoring". FISA is FISA. It was FISA, it is FISA. The only reason FISA would need "restoring" is if we are all willing to accept that it had been invalidated entirely by the president's actions -- that the president was not only able to simply break the law, but managed to erase it from the books entirely on his own say-so.

That's absurd. That's asinine. A law does not need "restoring" when it is violated, it needs enforcing. And given that the Democrats have latched onto a piece of legislation designed explicitly to prevent that from ever happening in any meaningful way, there is nothing to be the slightest bit proud of. It is complete acceptance of an illegal program, dressed up as hard-fought victory, and by God the Democrats responsible for it and voting for it, Obama included, naturally presume that if they type up some lovely-sounding bullcrap about it, they'll be able to pretend it is something other than strategically planned and executed cowardice in the face of lawbreaking.
Quote:
Originally Posted by From Obama's Statement
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. But this compromise guarantees a thorough review by the Inspectors General of our national security agencies to determine what took place in the past, and ensures that there will be accountability going forward. By demanding oversight and accountability, a grassroots movement of Americans has helped yield a bill that is far better than the Protect America Act.

It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. [...]
The glowing embrace of the right-wing and administration logic used to foist corporate immunity to lawbreaking upon us: President Bush is so terribly put upon that he cannot possibly follow existing law in conducting espionage against American citizens, and nobody should expect him to, so we must urgently change the law.

But FISA was not expiring. FISA was not falling into a legislative black hole. It continued to exist, as the exclusive means for electronic surveillance of the American people, and all it required was a warrant, and all the warrant required was probable cause. That's it. That's what this entire, months-long parade of panic, bluster and torn hair has been about, that it was just too damn difficult for the administration to be asked to show two sentences of probable cause to a judge in a secret hearing before collecting whatever electronic information about you, your neighbors, your family, your friends, everyone in your town, everyone in your social organizations, everyone in every restaurant you've ever been to, etc., etc., etc. they wanted to collect.

And if you object to it, then even Barack Obama will hold the threat of imminent Terror over your head as justification for why we should ignore past violations of Constitutional rights and declare a massive, flag-waving, star-spangled do over that simply declares there's no more problem.

Oh, but don't worry. The Bush administration is charged with coming up with a "thorough review" of what the Bush administration did, in order to tell us all about whether or not they did anything wrong. Yes, let's all stand in awe that, after all that has happened the last seven years, there are still entire collections of Democrats who think that having the administration investigate itself will solve the problem. I'm not sure whether to laugh, to cry, or to simply throw my hands up at the whole thing.


I'm not sure which frightens me more, the thought that the people leading my nation could be so damn gullible, or the thought that they aren't -- but they're counting on us to be. If the Democrats are going to be so fired up about demanding that they be allowed cave on basic protections, lest the Republicans treat them cruelly in future elections, they could at least have the decency to not insult our intelligence while they're doing it.

That is my primary objection, here. Democrats: if you're going to cave, just cave. Don't draft up flagrantly insulting talking points that pretend you've gotten something in return -- you haven't. You haven't gotten squat, except for the knowledge that the illegal is now legal, that past illegalities will be swept under the rug, and that future illegalities will be met with no action more substantive than a few harshly worded reports.

We all know how much money the telecommunications companies spent "lobbying" you for this legislation; fine. So just come out and say it -- you can't piss off corporate contributors that are that important, so the Fourth Amendment can go suck eggs. We all know you don't have any confidence you can both stand up for the rule of law and get reelected in the face of conservative demands that our laws be considered obsolete in the face of our own pants-wetting fear; fine. So just say that, and quit painting us as rubes who won't know any better if you shove a few noble-sounding sentences our way.

It's beyond insulting.

* Permalink ::
* Discuss (231 comments, 231 new)
So, what do we do now? Is it time for demonstrations, organized civil disobedience.... Nascar and a beer..... more denial and empty rationalizations?

IMO, Obama is the new George Bush...the language in his carefully worded statement confirms it......

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Old 06-21-2008, 09:19 AM   #2 (permalink)
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I'm going with more denial & empty rationalizations.
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Old 06-21-2008, 09:40 AM   #3 (permalink)
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Host, he's talking about supporting FISA. Under the "Protect America Act", Bush's wiretaps would have still been illegal. And Obama said, in his quote, that he is going to try and get retroactive immunity removed from the Senate version.
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Old 06-21-2008, 09:54 AM   #4 (permalink)
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Quote:
Obama & Dem Leaders Act Same As Bush: Lying Corporatist, Stealing Our Bill of Rights
And this is news to anyone? These are interesting times.
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Old 06-21-2008, 10:15 AM   #5 (permalink)
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will, I know you were indifferent to the argument that the democrats are the only serious alternative to republican political ambitions, long before I was, so I'm sure you are reacting to the facts being reported, and to Obama's own words. Obama voted against the senate bill in february. Harry Reid selected the Rockefeller Cheney bill with telecomm immunity, instead of the bill drafted by a senate committee w/o telecomm immunity, to come to the floor for a vote. The bill passed with all republicans and 17 democrats voting for it. 29 democrats voted against it. Do you think the only thing wrong with the house bill is telecomm immunity? Do you think Obama is even serious about thinking he has any chance to remove telecomm immunity, given what Reid did in february and says now, plus the lopsided february vote? How serious does Obama sound negotiating, since he says he'll try to get the bill changed but if not....he'll vote for it anyway? Did his fear card rhetoric creep you out? Didn't the house dems simply have to offer the repubs the change to Fisa that would permit warrantless surveillance of foreign communication that originated and ended outside the US, but passed through a switch located in the US, as is claimed to be common routing, to achieve an honest and fair to the American people, Fisa modernization? Wasn't that the change that could be justified and, beyond that, wasn't the decent way for house dems and Obama to represent our best interests, to tell repubs to accept only that revision, or get nothing.....just house leaders sitting on their hands when it came to introduction of a Fisa reform bill that was not rooted in fear based power transfer to the executive or on telecomm lobbying pressure?

otto, please don't do this on this thread....do it somewhere else, 'kay?

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Old 06-21-2008, 10:41 AM   #6 (permalink)
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I think the big thing wrong with the Bill is immunity, but I recognize it's hardly the only fault. What should be happening is FISA being upheld, but when in government or anywhere does something that should happen actually happen? We all knew this was coming eventually, and I'm massively disappointed in the House for voting it through. Just like I've been disappointed time and again with the House. It's a complete fucking mess. We might as well have a Republican House, really.

It passing in it's current form in the House does not mean it will pass in it's current form in the Senate. With Obama (the likely party leader for the next 5 years) saying specifically that he's going to try and remove immunity, there is a chance that he may take control of the bandwagon in the Senate. A small chance, yes, but a chance.

"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." If this can really get picked up on by other Democratic Senators, there's that possibility that we won't get the House version passed and we can even get a reaffirmation of FISA, which is what we need so badly right now.

BTW, if this passes without retroactive immunity, it can be used once Obama takes office to pursue criminal charges against Bush and his despicable cronies.
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Old 06-21-2008, 12:18 PM   #7 (permalink)
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host: is there anything you're in favor of? I used to feel a real kinship with your posts, but lately it's nothing but a bitchfest.

Obama ADMITS he's not crazy about the bill getting passed, that it's a compromise, that it's a lot better than things have been, and that he's not through working to get rid of the troubling aspects of it. I guess taking people at their word isn't something you have the luxury of when you're on a mission like yours, eh host?
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Old 06-21-2008, 12:27 PM   #8 (permalink)
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With McCain running, I'm feeling bitchy myself. And I'm concerned about the level of zealotism towards Obama. Don't get me wrong, he's a stronger candidate than Gore or Kerry ever could have been, but it's okay to admit that he makes mistakes. Moreover, it's okay to admit that many of the Democrats in the House and many in the Senate might as well be Republican, and that the Democratic majority is only a good thing for the left when they actually vote Democratic.
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Old 06-21-2008, 01:10 PM   #9 (permalink)
 
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host....i think you are overstating your case for your objections, at least based on my understanding of the FISA amendments the House passed.

From the time FISA was enacted in 1978 through 2001, there was little if any objection to the law from presidents or Congress of either party....or from few if any advocacy groups.

Then, from 2002-2006, Bush grossly abused and/or circumvented the law...claiming that the post 9/11 "Authorization for Use of Military Force" (AUMF) passed by Congress gave him the unilateral authority to do whatever he damn well pleased to whomever he damn well wanted.

The first and most important thing these new amendments accomplish is to codify in no uncertain terms that FISA provides the sole legal authority to undertake wiretapping (or other electronic surveillance) on foreign nationals...a president can no longer claim that an AUMF gives him the authority to bypass FISA.

It reaffirms and goes a bit further than the original act by requiring the DNI and the AG to certify in writing, under oath, and with supporting affidavits that for each (warrantless) wiretap of foreign nationals outside the country, that it will not include American citizens on the other end. Wiretaps of foreign nationals inside the US require a warrant and also cannot include US citizens on the other end w/o specific reasonable cause.

It also reaffirms and expands prohibitions on reverse targeting..where a foreign national can be surveilled for the purpose wiretapping Americans.

And it provides for greater Congressional oversight of the FISA warrant process than previously existed.

The issue for many on the far left is the retroactive immunity for telecomms. Like you, I would prefer that it had been included, but I'm not gonna lose sleep over it. The fact is, the class actions suits against the telecomms would likely never have worked through the courts anyway - Bush would have asserted executive privilege or national security on requests for documents and the telecomms would have claimed that w/o documents from the gov, they would be restrained from conducting a reasonable defense.

The latest amendments for the most part simply restore the orginal intent of FISA. Where it expands the coverage of FISA, it also expands accountability and oversight. Its not my preferred bill, but for the most part, it is an acceptable bill....thats how compromise works.
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Old 06-21-2008, 01:18 PM   #10 (permalink)
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Here's what I didn't say above: The real world of politics requires compromise. Idealism is nice, but that's all it is. Does anyone think Kucinich is going to actually get any impeaching done? His idealism is inspiring and admirable, but it's not going to produce any results.

Those who blanched at the supposed sainthood of Obama are now screaming about how disappointed they are over this. Those of us who believe him to be a new kind of politician--but still a politician--don't have much trouble with it.
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Old 06-21-2008, 01:20 PM   #11 (permalink)
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ratbastid
Here's what I didn't say above: The real world of politics requires compromise. Idealism is nice, but that's all it is.
yep....Politics, and in particular democratic politics, involves the art of compromise - what is achievable, given the make-up of Congress and what can garner the support of the majority of the citizens.

Congressional Republicans in 06 (and likely in 08) lost in great numbers in part because of their unwillingness to compromise (particularly on the Iraq occupation) and as a result, they lost their majority.

I dont want to see the same thing happen to the Democrats over the issue of retroactive immunity for the telecomms.
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Old 06-21-2008, 02:01 PM   #12 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ratbastid
Here's what I didn't say above: The real world of politics requires compromise. Idealism is nice, but that's all it is.
has anyone on this board ever considered just who is the one dealing with all the compromising? It certainly isn't the democrat or republican politicians. It is you and I, the american citizen, who has to live through all the ramifications of this 'compromise', and just what is it that we are losing on the 'compromise'?
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Old 06-21-2008, 02:12 PM   #13 (permalink)
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DC, you can't possibly support House Democrats voting yes on a bill that includes retroactive immunity. That, more than anything else, is why I have a problem with. The Democrats are compromising by allowing unethical and illegal legislation to pass. I can't possibly imagine an argument where that's acceptable.

We all want FISA back. Probably even Otto.
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Old 06-21-2008, 02:38 PM   #14 (permalink)
 
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will...I would prefer a bill w/o retroactive immunity....and despite all the shouting, it is not clear to me that the provision is illegal.

But in any case, IMO, the issue of immunity is a hollow shell for all practical purposes. As I said above, the class action civil suits against the telecomms would not likely have seen the light of day...they would have claimed that they could not exercise a defense w/o government docs and the gov would withhold the docs based on claims of vital "national security"....so what is accomplished.

I would like to see Bush face a criminal trial after he leaves office and the possibility of five years in prson for each warrantless wiretap of an American citizen:
Quote:
§ 1809. Criminal sanctions

(a) Prohibited activities
A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally—

(1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute; or

(2) discloses or uses information obtained under color of law by electronic surveillance, knowing or having reason to know that the information was obtained through electronic surveillance not authorized by statute.

(b) Defense
It is a defense to a prosecution under subsection (a) of this section that the defendant was a law enforcement or investigative officer engaged in the course of his official duties and the electronic surveillance was authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order of a court of competent jurisdiction.

(c) Penalties
An offense described in this section is punishable by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both.

(d) Federal jurisdiction
There is Federal jurisdiction over an offense under this section if the person committing the offense was an officer or employee of the United States at the time the offense was committed.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/ht...9----000-.html
But that is highly unlikely as well.

