“3. Less intrusive government.”

Amnesty Day for Bush and lawbreaking telecoms

The Senate today — led by Jay Rockefeller, enabled by Harry Reid, and with the active support of at least 12 (and probably more) Democrats, in conjunction with an as-always lockstep GOP caucus — will vote to legalize warrantless spying on the telephone calls and emails of Americans, and will also provide full retroactive amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms, thus forever putting an end to any efforts to investigate and obtain a judicial ruling regarding the Bush administration’s years-long illegal spying programs aimed at Americans. The long, hard efforts by AT&T, Verizon and their all-star, bipartisan cast of lobbyists to grease the wheels of the Senate — led by former Bush 41 Attorney General William Barr and former Clinton Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick — are about to pay huge dividends, as such noble efforts invariably do with our political establishment.
[…]

How far we’ve come — really: disgracefully tumbled — from the days of the Church Committee, which aggressively uncovered surveillance abuses and then drafted legislation to outlaw them and prevent them from ever occurring again. It is, of course, precisely those post-Watergate laws which the Bush administration and their telecom conspirators purposely violated, and for which they are about to receive permanent, lawless protection.
What Harry Reid’s Senate is about to do today would be tantamount to the Church Committee — after discovering the decades of abuses of eavesdropping powers by various administrations — proceeding in response to write legislation to legalize unchecked surveillance, bar any subjects of the illegal eavesdropping from obtaining remedies in court, and then pass a bill with no purpose other than to provide retroactive immunity for the surveillance lawbreakers. That would be an absurd and incomparably corrupt nonsequitur, but that is precisely what Harry Reid’s Senate — in response to the NYT’s 2005 revelations of clear surveillance lawbreaking by the administration — is going to do today.

Left by Pat on February 12th, 2008 at 9:07 am

pat- i’m not sure i agree with your perspective on current methods of intelligence gathering. may i remind you that we are 3+decades removed from the church committee and face very different threats today.

i was especially fond of agenda item #14.

Left by adam on February 12th, 2008 at 9:52 am

If you think things have gotten so bad in three decades that our Constitution is no longer sufficient to protect us, then at least be honest and say that.

The only difference here is that in the 1970s the public recognized the danger of allowing the executive branch to spy on American citizens without court oversight. In 2008, the public’s mass hysteria in the wake of 9/11 has been maximally exploited by an executive which believes that any legal check on its power, a principle firmly cemented in our Constitution, is tantamount to treason. In stark contrast to the 1970s, when the press couched Nixon’s offenses in the proper legal context so the public could see how bad a criminal he really was, in 2008 it has aided and abetted this President’s crimes by promulgating the GOP talking-point that retroactive immunity is merely protection from greedy trial lawyers, instead of the blatant violation of long-established legal doctrine that it clearly is.

Left by Pat on February 12th, 2008 at 10:46 am

Pat, you are so predictably pathetic, ignoring the activites of the leftists, but not of Nixon or Bush.

Oh, and since you want to keep up with the copy/paste ploy, here’s one for ya’, only I provide a link attribution, unlike you.

In terms of Western morale, the picture is likewise not so encouraging. Although the worst days of Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore have faded, American public opinion is inconsistent. It is angry over the cost of Iraq, but supports the Petraeus plan and rejects the Democratic alternative of mandatory withdrawal and subsequent defeat. It bridles at Guantanamo and wiretaps, but wants the protections of such surveillance and the Patriot Act in continuance. It complains about lost liberties, but neither explains in any detail how exactly we are no longer free nor appreciates that the nation has not experienced another 9/11, despite repeated terrorist attempts.

VDH

Left by no2liberals on February 12th, 2008 at 10:51 am

Senator Russ Feingold speaking yesterday:

The abuses that took place [prior to FISA] are well documented and quite shocking. With the willing cooperation of the telephone companies, the FBI conducted surveillance of peaceful anti-war protesters, journalists, steel company executives, and even Martin Luther King Jr., an American hero whose life we recently celebrated.

Congress decided to take action. Based on the history of, and potential for, government abuses, Congress decided that it was not appropriate for telephone companies to simply assume that any government request for assistance to conduct electronic surveillance was legal. Let me repeat that: a primary purpose of FISA was to make clear, once and for all, that the telephone companies should not blindly cooperate with government requests for assistance.
[...]
As Feingold explained, FISA was written with the cooperation of AT&T to ensure they had the clarity they needed — if they received written certification of legality from the AG, then they were required to cooperate with surveillance requests, but if they did not receive such certification, then the requests were by definition illegal and they were prohibited from doing so. The law already provides all the protections telecoms need and wanted for legal surveillance on Americans. This was the law they deliberately broke when they allowed the Bush administration to spy on Americans without warrants.

Left by Pat on February 12th, 2008 at 10:57 am

pat-i’m taken a back by your implication that i’m somehow being dishonest. in the 70’s surveillance was needed to combat a drastically different, better funded, sovereign(in most cases) enemy. today the threat is less easily defined, substantially more reckless, and motivated by radical religious fundamentalism. by not honestly identifying