Perhaps loquitor knows if that could ever happen of if there are issues of some type of sovereign immunity that covers Bush after leaving office.
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Old 06-21-2008, 03:40 PM   #15 (permalink)
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Yeah, but for the Democratic base that immunity is the meat and potatoes of the bill. The other stuff really is immaterial because FISA is already passed and in effect, and it's fine in the form it took to try and combat future Nixons.

When they vote to approve the bill when it's gotta be crystal clear that their constituents do not want it, and more so it's clear that the bill is essentially a get out of jail free card (regardless of the possible difficulties in prosecuting the telecoms), they're compromising with the devil, not compromising for the sake of common good. And it's that kind of compromising that will likely lead to a GOP Senate soon and possibly even a House, which will severely limit Obama in cleaning up Bush's mess, which let's be honest, is why he'll be elected.

To me, a non-Democrat, it seems like the same bullshit. Dems are rolling over because they're afraid of looking soft. Can you imagine how stupid someone has to be to think rolling over will make them appear strong? For too long the GOP has been the 'father' party and the Dems the 'mother'. As long as the media can make people afraid, the mother won't be who people turn to and that is exactly what the GOP wants. I'm sure you had a situation where you individuated from your father as a young man. Did you compromise or did you forge your own path? I'm sure you, like me, forged your own path in life and are stronger for it. The Dems need to do the same thing here. Instead of continuing to play the GOPs game, they need to prove to people like me and Host that they're not simply Republicans in blue ties but are actually real liberals and have real drive and, more than anything else, real fortitude and power. Until they do that they'll enjoy record low public popularity at the very least and be voted out on each cycle as people are forced to choose between the abusive husband or the victim wife.
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Old 06-21-2008, 04:40 PM   #16 (permalink)
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I was about to write "I'd like to hear Steny Hoyer explain himself about the immunity issue", then thought: maybe I ought to google that.

Here's what I found:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Steny Hoyer
“Mr. Speaker, today, we conclude one step in a long, continuing process.

“Just under a year ago, the House came under great pressure from the Administration and the Senate to pass the Protect America Act – a bill I could not support and spoke out against for its lack of civil liberties protections.

“Since then, there have been other attempts to modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – first, the RESTORE Act passed by the House last November; followed by the Senate bill, which passed with 68 votes in February; and, most recently, the FISA Amendments Act passed by the House in March.

“I was proud to support the two House bills, which I believe struck the right balance between giving our intelligence community the tools to go after those who seek to harm us and protecting the Constitutional rights of American citizens.

“Today, I stand in support of a different kind of bill – a compromise.

“To be clear, this is not the bill I would have written in an ideal world.

“However, in our legislative process, no one gets everything he or she wants. Different parties – often with deeply competing interests – come together here to produce a consensus product, where each side
gives and takes.

“Over the past few months, I have been involved in almost daily discussions with the stakeholders on this important issue – members in both chambers and both parties, as well as outside organizations and experts.

“I have worked closely with Speaker Pelosi and enjoyed the valuable counsel of the distinguished Chairmen of the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees.

“Together, we have worked to develop a bill that strikes a sound balance.

“This measure provides the intelligence community with strong authority to surveil foreign terrorists who seek to harm this country and our people.

“It provides for enhanced civil liberties protections for Americans, and insists on meaningful judicial scrutiny.

“And, it includes critical new oversight and accountability requirements that both address the President’s warrantless surveillance program and ensure that any surveillance going forward comports with the Fourth Amendment and will be closely monitored by the Congress.

“Of vital importance, this legislation makes clear that FISA is the exclusive means by which the government may conduct surveillance – an issue of great importance to the Speaker, herself a former member of the Intelligence Committee, and many others.

“Notably, this bill does not address or excuse any actions by the government or government officials related to the President’s warrantless surveillance program. Nor does it include any statement by the Congress on the legality of that program.

“Indeed, it mandates, for the first time ever, a robust accounting by the Inspectors General on the warrantless surveillance program, which Congress will receive and act on.

“In closing, let me say again, this bill is not perfect. It is a compromise.

“And, the conclusions drawn by editorials in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post over the last two days reflect this.

“Today, for example, the Washington Post recognized that this is a reasonable effort to strike a compromise, stating: ‘Striking the balance between liberties and security is never easy, and the new FISA bill is not perfect. But it is a vast improvement over the original law and over the earlier, rushed attempts to revise that law.’

“As I said at the beginning, this bill is one step in a long, continuing process of updating this critical legislation – ensuring that our national security and our civil liberties are both protected.

“This legislation sunsets at the end of 2012, and it is imperative that we scrutinize its implementation over the next four years, and make any necessary changes.

“I believe we have the best bill before us that we could possibly get in the current environment.

“I look forward to working with my colleagues in the years ahead to ensure that both our national security and our civil liberties are protected.”
So: he doesn't address immunity here. In fact, it sounds like he's trying pretty hard to skirt the issue. But as he says, it's a compromise. Evidently he was willing to trade that for having judicial oversight reigns attached to surveillance programs again.
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Old 06-21-2008, 04:46 PM   #17 (permalink)
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I just reread FISA. It works just fine. It's punishing those who circumvent FISA that's the problem. I'm going to go ahead and take back what I said in post #2. FISA's not out of date or broken. This is an excuse to pander to idiots who actually think that the names of bills represent their meaning. \

Retroactive immunity will not protect America. It will protect private corporate interests.
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Old 06-21-2008, 05:20 PM   #18 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by host
otto, please don't do this on this thread....do it somewhere else, 'kay?
I'm not sure what I did. Stating the obvious may have been a little too direct. ... but you did say please.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Willravel
We all want FISA back. Probably even Otto.
Yep, even otto.
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Old 06-22-2008, 05:45 AM   #19 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ratbastid
host: is there anything you're in favor of? I used to feel a real kinship with your posts, but lately it's nothing but a bitchfest.

Obama ADMITS he's not crazy about the bill getting passed, that it's a compromise, that it's a lot better than things have been, and that he's not through working to get rid of the troubling aspects of it. I guess taking people at their word isn't something you have the luxury of when you're on a mission like yours, eh host?
Obama didn't even wait until he was elected, to sign on to negotiating away some of our constitutionally guaranteed protections, and even an elected US president does not have the right or the power to do that, because it is never his to negotiate away.....they are our rights...part of the bill of rights of "the people".

"Take his word", when it comes to trusting him with our rights? Are you serious, have you bought in, "that deep"?

Quote:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...ama/index.html

UPDATE: In comments, Hume's Ghost wrote:

What really rubbed me the wrong way was how Obama in his statement says essentially trust me with these powers, I'll use them responsibly.

Nope.

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." - John Adams [1772].

In 1799, Thomas Jefferson echoed that: "Free government is founded in jealousy, not confidence . . . . Let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitutions." Between (a) relying on the limitations imposed by the Constitution or (b) placing faith in the promises of a political leader not to abuse his unchecked power, it isn't really a difficult choice -- at least it ought not to be, no matter who the political leader in question happens to be.
A sign of arrogance from...Obama?
Quote:


http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...al-seal-morph/
CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) – Presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama sat down in Chicago Friday morning to discuss the economy with visiting Democratic governors, but all eyes were on the Illinois senator’s podium bearing, what might be described as, a quasi-presidential seal – a new Obama campaign logo.
I am not too "bitchyr", ratbastid to be in favor of the consistent, politically risky, principled stances of this senator. He has never failed to show respect for and defense of my rights, and of yours, over all other considerations, especially over fears for our safety. Read Obama's statement again. Does it put defense of our rights above reaction to fear for our safety?
Quote:
http://feingold.senate.gov/~feingold.../20080619f.htm

Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold
On the FISA Deal

June 19, 2008

“The proposed FISA deal is not a compromise; it is a capitulation. The House and Senate should not be taking up this bill, which effectively guarantees immunity for telecom companies alleged to have participated in the President’s illegal program, and which fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home. Allowing courts to review the question of immunity is meaningless when the same legislation essentially requires the court to grant immunity. And under this bill, the government can still sweep up and keep the international communications of innocent Americans in the U.S. with no connection to suspected terrorists, with very few safeguards to protect against abuse of this power. Instead of cutting bad deals on both FISA and funding for the war in Iraq, Democrats should be standing up to the flawed and dangerous policies of this administration.”

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) is a member of the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees.
Since I am resigned to the idea that I have to support and vote for Obama because, as flawed and untrustworthy as he has been showing himself to be, he still offers the most likely hope we have of electing someone to the presidency who will not appoint monsters to the supreme court, it is immensely important to me that Obama would show an inclination to listen to the advice of Sen. Russ Feingold and to follow his example of a principled senator.
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...031200877.html
Feingold Seeks Senate Censure of Bush

Associated Press
Monday, March 13, 2006; Page A03

A liberal Democrat and potential White House contender is proposing that the Senate censure President Bush for authorizing domestic eavesdropping, saying the White House misled Americans about its legality.

"The president has broken the law, and, in some way, he must be held accountable," Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) said....
While I think it is foolish for the democrats to legislate away the only possible means and chance for the people to learn just how invasive and illegal the Bush era electronic surveillance programs were, by passing this now "in the bag", telecomm amnesty legislation, and because it is another in a series of shifts to corporatism as major political party policy and agenda, over populism, it is no greater part of my objection to the bill than the changes to the FISA law, described below are. It doesn't help that the changes are harder to describe and understand than the telecomm amnesty part is:
Quote:
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2008/06/g...l-part-ii.html
Sunday, June 22, 2008

A Guide to the New FISA Bill, Part II

Guest Blogger

David Kris

Yesterday, (Link to Part I) in discussing H.R. 6304, the FISA modernization bill passed by the House on Thursday, I identified the key elements of current FISA, and described what I see as the main legal and operational arguments for and against modernizing the statute. Today, I’d like to describe the Bush Administration’s actual efforts to “modernize” electronic surveillance. There have been, essentially, three Administration approaches to modernizing electronic surveillance – one directed at each branch of the federal government. As it turns out, the first two approaches seem to have failed, but the third (embodied in H.R. 6304) appears to be on the verge of success.

a. Executive Branch. The Bush Administration’s first approach to modernization, illustrated by the TSP, was simply to ignore FISA. That method, relying on unilateral action by the executive branch, prevailed without public knowledge or challenge for approximately four years, until the famous December 2005 story by the New York Times. Much has been written about this period, on Balkinzation and elsewhere.

b. Judicial Branch. A little more than a year later, the government appeared to find a judicial solution to the problem of FISA modernization, advancing a new interpretation of the statute that at least one judge accepted. In January 2007, the FISA Court “issued orders authorizing the Government to target for collection international communications into or out of the United States where there is probable cause to believe that one of the communicants is a member or agent of al Qaeda or an associated terrorist organization.” As a result of these orders, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced, “any electronic surveillance that was occurring” under the TSP “will now be conducted subject to the approval” of the FISA Court. Although DOJ so far has refused to disclose the legal theory underlying these court orders, it is worth considering whether and how they could have both complied with FISA and, as DOJ asserted, allowed the necessary “speed and agility” of warrantless surveillance. The following paragraphs set forth an educated guess about the January 2007 FISA Court orders, drawn from a much longer discussion in Chapter 15 of my book .

As noted in yesterday’s post, FISA has three essential substantive requirements: first, a target that is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power; second, a facility being used by that target; and third, minimization. To satisfy these requirements without sacrificing speed and agility, it is necessary to identify the broadest possible target and facility, which will yield the broadest possible authorization order, which will require the fewest possible court orders for the most surveillance.

Identifying the broadest possible target is relatively straightforward under FISA – foreign powers (such as al Qaeda) are far broader than individual agents of a foreign power (such as Osama Bin Laden). This is entirely legitimate, and conventional, as long as the government is genuinely interested in getting information about al Qaeda, rather than any particular member of al Qaeda. If the government focuses its attention too much on any single terrorist, then that terrorist becomes the target. But if the government uses a wide-angle lens, focused on the group as a whole, it is comfortably within the requirements of FISA.

The broadest possible facility is harder to identify. A “facility” in FISA is the electronic analogue for location or place in an ordinary search – a concept with roots in the Fourth Amendment’s Particularity Clause. In a conventional criminal case, for example, the police obtain a warrant to search for the murder weapon in the suspect’s apartment. The warrant is not issued for the suspect’s entire apartment building, let alone his entire street or neighborhood, because that would be insufficiently particular. But nor is the warrant limited, for example, to the top drawer of the suspect’s desk – that is more particular than the Fourth Amendment requires. The location specified in a search warrant must be “reasonably” particular, and so too a FISA facility must be reasonably particular. For example, as noted in yesterday’s post, the traditional FISA facilities are 10-digit telephone numbers or name@domain e-mail addresses.

As far as I can determine, the government seems to have persuaded the FISA Court in January 2007 that the international gateway switches, which essentially are the junctions between the U.S. and the rest of the world’s telecommunications grids, are reasonably particular FISA “facilities,” and that al Qaeda is using them. If that is right, it means that a handful of orders gave the government access to all, or almost all, of the international telecommunications traffic entering or leaving the United States. That is very speedy and agile.

The problem, of course, is that while al Qaeda is using those switches, so is everyone else. Even under the most extreme estimates, al Qaeda cannot account for more than a tiny percentage of calls transiting the switches.


It is possible that the government and the FISA Court saw this problem, and dealt with it through minimization. What they may have decided is that while the government has authority to conduct surveillance of al Qaeda on the switches, it cannot actually have someone monitor – listen to or record – any individual call without probable cause (or something like probable cause) that at least one party to the call is a terrorist (or something like a terrorist). This minimization standard may resemble the normal probable-cause determination required by FISA for agents of a foreign power, except that it is made by the executive branch rather than by the FISA Court.

To understand the function of such a FISA order, consider an (admittedly flawed) analogy to the world of ordinary searches. Imagine that the FBI obtains a warrant to search for drugs anywhere in New York City. Standing alone, this seems too broad – a clear Particularity Clause problem. But now imagine that the warrant provides expressly that while the FBI has nominal authority to search all buildings in New York, it may not enter any particular building unless a Supervisory Special Agent or higher-ranking official finds probable cause that drugs are indeed located within that building. Rightly or wrongly, this is the basic idea behind the January 2007 orders as described above. Again, the clever aspect is that those orders moved the bedrock probable-cause requirement of FISA from the front end of the statute, where a judge decides it, to the back end, where the executive branch applies it as part of minimization, subject only to after-the-fact review by the court. If this is indeed what the FISA Court decided in January 2007, it is easy to understand why the government announced the result publicly, as it seems to solve many of the problems posed by the TSP being conducted in violation of FISA.

It appears, however, that in April 2007, another FISA Court judge rejected the government’s interpretation at least in part, imposing limits and conditions that the executive branch apparently could not tolerate. As the DNI explained to Congress in September 2007, “we were devoting substantial expert resources towards preparing applications that needed FISA Court approval. This was an intolerable situation, as substantive experts, particularly IC subject matter and language experts, were diverted from the job of analyzing collection results and finding new leads, to writing justifications that would demonstrate their targeting selections would satisfy the statute.”

c. Legislative Branch. The government’s setback in the FISA Court led to a third approach, involving the legislative branch, that appears to have culminated in the bill passed by the House of Representatives on Thursday. I’m still working my way through the bill, but here is my initial take on its essential provisions, with new FISA Title VII section numbers noted in parentheses so any interested readers can check my work and correct it if I’ve messed up.

The new bill allows the government, “[n]otwithstanding any other provision of law,” to engage in the “targeting of persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information” (702(a)). There is no probable-cause requirement; the only thing that matters is (the government’s reasonable belief about) the target’s location. The acquisition must be to obtain foreign intelligence information, which includes information necessary to protect against the full range of foreign threats to national security, including both international terrorism and espionage, and information with respect to a foreign power that is necessary to the national defense or foreign affairs. The acquisition is not limited to any particular facility or place (702(g)(4)), which means that the government can use it to direct surveillance (or other acquisition methods) at various facilities without obtaining a separate authorization for each one.

The acquisition authority granted by the statute is subject to several essential requirements and limitations:


* First, the acquisition “may be conducted only in accordance with” what are referred to in the bill as “targeting procedures” (702(c)(1)(A)) which must be “reasonably designed” to “ensure that any acquisition … is limited to targeting persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States,” and to “prevent the intentional acquisition” of communications “known, at the time of the acquisition,” to be purely domestic (702(d)(1)) – these communications remain subject to surveillance under traditional FISA (702(b)(4)).

* Second, the acquisition “may be conducted only in accordance with” some version of traditional “minimization procedures” (702(c)(1)(A)), which must be “consistent with” FISA’s definition of that term for electronic surveillance or physical searches (702(e)).

* Third, a senior Justice Department official and the Director of National Intelligence must certify in advance (or if necessary, a week after acquisition begins (702(g)(1)), that the targeting and minimization procedures satisfy the statutory requirements, that a “significant purpose” of the acquisition is to obtain foreign intelligence information, and that the acquisition involves the assistance of an electronic communication service provider (702(g)(2)).

* Fourth, where the targeted person is a United States person – e.g., a U.S. citizen or green card holder – more restrictive measures apply depending primarily on whether the acquisition occurs inside or outside the United States (703 and 704).


Under the bill, the FISA Court reviews the targeting and minimization procedures to ensure that they meet the statutory requirements and the Fourth Amendment (702(i)), and orders modifications if necessary; the court reviews the certification only as a matter of form, to ensure that it “contains all the required elements” (702(i)(3)(A)-(B)). The court’s order is issued to the government only – there is no provision in the bills for a secondary order. Instead, the government itself issues a “directive” to electronic communication service providers requiring their assistance (702(h)). Providers may challenge such directives in the FISA Court (702(h)(4)), and the government may seek FISA Court orders compelling compliance from a recalcitrant provider (702(h)(5)). Thereafter, providers may be punished via contempt of court for noncompliance (702(h)(4)(G) and (h)(5)(D)). There are reporting and oversight procedures, including review by Inspectors General of the government’s compliance with the targeting and minimization procedures, and the number of targets originally believed to be abroad but later determined to have been located in the United States (702(l)), and there is a reiteration of FISA’s 1978 “exclusivity provision” in Section 102 of the bill.

It is interesting to compare the pending legislation to the TSP as it may have been implemented just prior to, and just after, the January 2007 FISA Court orders. There appear to be two main differences. First, the pending legislation applies only to targets located abroad, while the January 2007 orders may have allowed surveillance of targets in the U.S. (as long as they were making international calls). Second, more importantly, the pending legislation focuses only on the target’s location (or the government’s reasonable belief about his location) not his status or conduct as a terrorist or agent of a foreign power. In other words, there is no requirement that anyone – the FISA Court or the NSA – find probable cause that the target is a terrorist or a spy before (or after) commencing surveillance. This may well be a reaction, or perhaps an over-reaction, to the FISA Court’s April 2007 order, which appears to have frustrated the government by requiring more, or more frequent, reporting about the status of certain surveillance targets. But, as discussed above, the Administration’s request for this aspect of the bill seems to have provoked a countervailing limitation from Congress, in that the pending legislation extends some version of FISA to surveillance conducted abroad of a U.S. person who is located abroad; today, such surveillance is conducted unilaterally by the executive branch, without statutory regulation or judicial review and approval, albeit with a requirement that the Attorney General find probable cause that the U.S. person is an agent of a foreign power. (It is also interesting to compare the pending legislation to the current, traditional version of FISA, but in an abundance of caution I plan to seek prepublication review for that comparison, and therefore cannot provide it here.)

Looking ahead, I believe the pending legislation probably represents only an interim solution to the problem of FISA modernization. First, it is extremely complicated. As I read the bill, it establishes at least five different categories of full-content acquisition: (1) traditional electronic surveillance, (2) traditional physical searches, (3) surveillance or searches targeting non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be abroad, (4) surveillance or searches targeting U.S. persons reasonably believed to be abroad when the acquisition occurs in the United States, and (5) surveillance or searches targeting U.S. persons reasonably believed to be abroad when the acquisition occurs outside the United States. FISA has always been an arcane and difficult statute, but the intricacy of the pending legislation risks confusing the government officials who must apply it, often under substantial time pressure. This can lead to errors of both major types – improper acquisition of private communications (or other information) that undermines liberty and privacy, and improper abstention from acquisition that undermines security.

In addition, the pending legislation continues to rely, at least to some degree, on the location of the surveillance target. For now, that may be the best we can do. For the long run, however, we may need more radical change. If the government genuinely cannot determine a person’s location, it makes no sense to use geography as a trigger for FISA’s warrant requirements. In those circumstances, a geographical approach will always be too broad or too narrow – treating all communicating parties, or none, as if they were in the United States.

There is more to say here, and some of it I (and others) have said elsewhere, but for here and now I have probably already said too much. Thanks.
IMO, this issue of geographical location, the premise for locating GITMO, and for "rendering" "parties of interest" of US Intel agencies to "rights free" locations, comes down to the example of the recent Supreme Court habeas ruling.... the majority opinion dealt at length with the problem of applicability of US consitutional rights. The authors of the constitutions and congress, formerly had a preference for extending these rights, not confining them, and. as the language in the opinion indicates, and the ruse of Gitmo demonstrates, the Bush administration, congress, and the minority court opinion has been all about narrowing the geography....the physical locations where these rights apply...these protections of the individual from US government "taking"....taking of liberty, and by extension, of "the right to be secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects".

It is ironic that an administration that claimed it wanted to "spread democracy", especially into "the middle east", cannot recognize that a vehement policy of determining personal rights status of "a free people", merely by where the US citizen or green card holder happens to be standing, inside the US, or somewhere else....rights in force sometimes, removed other times, contradicts the worth of the rights, by the example. (I was concerned to read that the "bill of rights" is relegated to a lesser status than the right of habeas, as a consequences of this mention....):

Quote:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinio...df/06-1195.pdf

Page 3

2. Petitioners have the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus. They are not barred from seeking the writ or invoking the Suspension
Clause’s protections because they have been designated as enemy
combatants or because of their presence at Guantanamo. Pp. 8–
41.
(a)
A brief account of the writ’s history and origins shows thatprotection for the habeas privilege was one of the few safeguards ofliberty specified in a Constitution that, at the outset, had no Bill ofRights; in the system the Framers conceived, the writ has a centrality
that must inform proper interpretation of the Suspension Clause. That the Framers considered the writ a vital instrument for the protection
of individual liberty is evident from the care taken in the Suspension
Clause to specify the limited grounds for its suspension: Thewrit may be suspended only when public safety requires it in times ofrebellion or invasion. The Clause is designed to protect against cyclical
abuses of the writ by the Executive and Legislative Branches. It protects detainee rights by a means consistent with the Constitution’s
essential design, ensuring that, except during periods of formal suspension, the Judiciary will have a time-tested device, the writ, to maintain the “delicate balance of governance.” Hamdi, supra, at 536. Separation-of-powers principles, and the history that influenced their design, inform the Clause’s reach and purpose. Pp. 8–15.
(b)
A diligent search of founding-era precedents and legal commentaries
reveals no certain conclusions. None of the cases the parties
cite reveal whether a common-law court would have granted, orrefused to hear for lack of jurisdiction, a habeas petition by a prisonerdeemed an enemy combatant, under a standard like the Defense Department’s
in these cases, and when held in a territory, like Guantanamo,
over which the Government has total military and civil control.
The evidence as to the writ’s geographic scope at common law is informative, but, again, not dispositive. Petitioners argue that thesite of their detention is analogous to two territories outside Englandto which the common-law writ ran, the exempt jurisdictions and India,
but critical differences between these places and Guantanamorender these claims unpersuasive. The Government argues thatGuantanamo is more closely analogous to Scotland and Hanover, where the writ did not run, but it is unclear whether the common-law courts lacked the power to issue the writ there, or whether they refrained
from doing so for prudential reasons. The parties’ arguments that the very lack of a precedent on point supports their respective


positions are premised upon the doubtful assumptions that the historical
record is complete and that the common law, if properly understood,
yields a definite answer to the questions before the Court.Pp. 15–22.
(c)
The Suspension Clause has full effect at Guantanamo. The Government’s argument that the Clause affords petitioners no rights because the United States does not claim sovereignty over the naval station is rejected. Pp. 22–42
.   click to show 
My point is that neither the right of habeas, nor the fourth amendment protections in the BOR should be location dependent, when applied to US citizens and residents. THe US government should not be conducting warrantless surveillance of Americans merely because they have stepped off of US "soil", or are conversing with someone of and in a foreign jurisdiction.

Our fucking borders are still open, unguarded, and porous, and our port secuirty is a sham. The government has not even demonstrated that it is seriously committed to securing these gaping holes. Obama, in his own statement, has played the same fear card to narrow our rights, as Bush himself has done. This is extremely disturbing to me, and it should be, to all of you, too.....
Quote:
Originally Posted by From Obama's statement
...
"It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay...
9/11....9/11....9/11.....9/11.... the house bill was rushed to a vote on friday, within less than a day from the time it was published, with debate limited to one hour, with no advance notice to the public that the bill was finalized and would be voted on, and with no hearings on it's provisions....and Obama had no objections to this rushed farce, only that it was "too important to delay", although the existing FISA "modernization" does not expired for at least 45 days, and the white house was so adamant in it's demand that telecomm amnesty be included in any FISA legislation, that it was willing to let last year's "modernization" provisions lapse, if it did not get amnesty in the bill sent to the president to sign.....and no reasonable explanation from Hoyer, Pelosy, or Obama as to why the compromise was even necessary, with a president and his party so untrusted and politically weakened. Sorry, Obama, I don't trust you, because your statement is full of bullshit!

Just as serious a concern is the fact that neither Hoyer, Pelosi, or Obama has provided any detailed, sincere justification for way it was necessary to negotiate what they all described as this "compromise" in the first place, with a president who has a chronic, 30 percent approval rating, of a political party exposed as exploiting the 9/11 "fear card" incessantly, bankrupting it's own reputation and trust, since the attacks in NYC and DC.

Their failure to level with us as to what motivated them to, on the surface, "cave in" to the demands of the politically crippled white house and republican congressional minority, if it wasn;t because of a political calculation to exploit the lockstep republican vote for this sellout legislation, to consolidate executive power in anticipation of a democractic sweep, in the elections just five months from now, what are we to think of them, but the worst? They are either, in rushing to do this now, cynically calculating, disingenuous, and totally disrespectful of their duty to defend our rights, not to negotiate away what are not theirs to give.....or they are what they appear on the surface to be.....incredibly weak and ineffective, not a good image for "reform" candidate Obama to wrap himself around, IMO.

Last edited by host; 06-22-2008 at 07:31 AM..
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Old 06-22-2008, 02:13 PM   #20 (permalink)
Sir, I have a plan...
 
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Holy shit, what does it mean when I agree with host 100%?


*sets self on fire*
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Old 06-22-2008, 03:41 PM   #21 (permalink)
 
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I would prefer to see the retroactive immunity provision removed, but its just not a deal breaker for me.

The most important issue is providing more safeguards, checks and balances, and oversight to prevent Bush and/or the next president from bypassing FISA or authorizing excessive wiretaps w/o warrants. Despite the complexity of the bill, I think it accomplishes that.

If your issue with retroactive immunity for the telecomms is punitive rather than for the purpose of having the full truth about past actions brought to light...then its a dead deal.

But if you are more concerned about the truth of what Bush did for four years, there is a relatively simple solution.

Once the telecomms have retroactive immunity, both Judiciary Committees can convene oversight hearings on the bill and its intent to prevent past abuses and compel the telecomm officials to testify under oath.

With immunity, they can no longer plead the 5th and Bush cant claim they are covered by executive privilege......and voila, the truth comes out.

In fact, I would even encourage Obama to take this route.

First, try to remove the retroactive immunity provision.

If, and when that fails, introduce another amendment to make the retroactive immunity immediate and complete (no waiting for a court decision as is currently is proposed).

Then call for immediate hearings after the bill is signed and bring the telecomm execs in to testify...with subpoenas if necessary.
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Last edited by dc_dux; 06-22-2008 at 03:48 PM.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost
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Old 06-22-2008, 03:50 PM   #22 (permalink)
Getting it.
 
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That sounds a lot more practical. Personally, I am not interested in persecuting the telecoms. They seem to be pawns in this whole adventure.
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Old 06-22-2008, 03:51 PM   #23 (permalink)
 
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IMO, they were more than pawns, they were victims (albeit willing) of WH bribery...do what we want or forget any future federal contracts for any services anywhere.
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Old 06-22-2008, 05:46 PM   #24 (permalink)
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dc_dux, and to a lesser extent, Charlatan....you're posting what I wouldn't have thought I'd be reading,, but Greenwald predicted it would hapen...

Do you know why roachboy uses the avatar he has selected, and how it compares to what is happening in this FISA "reform"/telecomm amnesty, controversy?

Quote:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...ama/index.html
June 21, 2008
Obama's support for the FISA "compromise"


In the past 24 hours, specifically beginning with the moment Barack Obama announced that he now supports the Cheney/Rockefeller/Hoyer House bill, there have magically arisen -- in places where one would never have expected to find them -- all sorts of claims about why this FISA "compromise" isn't really so bad after all. People who spent the week railing against Steny Hoyer as an evil, craven enabler of the Bush administration -- or who spent the last several months identically railing against Jay Rockefeller -- suddenly changed their minds completely when Barack Obama announced that he would do the same thing as they did. What had been a vicious assault on our Constitution, and corrupt complicity to conceal Bush lawbreaking, magically and instantaneously transformed into a perfectly understandable position, even a shrewd and commendable decision, that we should not only accept, but be grateful for as undertaken by Obama for our Own Good.

Accompanying those claims are a whole array of factually false statements about the bill, deployed in service of defending Obama's indefensible -- and deeply unprincipled -- support for this "compromise." Numerous individuals stepped forward to assure us that there was only one small bad part of this bill -- the part which immunizes lawbreaking telecoms -- and since Obama says that he opposes that part, there is no basis for criticizing him for what he did. Besides, even if Obama decided to support an imperfect bill, it's our duty to refrain from voicing any criticism of him, because the Only Thing That Matters is that Barack Obama be put in the Oval Office, and we must do anything and everything -- including remain silent when he embraces a full-scale assault on the Fourth Amendment and the rule of law -- because every goal is now subordinate to electing Barack Obama our new Leader.

It is absolutely false that the only unconstitutional and destructive provision of this "compromise" bill is the telecom amnesty part. It's true that most people working to defeat the Cheney/Rockefeller bill viewed opposition to telecom amnesty as the most politically potent way to defeat the bill, but the bill's expansion of warrantless eavesdropping powers vested in the President, and its evisceration of safeguards against abuses of those powers, is at least as long-lasting and destructive as the telecom amnesty provisions.
The bill legalizes many of the warrantless eavesdropping activities George Bush secretly and illegally ordered in 2001. Those warrantless eavesdropping powers violate core Fourth Amendment protections. And Barack Obama now supports all of it, and will vote it into law. Those are just facts.

The ACLU specifically identifies the ways in which this bill destroys meaningful limits on the President's power to spy on our international calls and emails. Sen. Russ Feingold condemned the bill on the ground that it "fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home" because "the government can still sweep up and keep the international communications of innocent Americans in the U.S. with no connection to suspected terrorists, with very few safeguards to protect against abuse of this power." Rep. Rush Holt -- who was actually denied time to speak by bill-supporter Silvestre Reyes only to be given time by bill-opponent John Conyers -- condemned the bill because it vests the power to decide who are the "bad guys" in the very people who do the spying.

This bill doesn't legalize every part of Bush's illegal warrantless eavesdropping program but it takes a large step beyond FISA towards what Bush did. There was absolutely no reason to destroy the FISA framework, which is already an extraordinarily pro-Executive instrument that vests vast eavesdropping powers in the President, in order to empower the President to spy on large parts of our international communications with no warrants at all. This was all done by invoking the scary spectre of Terrorism -- "you must give up your privacy and constitutional rights to us if you want us to keep you safe" -- and it is Obama's willingness to embrace that rancid framework, the defining mindset of the Bush years, that is most deserving of intense criticism here.
There is evidence that this illegal intrusion was hatched months before 9/11 happened:
Quote:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...ceo-not-a.html
Qwest CEO Not Alone in Alleging NSA Started Domestic Phone Record Program 7 Months Before 9/11
By Ryan Singel October 12, 2007 NSA, Surveillance

Startling statements from former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio's defense documents alleging the National Security Agency http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...l#previouspost began building a massive call records database seven months before 9/11 aren't the only accusations that the controversial program predated the attacks of 9/11.

According to court documents unveiled this week, former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio clearly wanted to argue in court that the NSA retaliated against his company after he turned down a NSA request on February 27, 2001 that he thought was illegal. Nacchio's attorney issued a carefully worded statement in 2006, saying that Nacchio had turned down the NSA's repeated requests for customer call records. The statement says that Nacchio was asked for the records in the fall of 2001, but doesn't say he was "first asked" then.

And in May 2006, a lawsuit filed against Verizon for allegedly turning over call records to the NSA alleged that AT&T began building a spying facility for the NSA just days after President Bush was inaugurated. That lawsuit is one of 50 that were consolidated and moved to a San Francisco federal district court, where the suits sit in limbo waiting for the 9th Circuit Appeals court to decide whether the suits can proceed without endangering national security.

According the allegations in the suit http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/fil...kerlawsuit.pdf (.pdf):

The project was described in the ATT sales division documents as calling for the construction of a facility to store and retain data gathered by the NSA from its domestic and foreign intelligence operations but was to be in actuality a duplicate ATT Network Operations Center for the use and possession of the NSA that would give the NSA direct, unlimited, unrestricted and unfettered access to all call information and internet and digital traffic on ATTÌs long distance network. [...]

The NSA program was initially conceived at least one year prior to 2001 but had been called off; it was reinstated within 11 days of the entry into office of defendant George W. Bush.

An ATT Solutions logbook reviewed by counsel confirms the Pioneer-Groundbreaker project start date of February 1, 2001....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/business/14qwest.html

October 14, 2007
Former Phone Chief Says Spy Agency Sought Surveillance Help Before 9/11
By SCOTT SHANE

The phone company Qwest Communications refused a proposal from the National Security Agency that the company’s lawyers considered illegal in February 2001, nearly seven months before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, the former head of the company contends in newly unsealed court filings.

The executive, Joseph P. Nacchio, also asserts in the filings that the agency retaliated by depriving Qwest of lucrative outsourcing contracts.

The filings were made as Mr. Nacchio fought charges of insider trading. He was ultimately convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading and has been sentenced to six years in prison. He remains free while appealing the conviction.

Mr. Nacchio said last year that he had refused an N.S.A. request for customers’ call records in late 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks, as the agency initiated domestic surveillance and data mining programs to monitor Al Qaeda communications.

But the documents unsealed Wednesday in federal court in Denver, first reported in The Rocky Mountain News on Thursday, claim for the first time that pressure on the company to participate in activities it saw as improper came as early as February, nearly seven months before the terrorist attacks. ....
Pelosi claims, below, that, after amnesty is granted, it will be easier for congress to obtain answers from telecomms than in litigation...
Quote:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...sty/print.html
The truth about telecom amnesty
An interview with the lead counsel in the AT&T case reveals how much misinformation is being disseminated about telecom amnesty.

Glenn Greenwald

Oct. 17, 2007 | Today I interviewed Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the lead counsel in the pending litigation against AT&T, alleging that AT&T violated multiple federal laws by providing (without warrants) unfettered access for the Bush administration to all telephone and Internet data concerning its customers. The Bush administration intervened in that lawsuit to argue that the "state secrets" doctrine compelled dismissal of the lawsuit, but the presiding judge, Bush 41-appointee Vaughn Walker, last year rejected that argument and ordered the case to proceed (Oral Argument on the administration's appeal of that ruling was heard by the 9th Circuit earlier this year).

The EFF/AT&T lawsuit -- based in part on the testimony and documentation of Mark Klein, a former AT&T employee -- will entail an investigation into the extent to which AT&T and other telecoms enabled the Bush administration to spy illegally on their customers. As of now, these telecom lawsuits are the best (arguably, the only real) hope for obtaining a judicial ruling as to whether these surveillance programs were illegal. Precisely for these reasons, the Bush administration is demanding "telecom amnesty" -- to bring a halt to EFF's lawsuit and thus ensure that no investigation of its spying activities on Americans ever occurs, and that no ruling is ever obtained as to whether it broke the law.

I found this interview extremely illuminating, and it reveals just how much misinformation is being disseminated by amnesty advocates. I will post the entire podcast and transcript when it is available, but wanted to post some key excerpts now:

* * * *

GG: The lawsuit you originally brought was against only AT&T and not against the Bush administration or any government officials. Is that correct?

CC: Yes. We brought the case only against AT&T because AT&T has an independent duty to you, its customers, to protect your privacy. This is a very old duty, and if you know the history of the FISA law, you'll know that it was adopted as a result of some very deep work done by the Church Committee in Congress, that revealed that Western Union and the telegraph companies were making a copy of all telegraphs going into and outside the U.S. and delivering them to the Government.

So this was one of the big outrages uncovered by the Church Committee -- in addition to the rampant surveillance of people like Martin Luther King.

As a result of this, Congress very wisely decided that it wasn't sufficient to simply prevent the Government from listening in on your calls - they had to create an independent duty for the telecom carries not to participate in illegal surveillance.

So they are strictly forbidden from handing over your communications and communications records to the Government without proper legal process.

* * * *

Regarding the 9th Circuit appeal and what is at stake in these cases:

GG: If you were a Bush administration lawyer coming out of that Oral Argument, you would be far from confident that the 9th Circuit is going to dismiss the case?

CC: I think that's a fair characterization.

GG: And so, as we sit here now, with the Bush administration demanding amnesty for telecoms -- including AT&T and the other telecom defendants in these various lawsuits - there is a very real prospect, as of this moment, that the case you brought against these telecoms will go forward, and will entail an investigation into what these telecoms have been doing vis-a-vis surveillance of Americans -- is that true?

CC: I think that's true. . . . The courts will be able to look pretty deeply into what the phone companies have been doing. It may not be the case that the rest of us will know all of it. But what we will know at the end -- and what I think is critically important -- is whether it was legal or not.

GG: There will be a judicial ruling, assuming your case goes forward, as to whether or not the activities the telecoms engaged in, in concert with the Bush administration, actually broke the law?

CC: Yes - and that I think is tremendously important even if we don't end up knowing every nook and cranny of what the Government has been doing.

The FISA law really makes it illegal for the phone companies to give this information to the Government, and what the Government does with it afterwards isn't really relevant to our claim.

We have evidence of an NSA-controlled room in the Folsom Street AT&T facilities in San Francisco. We have evidence that AT&T diverted copies of everyone's Internet traffic into that room. And we know that there's very sophisticated equipment in that room that is capable of doing real-time analysis of the Internet traffic that is getting routed into there.

For most of our legal claims, that's enough to win, and we're done.

GG: Let's talk about those allegations. Your lawsuit, if it proceeded, would necesarily require an investigaiton into those allegations -- namely, into whether there was a secret room built, whether AT&T was providing unfettered access to the NSA, whether they were turning over this data. You would have to prove those allegations in order to prevail, right?

CC: Yes. . . . in that regard we already have AT&T internal documents that lay out the schematics of how this is happening and AT&T has authenticated these documents. They filed a motion with Judge Walker saying that those documents are their trade secrets and to say that, they had to say they were true. . . . The evidence we already presented and the fact that AT&T authenticated them takes us, if not all the way there, pretty darn close.

* * * *

The impact of amnesty on these investigations:

GG: So, if Congress were to enact a law providing amnesty to telecoms -- something like the Bush administration is demanding, whereby the telecoms would receive retroactive amnesty -- that would essentially put a halt to your lawsuit?

CC: We would certainly argue that it didn't, but it's fair to say that it would put a pretty large hurdle in front of us for going forward. . . .

GG: But you would expect AT&T's lawyers and the telecom industry to argue that the amnesty they got from Congress does in fact bar those claims as well?

CC: Yes. Their goal is plainly to get rid of these litigations full stop. They don't want the courts to ever rule on whether this is legal or not. That's their goal. . . .

It's certainly the goal of the administration and the phone companies to ensure that there's never a decision about what's been going on is legal or not. The telecom cases are the last, best hope.

GG: In all of these cases that might result in an adjudication as to whether the surveillance programs were illegal, the Bush administration has been actively invovled in trying to block these cases from proceeding at all?

CC: That's right - they made the same "states secrets" argument as they made in our case in all these other cases as well.

GG: And having lost the "state secrets" argument in your case, and also in the ACLU case originally, they're now attempting to put a stop to these cases through the amnesty law that they're seeking?

CC: I think that's right. They're afraid. I think it's fair to say that they're worried they're not going to win with the rules of the game as they were set up at the time they started spying on everyone. They're running to Congress to try to change the rules of the game going forward, and trying to cover up what's happened in the past. And the question is - - is Congress going to go for this?


* * * *

The passivity of Congress:

GG: The claims by Mark Klein about what AT&T was doing - do you know, has he ever testified before any Congressional hearings or spoken with any Congressional Committee as part of any investigations that they've done into these claims?

CC: I know he hasn't ever been asked to testify in front of Congress. I know he would be willing to testify, I know he'd be very eager to tell his story to Congress.

GG: Well that's why I'm asking. These are pretty extraordinary claims that he's making, and yet -- not only during the time that the Republicans were in control of the Congress, but even for the 9 months that Democrats were in control -- there have been no formal Congressional hearings, Committee investigations, in which they asked him to come and testify about what he knows. Is that right?

CC: I think that's right. And I think that as we've been talking to members of Congress about the immunity provision, as the amnesty provision has been moving to Congress, it's shocking to me that they don't know what Mr. Klein has told a federal judge.

It's been on Frontline, and it was on a whole bunch of things -- you've been talking about it -- but there's a sense that members of Congress don't understand the kind of wholesale dragnet surveillance that Mr. Klein's evidence demonstrates . . . It's undisputed, this evidence. They have never said that Mr. Klein is lying or that the documents are phony.

To the contrary, AT&T itself said they were all true and were trying to argue that they were their trade secrets and we should have to give them all back. It's undisputed evidence and it is surprising that Congressional members still don't know about it and haven't asked Mr. Klein to come tell them himself.

* * * * *

Claims of telecoms' "good faith":

GG: One of the arguments that the telecom industry is making, and that advocates of telecom immunity or amnesty are making, is that these telecoms acted in good faith when they did what they did, and so it's unfair to punish these companies -- even if they technically broke the law -- because they were acting in good faith, acting as what the Washington Post Editorial Page described as good "patriotic corporate citizens" trying to protect the country. I have two questions about that:

(1) is it true that under the law, if they can prove they acted in good faith, then at least for the statutory claims, there won't be any liability?; and,

(2) aren't those claims, those arguments, that they're making now [about their supposed "good faith"] ones that they made before Judge Walker, that he rejected, when he refused to dismiss the case against them?

CC: Yes and yes. To answer your first question: the FISA law already has very broad immunities for the telecoms, and if it was the case that they were acting in good faith with an honest belief that what they were being asked to do was legal, then they would already have immunity, and they don't need an additional immunity from Congress for that.

And it's also the case that they made all these arguments to Judge Walker and Judge Walker's decision on this addresses those arguments very directly -- he said no reasonable phone company in the position of AT&T could have thought that what they were being asked to do was legal. It is not the case that this phone company could have believed that the wholesale surveillance of millions of its customers for five years, six years and counting, could be legal under the law.

Remember, these phone companies are very sophisticated about these FISA laws and the other laws that explain how and when they can cooperate with law enforcement. These aren't some rouges. This isn't Joe's Phone Company. They are very sophisticated and know the law better than almost everyone.

But even if they didn't, I don't think it takes a lot of thought to wonder: "huh, the FISA law says that the exclusive means by which the Government can get information is either by a warrant or a short-term certification from the Attorney General in an emergency situation. Huh - do either of these two things justify ongoing wholesale surveillance of all of our customers for five years and counting?"

The answer to that has to be "no." I don't think you even need a law degree to figure that one out.

* * * * *

The motives for the telecom lawsuits:

GG: John Boehner, the House Minority Leader, was on Fox News on Sunday arguing for telecom immunity, and this is one of the things he said in explaining why he believed in amnesty: "I believe that they deserve immunity from lawsuits out there from typical trial lawyers trying to find a way to get into the pockets of the American companies."

Is that an accurate description of your lawsuit and your organization?

CC: No, we are not plaintiff's attorneys. . . . He's welcome to come and visit our offices and if he still thinks that we're rich plaintiffs' attorneys after he's visited our little tiny Mission Street offices, then I have a bridge to sell him. We're a small, struggling non-profit with a very tiny budget - and we're doing this because we're committed to protecting people's privacy in the digital age.

GG: I don't know the salaries of EFF lawyers and I'm not asking that, but I assume it's true that there are all kinds of private sector opportunities and large corporate law firms in San Francisco where lawyers working in those places are making a lot more money, and if EFF lawyers were motivated by the desire for profit -- as Mr. Bohener dishonestly suggested -- there are a lot of other jobs that you could get that would pay a lot more money.

CC: Oh yeah, absolutely. And in fact, our lawyers are just the opposite. Most of the EFF lawyers worked in those big fancy firms for big fancy salaries, and took big paycuts to join us, because they wanted to do personally fulfilling work and feel like they were making the world a better place.

What I tell young lawyers who come to me and say: "I really want to work for EFF - you have such great lawyers," I say: "take your current paycheck, rip it in three pieces, take any third, and that's about what you'll get working for EFF." The lawyers who work for EFF are making some of the biggest contributions to this organization, because they are making far less than they could on the open market in exchange for being able to work on things they believe in every day.
Quote:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...8/rockefeller/

Oct. 18, 2007
AT&T, other telecoms, buy victory in lawsuits

(**UPDATE II -- DODD TO PLACE A SENATE "HOLD" ON TELECOM AMNESTY BILL)

(Update III)

The fact that this was completely predictable does not make it any less reprehensible:

Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources. . . .

The draft Senate bill has the support of the intelligence committee's chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), and Bush's director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. It will include full immunity for those companies that can demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States.

Such a demonstration, which the bill says could be made in secret, would wipe out a series of pending lawsuits alleging violations of privacy rights by telecommunications companies that provided telephone records, summaries of e-mail traffic and other information to the government after Sept. 11, 2001, without receiving court warrants. Bush had repeatedly threatened to veto any legislation that lacked this provision.

Let's just describe very factually and dispassionately what has happened here. Congress -- led by Senators, such as Jay Rockefeller, who have received huge payments from the telecom industry, and by privatized intelligence pioneer Mike McConnell, former Chairman of the secretive intelligence industry association that has been demanding telecom amnesty -- is going to intervene directly in the pending lawsuits against AT&T and other telecoms and declare them the winners on the ground that they did nothing wrong. Because of their vast ties to the telecoms, neither Rockefeller nor McConnell could ever appropriately serve as an actual judge in those lawsuits.

Yet here they are, meeting and reviewing secret documents and deciding amongst themselves to end all pending lawsuits in favor of their benefactors -- AT&T, Verizon and others. Let me quote again from that 1998 Foreign Affairs essay http://www.foreignaffairs.org/199803...w-revival.html by Thomas Carothers helpfully outlining the steps required to install the "rule of law" in third-world, pre-democracy countries:

Type three reforms aim at the deeper goal of increasing government's compliance with law. A key step is achieving genuine judicial independence. . . . But the most crucial changes lie elsewhere. Above all, government officials must refrain from interfering with judicial decision-making and accept the judiciary as an independent authority.

The question of whether the telecoms acted in "good faith" in allowing warrantless government spying on their customers is already pending before a court of law.
In fact, that is one of the central issues in the current lawsuits -- one that AT&T has already lost in a federal court.

Yet that is the issue that Jay Rockefeller and Mike McConnell -- operating in secret -- are taking away from the courts by passing a law declaring the telecoms to have won ("Senators this week began reviewing classified documents . . . and came away from that early review convinced that the companies had 'acted in good faith' in cooperating with what they believed was a legal and presidentially authorized program"). They are directly interfering in these lawsuits and issuing a "ruling" in favor of AT&T and other telecoms that is exactly the opposite of the one an actual court of law has already issued.

Just read what Bush-41-appointed Federal Judge Vaughn Walker -- operating out in the open, in an actual court of law, with both sides present and in accordance with due process -- ruled when rejecting AT&T's argument that they are entitled to have the case dismissed because they operated in "good faith" [Decision (.pdf) at p. 68]:


Just think about what is really happening here. AT&T's customers sued them for violating their privacy in violation of long-standing federal laws and for violating their Fourth Amendment rights. Even with the most expensive armies of lawyers possible, AT&T and other telecoms are losing in a court of law. The federal judge presiding over the case ruled against them -- ruled that the law is so clear they could not possibly have believed that what they did was legal -- and most observers, having heard the Oral Argument on appeal, predicted that they will lose in the Court of Appeals, too.

So AT&T and other telecoms went to Washington and -- led by Bush 41 Attorney General (and now Verizon General Counsel) William Barr, and in cooperation with their former colleague, Mike McConnell -- began paying former government officials such as Dan Coats and Jamie Gorelick to convince political officials to whom they give money, such as Jay Rockefeller, to pass a law declaring them the victors in these lawsuits and be relieved of all liability -- all based on assertions that a court of law has already rejected. They are literally buying a judicial victory in Congress -- just like Carothers warned that third-world countries must avoid if they want to become functioning democracies under the "rule of law" ("Above all, government officials must refrain from interfering with judicial decision-making").

And in the process -- for good measure -- they have ensured that there will never be any judicial ruling as to whether our Government and the telecom industry broke the law in how they spied on us for years without warrants. They have placed what they did literally beyond the reach of any law or judicial determination. And they accomplished all of that by paying enough officials in Washington to obtain those incomparably corrupt gifts. That's just factually, objectively, what has happened here.

To describe this is to illustrate how low we have fallen over the last six years, how illusory the concept of "the rule of law" now is in Washington. As Carothers put it in his solemn lecture to the Third World:

The primary obstacles to such reform are not technical or financial, but political and human. Rule-of-law reform will succeed only if it gets at the fundamental problem of leaders who refuse to be ruled by the law. Respect for the law will not easily take root in systems rife with corruption and cynicism, since entrenched elites cede their traditional impunity and vested interests only under great pressure.

Americans can understand instinctively -- if the argument were really made -- that it is completely corrupt for corporations which break the law and are sued to go to Congress and get a law passed declaring that they did nothing wrong. That is not an option available to most people if they break the law and/or are sued. But our "entrenched elites" defend it by spouting rank, fear-mongering tripe such as this, and thus, the intense erosion of our country's core political principles continues unabated.
Quote:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...l#previouspost

Is Retroactive Telecom Immunity Unconstitutional?
By Ryan Singel February 08, 2008 Categories: NSA

The Senate continues debate on whether to grant amnesty to telecoms that turned over Americans phone records to the nation's spooks and helped them spy on Americans' international phone and email conversations. But Findlaw columnist and Cardozo law school professor Anthony Sebok suggests that freeing the telecoms without giving some sort of compensation to those suing the companies would amount to an unconstitutional taking.

Some 40 lawsuits have been filed against suspected participating telecoms for alleged violations of federal privacy law. Proponents of immunity say the companies were simply acting in good faith for five years and that the Administration showed them paperwork certifying the government thought its own conduct was legal. Opponents say the telecoms knew they were violating the clear dictates of federal privacy law and that no one should be above the law -- especially since this wasn't a one-off request just days after 9/11.


Sebok's argument, however, hinges on the constitutionality of the provision, which would require a judge to dismiss a civil suit so long as the Attorney General writes a secret letter saying the company did not participate or did so only after getting paperwork saying the government thought its own use of the data was legal.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/sebok/20080129.html

Sebok may be on to something, but even if the provision is unconstitutional, immunity opponents face the same challenge that has vexed them in the fight against warrantless wiretapping: namely, standing.

To prove standing, one generally needs to prove harm, which proved to be the undoing of an ACLU challenge brought by journalists, Muslim groups and lawyers -- none of whom could actually prove they were wiretapped. The Ninth Circuit ruled fairly unfavorably on the Al-Haramain case where the plaintiffs claim the government accidentally gave them a secret document showing the group's lawyers had been warrantless spying.

In the most successful case so far, Judge Vaughn Walker has thus far only allowed the case to proceed on the issue of wiretapping, but not on claims based on the turn over of phone records to the government. Walker's ruling turns on the fact that the Administration has admitted to the former, but never to the latter (though many in Congress have confirmed the phone record data dump). Ostensibly those who were actually listened in on were a fairly small number, but the latter would likely include a substantial percentage of the country's population.

It's much harder to prove that one was secretly wiretapped than it is to prove one had phone service through, say, AT&T in 2002.

If the Administration actually wanted to create a fund for the wiretapped, how could they possibly distribute the money, given the targets are bad guys who shouldn't know they were wiretapped?

Would it be a series of black bag break-in jobs where spooks would surreptitiously slip $300 under a suspected terrorist sympathizer's mattress?

If the Administration decided to compensate everyone whose phone records were tapped, THREAT LEVEL suggest it would look mightily like the upcoming stimulus package.....
Quote:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/06/house-falls-down
June 20th, 2008
House Falls Down on the Job
Posted by Hugh D'Andrade

The House of Representatives today has fallen down on the job. By passing the FISA Amendments Act (293-129, with 105 Democrats in favor), they voted to give this lame duck President an undeserved parting gift by passing immunity for telcoms that helped the President violate the Constitution by participating in the NSA's massive and illegal spying program.

While Speaker Pelosi and President Bush describe it as a "balanced bill" with "bipartisan support," the millions of Americans whose privacy rights have been violated by the President's illegal spying program seem to have been left out of the equation.....

.....Republican Senator Arlen Specter has shown himself more supportive of the rule of law than Speaker Pelosi on this issue: "I am opposed to the proposed legislation because it does not require a judicial determination that what the telephone companies have done in the past is constitutional. It is totally insufficient to grant immunity for the telephone companies’ prior conduct based http://specter.senate.gov/public/ind..._id=&Issue_id= merely on the written assurance from the administration that the spying was legal."....
Quote:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/nsa/index.html
Obama Supports Telecom Amnesty Bill
By Ryan Singel EmailJune 20, 2008 | 7:28:07 PMCategories: NSA, Politics

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama supports the spy bill compromise passed by the House Friday, despite having opposed retroactive amnesty to telecoms that helped with the President's secret, warrantless wiretapping.

The measure expands the government's ability to install blanket wiretaps inside domestic communication infrastructure and frees the nation's phone and internet companies from lawsuits accusing them of massive violations of their customers' privacy. The Senate is expected to take up and pass the Bush-approved bill next week.

The bill is widely perceived as a victory for the White House, and was agreed to by Democrats out of a fear of being labeled soft on terrorism in the upcoming elections.

Obama's campaign released the following statement late Friday:.....
It comes down to the problem that Nancy Pelosi resorted to lies because she refuses to tell us why she supported this:
Quote:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/nsa/index.html
House Grants Telecom Amnesty, Expands Spying Powers
By Ryan Singel June 20, 2008

.....Pelosi said she did not like the amnesty provision, saying the telecoms "come out of this with a taint." But Pelosi added that the bill's required inspector-general report was more likely to "learn the truth about the president's surveillance program" than the lawsuits would have......

Quote:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...esi/index.html
Sunday June 22, 2008 06:31 EDT
Time Magazine uncritically prints Nancy Pelosi's "justifications" for the FISA "compromise"

....The very first fact asserted by Calabresi is totally false, designed to make the bill seem like some centrist compromise that has angered ideological extremists on all sides, when, in fact, the furthest extremes on the Right love the bill, and with good reason. Next we have this:

Much of the latter's rage has been directed against Nancy Pelosi, the liberal House Speaker who was instrumental in negotiating the deal -- attacking her on the internet and virtually shutting down her switchboard with complaints. One blogger called Pelosi "disturbingly disoriented" and said the deal she and her allies have cut will "eviscerate the Fourth Amendment, exempt their largest corporate contributors from the rule of law, and endorse the most radical aspects of the Bush lawbreaking regime."

That passage there quotes this post http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...hip/index.html that I wrote on Friday. Calabresi has sent me emails several times in the past about FISA and other pieces I've written. But when quoting what I wrote, I have to be an unnamed "one blogger" who is "attacking [Nancy Pelosi] on the internet," because the only people who could possibly object to this Important Centrist Compromise are shrill, unhinged leftist rabble who (unlike real journalists) write "on the internet" and shut down Official Government Switchboards with their "rage." And Calabresi studiously ignores the vast factions on the Right who are vigorously opposed to these extremist policies -- from the Ron Paul faction to libertarian groups such as the Cato Institute and presidential candidate Bob Barr -- in order to demonize oh-so-exotic doctrines like Search Warrants and the Rule of Law as some sort of Far Leftist agenda.

Moreover, the article of mine which Calabresi is quoting, and thus presumably read, amply documents that the Right loves this bill and was boasting that they got everything they wanted. Calabresi thus knows full well that the central premise of his article -- it angered both extremes! -- is patently false. But in terms of outright false statements, nothing can compete with this next passage, which begins by telling us that what motivated Pelosi to support this bill was "a mix of politics, pragmatism and some significant concessions," and then describes this one "significant concession" in particular:

Letting the PAA expire was a risk — the Administration pilloried Democrats for being soft on terrorism. But Pelosi successfully parlayed it into specific improvements. For example, under Administration proposals, the telecoms would have received full retroactive immunity from lawsuits brought by civil libertarians alleging they violated the fourth amendment by complying with Administration requests to conduct wiretaps following 9/11. In negotiations with Pelosi's office, the telecoms offered a compromise: Let a judge decide if the letters they received from the Administration asking for their help show that the government was really after terrorist suspects and not innocent Americans.

Pelosi's negotiators felt that was a significant concession. The California district judge who will make the decision in such cases has been sympathetic to some of the civil libertarians' claims. And an adverse decision can be appealed to the liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The telecoms are casting it as a victory, and Pelosi's aides acknowledge the telecoms are likely to win immunity in court. But they're getting less than they would have in A Senate version of the bill, and they will hardly have a free ride once litigation and lobbying fees have been added up.

This is false from start to finish. Calabresi literally knows less about this topic than his colleague, Joe Klein. I try hard not to use the word "lie" except when it's absolutely clear that it applies, and it does here. Either Pelosi's spokesperson feeding these claims is lying about one of the key provisions of this bill, or Calabresi is, or both. The law does not do what this article says it does.

The court most certainly does not decide if the Government letters to telecoms "show that the government was really after terrorist suspects and not innocent Americans." To the contrary, the judge is barred from examining the real reasons this spying occurred. The judge has only one role: dismiss the lawsuits as long as the Attorney General -- Bush's Attorney General -- claims that the spying was "designed to prevent or detect a terrorist attack."

The court is barred from examining whether that's true or whether there is evidence to support that claim. It's totally irrelevant whether the Judge is favorable to "civil libertarians' claims" or not since he's required to dismiss the lawsuits the minute the Attorney General utters the magic words, and he's prohibited from inquiring as to whether the Attorney General's statements about the purpose of the spying are true. That's why Rep. Blunt dismissed the whole process as nothing more than a "formality" -- because it compels the court to dismiss the lawsuits and bars it from engaging in the inquiry which Calabresi falsely assures his readers the judge will undertake. http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...com/index.html

As for the notion that telecoms will have "hardly had a free ride" from breaking our spying laws because they had to pays fees to lobbyists to get Congress to write an amnesty law for them, and incurred some lawyers fees in the resulting lawsuits, that's really almost too extraordinary for words. The amount of fees the telecoms incurred is less than pocket change. And in return, they are having the Congress pass a law with no purpose other than to compel dismissal of lawsuits brought against them by their customers for breaking the law.

But in today's America, it's considered a real burden -- an unjust plight -- when put-upon high government officials such as Lewis Libby and terribly-burdened huge corporations such as AT&T have to incur some fees in order to win extraordinary government protection from consequences after they get caught deliberately and continuously breaking numerous federal laws. It's touching to see the Time Warner Corporation express such empathy for the tribulations of AT&T and Verizon through its media organs.

Finally, we have this explanation as to why Pelosi and the House leadership did what they did:

Stonewalling the Administration and letting the surveillance powers expire could have cost the Democrats swing seats they won in 2006 as well as new ones they have a chance to steal from Republicans this November. "For any Republican-leaning district this would have been a huge issue," says a top Pelosi aide, who estimates that as many as 10 competitive races could have been affected by it. . . .

Pelosi's centrist compromise doesn't just help House Democrats in the fall. It also gives the party's presumptive nominee for President, Barack Obama, a chance to move to the center on national security. "Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay," Obama said in a statement Friday. "So I support the compromise."

The very idea that Democrats would lose elections if they didn't support this bill is false on numerous levels. They could have easily removed the issue simply by voting to extend the PAA orders for 6-9 months. More importantly, Karl Rove's central strategy in the 2006 midterm election was to use FISA and torture to depict the Democrats as being Weak on Terrorism, and the Democrats crushed the Republicans and took over both houses of Congress. Pelosi's claim that they support extremist Bush policies in order to avoid election losses in "swing districts" is dubious in the extreme -- an excuse to feed to Democratic voters to justify their complicity in these matters.

But whether true or false, this "justification" is precisely why I believe so fervently that the only option we have to battle against continuous assaults on core constitutional and civil liberties is to target the very seats that the Democratic leadership constantly points to in order to justify their behavior. What the Democratic leadership is saying is quite clear: we will continue to trample on the Constitution and support endless expansions of the surveillance state because that is how we'll win in swing districts and expand our Congressional majority (Hunter at Daily Kos -- "one leftist blogger" who spews rage "on the Internet" -- has one of the clearest statements http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/20...407/423/539606 on why this bill is so abominable). The only objective of Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer is to have a 50-seat majority rather than a 35-seat majority, and if enabling the Bush administration's lawbreaking and demolishing core constitutional protections can assist somewhat with that goal, then that it what they will do. That's what they are saying all but explicitly here.

Until that calculus changes, their behavior never will. That's why it is so vital to target and defeat selected Democrats in Congress who are enabling these unconstitutional and lawless assaults. Democratic leaders need to learn that this strategy won't work. Right now, they think there is no price to pay from doing things like giving telecoms amnesty and destroying the Fourth Amendment, because those who oppose that won't do anything other than continue to support them. If they start losing seats when they engage in that behavior rather than gaining them --.....-- only then will they stop doing it. .......
Just three months ago, Hoyer said the opposite of his and Pelosi claims on friday. They have no remaining integrity or credibility:
Quote:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...gree-to-e.html
Dems Agree to Expand Domestic Spying, Grant Telecoms Amnesty
By Ryan Singel June 19, 2008

...."It is the result of compromise, and like any compromise is not perfect, but I believe it strikes a sound balance," Hoyer said in a press release http://democraticleader.house.gov/in...ReleaseID=2403 announcing the deal.

That's a significant change for Hoyer, who in March in a House floor speech http://www.majorityleader.gov/media/...ReleaseID=2264 opposed blanket immunity, saying "I submit that a reasonable -- responsible -- Congress would not seek to immunize conduct without knowing what conduct or misconduct it is immunizing."

The bill itself oddly admits that the government's surveillance activities included more than the previously admitted "Terrorist Surveillance Program." That program, admitted by the president after The New York Times revealed it in December 2005, targeted Americans to intercept their international phone calls and e-mails without getting court approval. In a provision authorizing an oversight investigation, the bill refers to the "President's Surveillance Program," of which the so-called TSP was just one part.

That all but confirms what many have reported and suspected: that there was much more unilateral surveillance than the president or his lawyers have ever admitted.


The current immunity language differs very little from the proposal that was debated in February and March, according to Kevin Bankston, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation -- which is arguing the leading case against the nation's telecoms...
Quote:
http://pol.moveon.org/immunity/080621obama.html
Dear MoveOn member,

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.1

This Monday, the fight moves to the Senate. Senator Russ Feingold says the "deal is not a compromise; it is a capitulation."2 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."3

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."4 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? ...

Obama's presidential campaign: (866) 675-2008

Then, help us track our progress:

http://pol.moveon.org/call?cp_id=758&tg=479 ....

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Old 06-22-2008, 09:23 PM   #25 (permalink)
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I'm almost too angry with Obama to post a rational reply on this thread. He just sold out the Fourth Amendment.
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Old 06-23-2008, 08:43 AM   #26 (permalink)
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ratbastid, in case you meant to post this on this thread...it's on topic, here...

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...59#post2473659
Quote:
Originally Posted by ratbastid
Obama promised to support a filibuster of any legislation that granted retroactive immunity to telcos. This bill passed the HOUSE, not the Senate--he hasn't had the opportunity to get his hands on it yet. In his statement, he said he'd work to remove the immunity provisions when the bill is before the Senate. In short: he hasn't even had a chance to reverse himself yet, and everything he's saying is consistent with what he promised.

If he lets a compromise bill pass unchallenged in the Senate that grants retroactive immunity, I'll have trouble with that. I'll be troubled, but not about Obama, if he fights and loses on this issue--he's just a junior Senator right now, albeit one with a great big voice, and if a coalition is lined up to pass the thing, there's not a lot he can personally do. But he's said twice he'd work to remove the immunity provisions, and so far he's done nothing to go back on that.
If you were successful in arguing that this is just about telecomm amnesty, your post would go a long way to provide damage control for Obama's words and non-action when this sham bill was being rushed throrugh the house last week. The problem for Obama is that it is not only about telecomm amnesty. Obama sounds too much like Bush....complete with the use of the "fear card" component to make his support for this "compromise" more persuasive.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!

Quote:
http://wordout.computergeekservices....zen-red-flags/

...If I were Barack, I’d be worried. If I were a Barack supporter, I’d be embarrassed. I am an American, and I am disgusted. This bill, HR6304, which was passed Friday in the House, is a big thing. Naturally, mainstream media is giving it lip service. Not surprisingly, the political blog-world is going nuts over it, mostly focusing now on Barack Obama’s plans to endorse the bill bull. I’ve been searching online to find an official statement from Obama, but I can’t find it.

What I did find I traced back to Glenn Greenwald.
Quote:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...ama/index.html

.....Obama has embraced a bill that is not only redolent of many of the excesses of Bush's executive power theories and surveillance state expansions, but worse, has done so by embracing the underlying rationale of "Be-scared-and-give-up-your-rights." Note that the very first line of Obama's statement warns us that we face what he calls "grave threats," and that therefore, we must accept that our Leader needs more unlimited power, and the best we can do is trust that he will use it for our Good. .....
From what I can gather, it’s believed around the web to be the authentic words of Barack Obama, sent to Glenn as a response to a post he published last week with the title “A Letter to the Next President of the United States“. Well, at least I found something. Regular readers know I am stickler for going to the source. It bothers me that I can’t point directly at Obama and say to you: “Go here to read what he says.”

I have to wonder why Obama doesn’t have an ‘official’ statement at his website. I am simply amazed that instead, he chose to reply via email to a blog post. I don’t mean to imply that Glenn doesn’t deserve an answer to his open letter. I do mean to state that the rest of us deserve just as official an answer. We deserve to be able to go to Obama’s website and find out where he stands on important issues. I spent nearly 4 hours researching online, looking for an ‘official’ Obama statement. Obama, you have already started wasting my time.

Here is the response in its entirety (I’ve BOLDED some parts which I will address individually below):


Statement of Senator Barack Obama on FISA Compromise

“Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. There is also little doubt that the Bush Administration, with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, has abused that authority and undermined the Constitution by intercepting the communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or the required court orders.

“That is why last year I opposed the so-called Protect America Act, which expanded the surveillance powers of the government without sufficient independent oversight to protect the privacy and civil liberties of innocent Americans. I have also opposed the granting of retroactive immunity to those who were allegedly complicit in acts of illegal spying in the past.

“After months of negotiation, the House today passed a compromise that, while far from perfect, is a marked improvement over last year’s Protect America Act.

“Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President’s illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance – making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people. It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future. 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. But this compromise guarantees a thorough review by the Inspectors General of our national security agencies to determine what took place in the past, and ensures that there will be accountability going forward. By demanding oversight and accountability, a grassroots movement of Americans has helped yield a bill that is far better than the Protect America Act.

“It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives – and the liberty – of the American people.”


1. compromise legislation

This is not a compromise. It is a total caving in to what the administration asked for, and even more. All the administration wanted was immunity for the telecoms and themselves, and the ability to keep using the so-called FISA court setup under the 1978 bill. HR6304 abolishes that and says that the district court will now review the process, under the direction of the Executive Branch(The President).

By compromise, you are referring to the additional Domestic Spending which the Democrats attached to the bill FUNDING THE WAR IN IRAQ, wherein the Democrats also gave the Bushies the billions they asked for in exchange for some paltry millions of dollars, to be used as proof in the current election that the Democrats care about us. Bullshit compromise, if you ask me. If you care about us, protect us; protect the Constitution.

2. illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over

The illegality of it will be over. According to the provisions in this bill, the program of warrantless surveillance will be expanded greatly. But you’re right, the lack of a warrant will not be a legal issue any longer.

3. restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes

This is a misdirection of facts. In fact, FISA was alive and well, as were the “existing’ statutes. To imply that they are being restored, when in fact, they are not, is at best a misdirection of facts. At worst, it’s a barefaced lie. Under the existing law, all the President has to do is get a warrant. All a warrant requires is probable cause. HR6304 does away with that. There’s no requirement for anything more than a statement saying they want to do whatever it is they want to do, simply because they want to do it. No reason why required. In that manner, this bill completely destroys the existing statutes.

4. re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future

This is pure dishonesty on the senator’s part. In fact, the revisions contained in HR6304 completely abolish any judicial oversight. The provisions of the bill say that if the President says that he(she) thinks an action is needed, then the court must agree and not investigate further. The court is not even allowed to ask for an explanation of why. The court simply has to do whatever it is told.

5. grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses

Okay, Barack, here’s your chance to show America what you really are. Remember back in October of last year? You’re not elected yet, so I’m sure you haven’t developed the memory loss that comes with being in the Executive Branch. Let me quote your campaign:

“To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.”

If you do this on Monday, on the floor of the Senate, you will prove to all of US that you can be trusted to follow through on what you say. You will convince us that you are not another Bush. Do otherwise, and you will prove that you are not to be trusted. Fail here and you prove that you are a liar who will say anything to us to be elected. Anything to gain power.

6. thorough review by the Inspectors General

The Inspectors General are a part of the Executive Branch, reporting directly to the President. Giving the President the authority to review the President’s actions is not a real review by anyone’s standards.

7. accountability going forward

Once again, real accountability would disclose details, at least to the judges reviewing the actions. Oh, that’s right, they aren’t allowed to review anything at all unless the President says so. So I guess the President is accountable to …. the President!

8. grassroots movement of Americans

This is just bullshit. Barack, show me a grassroots movement to grant immunity to the telecoms. Barack, show me a grassroots movement to allow warrantless searches and seizures. Barack, show me a grassroots movement to allow the President to be the Supreme Authority on what is legal in this country. You, sir, are a liar.

9. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay

This sounds alarmingly similar to what GW Bush has said for the past 7 years. We have ALWAYS faced legitimate threats, the greatest of which caused our founding fathers to set up this crazy system of government… one which pits 3 different branches against each other so as to prevent one branch, one man, from attaining too much power. The most legitimate threat we face today, Mr. Obama, is from within our own government. The Executive Branch is trying to usurp all the power. As a member of the Legislative Branch, this should make you wary. Unless you really think you can win.

10. firm pledge that as President

Dude, you’ve already made a firm pledge as a Senator! Uphold the Constitution of The United States Of America! If you fail on that pledge, why should we expect you to do any better as President? Especially since you, alone, are in a position to turn this around. You don’t think so? You think you can’t fight the good fight on our behalf? You think you need to be a part of that machine to win?

You underestimate us, Mr. Obama. We are the American Republic. We are The People. If we choose you, no amount of money or might will stand in our way. All you have to do is: Be One Of Us.

11. any additional steps I deem necessary

This is not all that comforting to read. GW Bush did whatever he deemed necessary as well. Hey, doesn’t this bill give the President the power to do whatever he deems necessary anyway? Yeah, it does… whatever he wants with no fear of any real judicial review. The ‘Get Out Of Jail’ card which is called HR6304 says that all you would have to do is say you ‘deemed it necessary’ and that would be that. It’s not comforting to know that you already have decided that you WILL use this bill to do exactly what it gives the President the power to do. Anything you want....

It's a bad bill, and there was no need for this "compromise" at this time....
Quote:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...ama/index.html
....It is absolutely false that the only unconstitutional and destructive provision of this "compromise" bill is the telecom amnesty part. It's true that most people working to defeat the Cheney/Rockefeller bill viewed opposition to telecom amnesty as the most politically potent way to defeat the bill, but the bill's expansion of warrantless eavesdropping powers vested in the President, and its evisceration of safeguards against abuses of those powers, is at least as long-lasting and destructive as the telecom amnesty provisions. The bill legalizes many of the warrantless eavesdropping activities George Bush secretly and illegally ordered in 2001. Those warrantless eavesdropping powers violate core Fourth Amendment protections. And Barack Obama now supports all of it, and will vote it into law. Those are just facts.

The ACLU specifically identifies the ways in which this bill destroys meaningful limits on the President's power to spy on our international calls and emails. Sen. Russ Feingold condemned the bill on the ground that it "fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home" because "the government can still sweep up and keep the international communications of innocent Americans in the U.S. with no connection to suspected terrorists, with very few safeguards to protect against abuse of this power." Rep. Rush Holt -- who was actually denied time to speak by bill-supporter Silvestre Reyes only to be given time by bill-opponent John Conyers -- condemned the bill because it vests the power to decide who are the "bad guys" in the very people who do the spying.

This bill doesn't legalize every part of Bush's illegal warrantless eavesdropping program but it takes a large step beyond FISA towards what Bush did. There was absolutely no reason to destroy the FISA framework, which is already an extraordinarily pro-Executive instrument that vests vast eavesdropping powers in the President, in order to empower the President to spy on large parts of our international communications with no warrants at all. This was all done by invoking the scary spectre of Terrorism -- "you must give up your privacy and constitutional rights to us if you want us to keep you safe" -- and it is Obama's willingness to embrace that rancid framework, the defining mindset of the Bush years, that is most deserving of intense criticism here....

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Old 06-23-2008, 09:25 AM   #27 (permalink)
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Democrats continue to show me how empty their words were, and how they were using rhetoric for political purposes and political grandstanding. Was Bush right along, or did something actually change in the Democratic Party collective mindset that would lead them to legitimately support telecoms immunity?
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Old 06-23-2008, 09:56 AM   #28 (permalink)
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I will readily admit to being glad that I didn't vote for anyone who supported that bill. Zoe Lofgren (Cal 16th), my Congresswoman, voted against it. She even recently introduced H.R. 4182: Executive Branch Prosecutions Act of 2007. I'm quite happy with her representation of myself and my community.
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Old 06-23-2008, 10:04 AM   #29 (permalink)
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aceventura3
Democrats continue to show me how empty their words were, and how they were using rhetoric for political purposes and political grandstanding. Was Bush right along, or did something actually change in the Democratic Party collective mindset that would lead them to legitimately support telecoms immunity?
host and ace....a majority of the Dems (128-105) in the House voted against the FISA amendments.

I think you are both missing one critical point ..... by most measures, there is no "the Democrats" or at least to the same extent as there is "the Republicans".

Since 2006, with the election of more moderate/centrists, the Democrats have become less and less of a monolithic voting block....unllke the Republicans.

The tent is bigger and the opinions and policy positions are more diverse....which is a blessing and a curse.

One of Howard Deans' greatest under reported accomplishments has been the significant success since 2004 in "expanding the tent" of the Democratic party

Most recent data show the Democratic party growing while the Republican party is shrinking.

In 2000, voters identified with (or leaned towards) both parties at about an equal number - 40% each. In 2008, its more like 45% are selfd-identified Dems (or lean toward Dems) and 35% are self-identified Repubs (or lean towards Repub)

This bigger tent presents opportunities and challenges for Obama, Pelois, Reid.

I would agree that they haven't handled it as well as they could have. and no more so than on issues like the FISA reform and Iraq funding.

But I would still rather be in that position than to return to being the minority party...and hopefully, with a larger majority after November, that balancing act might be just a bit easier.

With that being said...I will withhold any further comment on the FISA amendments until the Senate votes later this week....

...other than reaffirming my opinion that the House bill accomplished the most important goal for me....providing more safeguards to prevent the recurrence of abuses we saw from Bush/Cheney/Gonzales between 2001-2006
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Old 06-23-2008, 10:05 AM   #30 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Willravel
I will readily admit to being glad that I didn't vote for anyone who supported that bill. Zoe Lofgren (Cal 16th), my Congresswoman, voted against it. She even recently introduced H.R. 4182: Executive Branch Prosecutions Act of 2007. I'm quite happy with her representation of myself and my community.
will, why do you think some are posting here, that the house bill "isn't that bad", and it's "a compromise", and, if it wasn't for the telecomm amnesty provision, which "Obama will oppose in the senate", there is no problem with Obama's inaction before the bill was passed, or in the wording of his statement?

I am amazed. I would have thought the "is it ground hog day" thread would have left an impression that this "reform" of FISA is a sham....information on that thread that would influence more to agree that the house dems and Obama's...actions, inactions, and statements are repugnant....to be exposed and condemned in no uncertain terms.

The back of my neck is wet, and they're posting that it's raining, when it isn't.
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Old 06-23-2008, 10:15 AM   #31 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by host
will, why do you think some are posting here, that the house bill "isn't that bad", and it's "a compromise", and, if it wasn't for the telecomm amnesty provision, which "Obama will oppose in the senate", there is no problem with Obama's inaction before the bill was passed, or in the wording of his statement?
I want to say cognitive dissonance, but it's a lot more simple. I'm often frustrated by those I vote for, but I feel a sense of ownership, responsibility for them. So any excuse I would make for myself in their situation I might afford to them by extension. Would DC_Dux have been elected to Congress, I honestly don't know if he would have voted for or against this bill. I would hope against. When his Democratic Congress voted in favor, it presented a set of decisions: do I agree with this bill? If no, do I agree with my Democrats voting for it? If yes, why? I, Willravel, can't answer these questions. I hope DC doesn't think I'm picking on him, I have a tremendous amount of respect for him, but I do see him as a loyal Democrat. And loyalty to ideology is an affront to free thinking.

DC, if you were a Congressman when this bill was presented for voting, would you have voted in favor or against?
Quote:
Originally Posted by host
The back of my neck is wet, and they're posting that it's raining, when it isn't.
I call that "Dharma Dew" or perspiration from enlightenment.
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Old 06-23-2008, 10:19 AM   #32 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dc_dux
host and ace.

I think you are both missing one critical point ..... by most measures, there is no "the Democrats" or at least to the same extent as there is "the Republicans".

.....With that being said...I will withhold any further comment on the FISA amendments until the Senate votes later this week.
dc_dux, first, I was shocked to hear that Hoyer was even negotiating with republican leaders...there was no political or national security justification to do more than allow FISA to sunset back to the pre-August 2007 law....with an offer to change the laws' wording to address the FISA judge's claim that communications not originating or ending in the US....but only passing through US based telecomm switches required warrants...a change to the law to exempt those "both party" foreign communications from requiring warrants.

Then, I became more shocked with the announcement that a bill was agreed on with Blunt and Bond, and quickly posted on Hoyer's web address.....rising to astonished when it was announced that it would be voted on in the house in less than a day after it was posted, with no hearings, and half an hour allotted for debate by non-leadership house members.

My shiock grew when the defacto leader of the democratic party, Obama, did not release a statement before the house voted on the bill.

Nothing could have prepared me for the statement Obama belatedly did issue....because it sounded just like something Bush would have said...see my last post....

I have a feeling, _dux, that you will find a way, no matter what happens in the senate, to make me look like the "hot headed reactionary", and Obama like the reasonable, stalwart, sincere, democratic presidential candidate.

"Lumping me in" with ace, (presumably to make my well documented opinions seem indistinguishable from ace's rhetorical and predictably partisan ones...). in the intro of your last post, was no accident, was it? You can put lipstick on this, all you want, dc_dux, but wishing ain't gonna make it so......

Last edited by host; 06-23-2008 at 10:21 AM..
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Old 06-23-2008, 10:24 AM   #33 (permalink)
 
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host...I meant no offense or compliment in "lumping you in with ace"....just saving space since you both have referred to "the Democrats" as if it were a singular voice with a singular opinion.

Will...I would have voted against the bill in the House...but I probably wound not be representing a southern or midwestern district with a diversity of voters and opinion...most of which is probably not very progressive.

I would also not strong arm my colleagues in the House to vote my way, but I would encourage them to vote their conscience or in the manner that they believe best represents the opinions of their constituents.
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Old 06-23-2008, 10:27 AM   #34 (permalink)
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Here something else to chew on while we wait for the Senate on the FISA bill. Again thinking about the principled reason people objected to "illegal wiretaps", imbedded in the housing bailout legislation is a national fingerprint registry. People involved in the mortgage industry and some involved in the real estate industry will have to give their finger prints just for the privilege of doing their business and no evidnece they have broken any laws.

Quote:
Buried in the text of the revised legislation, approved by the Senate Banking Committee by a 19-2 vote this week, is a plan to create a new national fingerprint registry. It covers just about everyone involved in the mortgage business, including lenders, "loan originators," and some real estate agents.

What's a little odd is the lack of public discussion about this new fingerprint database. No mention of it appears in the official summary of the revised Senate bill. No fingerprint database requirement is in the House version of the legislation approved earlier this month. No copy of the revised Senate legislation is posted on the Library of Congress' Thomas Web site, which would be the usual procedure.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9951420-38.html

I understand examining phone records of people communicating with known terrorist, but here I think government is taking a step too far. Should we expect more of the same from Washington with a Democrat in the WH and Democrats in control of Congress?

Quote:
Originally Posted by host
"Lumping me in" with ace, (presumably to make my well documented opinions seem indistinguishable from ace's rhetorical and predictably partisan ones...). in the intro of your last post, was no accident, was it? You can put lipstick on this, all you want, dc_dux, but wishing ain't gonna make it so......
Host, try and separate two points I continually make. One, I do generally support the Bush administration. I voted for him twice, I even worked on his campaign. My support of Bush is primarily based on national defense issues. We disagree on some domestic issues.

The other point I often make is that the Democrats are basically full of it.

I know we will never agree on national defense issues or domestic policy issues.
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Last edited by aceventura3; 06-23-2008 at 10:33 AM.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost
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Old 06-23-2008, 10:37 AM   #35 (permalink)
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dc_dux, thank you for your last post. Believe it or not....I do have mixed emotions about posting such strong objections against the candidate who I believe I have no choice but to vote for....as the best hope for maintaining the supreme court as a branch that is not, as was shown in the habeas ruling, last week, hell bent on ruling itself into irrelevancy, with a non (anti?)-judicial philosophy that defers predictably to the judgment of the executive and legislative. I think Roberts made the argument, last week, that there is no longer a justification to keep his court open and funded.
Quote:
http://www.studentnewsdaily.com/dail...amo-prisoners/

"Today the Court strikes down as inadequate the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants," Chief Justice Roberts wrote. "The political branches crafted these procedures amidst an ongoing military conflict, after much careful investigation and thorough debate."

Chief Justice Roberts also questioned whether the majority's decision should be counted as a win for the detainees.

"The majority merely replaces a review system designed by the people's representatives with a set of shapeless procedures to be defined by federal courts at some future date,"...
Is there any set of circumstances where John Roberts would think it was appropriate to declare an action by the executive or "people's representatives", unconstitutional, if transferring habeas from the courts to the executive, is not such a circumstance? He calls the future determinations of the lower, federal courts, "a set of shapeless procedures". By his criteria, why pay his salary, why have a supreme court, at all?

It follows that I want the candidate who I vote for, to win, but not at any cost, although my effort in this thread makes me feel like I'm sawing through the tree branch I am standing on.....

Quote:
Originally Posted by Willravel
....I call that "Dharma Dew" or perspiration from enlightenment.
Isn't it ironic that I am the one so strongly viewed as "too partisan"? I'm doing the same thing in reaction to this outrageous, bi-partisan "Op", as I try to do in any affront to my sensibilities.

Ironically, the Obama defenders here, and defenders of the democratic leadership and of the bill they drafted and rushed through the house....are generally regarded as much more "reasonable" than I am.

I think they think they are, too!

Last edited by host; 06-23-2008 at 10:48 AM..
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Old 06-23-2008, 10:39 AM   #36 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dc_dux
host...I meant no offense or compliment in "lumping you in with ace"....just saving space since you both have referred to "the Democrats" as if it were a singular voice with a singular opinion.
For the record here is what I think on the point you make above.

Republicans have talking points, and so do Democrats. Democrats have been unified, on the surface it seems more so now than in the past. It is my belief that Democrats in Congress have not been acting and speaking independently. Generally, I think Democrats in Congress do as they are instructed - by party leadership.
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Old 06-23-2008, 10:41 AM   #37 (permalink)
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What happens when conscience meets constituency? By conscience I don't mean ideology, but rather a more basic sense of right and wrong. Clearly, despite how simple or difficult it would be to prosecute telecoms, it would be wrong to grand any retroactive immunity for organizations that aided in breaking the law. I cannot imagine a sense of morality that would view that as right, only as either excusable as a necessary evil or as you have said that it's irrelevant in that one cannot prosecute the telecoms regardless of the provision.

I don't see that as compromise, but rather surrender. Again.


The Aceventuras of the world would likely suggest that the Democrats are weak, which simply gives them a string to pull at. Host and I would see the other side of the coin: those whom we have trusted and voted in the office to take a stand are compromising with tyranny. I don't intend to be melodramatic or wax hyperbole, but really there are times when compromise is appropriate and times when it is not. Between 2006 and now, we have expected the Democratic House and narrowly Democratic Senate to fulfill campaign promises for which the constituents voted them to office. We want an end to the war, we want economic stability, we want an end to runaway spending on military, we want and end of the gathering of power to the executive, we want actual protection from that which endangers us, and we want our rights restored. Unfortunately, this recent bill exemplifies the inconsistency of the steps forward being made. Yes, there have been some victories, but there has been squandered opportunity after squandered opportunity to relentlessly fight against Bush and his policies.
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Old 06-23-2008, 10:53 AM   #38 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Willravel
The Aceventuras of the world would likely suggest that the Democrats are weak, which simply gives them a string to pull at.
Re-read some of the other threads on this subject. I clearly spelled out my reasons for supporting telecom immunity. I thought it was right to do it months ago, I think the same now. The reasons I gave were solid, but I was told all kinds of things. Now it seems my reasons were not that far outside the mainstream. I never assumed that the Democrats now in support of telecom immunity were actually against it - there was a strong political climate of distrust regarding anything Bush did and wanted, Democrats made the most of it at the time. It seems you and Host did assume these people were sincere in their outrage. That is not me pulling at strings. Truth hurts sometimes.
__________________
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"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

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Old 06-23-2008, 10:58 AM   #39 (permalink)
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Could you summarize your views on telecom immunity really quickly? I would assume that it's simply "they were helping to find terrorists" or something.
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Old 06-23-2008, 11:03 AM   #40 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Willravel
Could you summarize your views on telecom immunity really quickly? I would assume that it's simply "they were helping to find terrorists" or something.
I predict ace's response will be about justifying amnesty because, without it, continued litigation will only be about windfall profits for "trial lawyers", and those lawyers contribute to democrats, so.....
Quote:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/05...t-quarter-2008
May 20th, 2008
AT&T Spent $5.2 million on lobbying in the First Quarter of 2008
Posted by Kurt Opsahl

The Associated Press is reporting that AT&T, the defendant in EFF's NSA surveillance litigation, "spent $5.2 million in the first quarter to lobby on domestic spying legislation and other issues." To put this into perspective, AT&T's spending for three months on lobbying alone is significantly more than the entire EFF budget for a whole year, from attorneys to sysadmins, pencils to bandwidth. For 2007, AT&T spent over $16 million on lobbying.

So what does over $5 million buy you? While AT&T's powerhouse FISA lobbyist Charlie Black left his firm BKSH & Associates [1Q 2008 Disclosure Form] to become Senator John McCain's chief campaign strategist, AT&T now has former United States Senators Trent Lott and John Breaux (the Breaux-Lott Leadership Group) [Lobbying Registration] to pull in the slack. The Center for Responsive Politics has the full list.
The ongoing litigation concerns telecomms giving customer billing records with the telephone numbers called and received, to the government, without a warrant signed by a judge, as required by law. The other suits related to warrantless surveillance were dismissed by the courts because no one could prove that they were surveilled, because the government refused to admit any specifics to the judge or the plaintiffs, citing national security excuses, thus, there was no plaintiff with standing satisfactory to the court.

I predict that ace is fine with his calling records, and maybe his internet search logs being given by his phone or ISP provider to the government, just for the asking, legal requirements for probable cause and a judge approved warrant, waived, in secret, by the executive....

Last edited by host; 06-23-2008 at 11:12 AM..
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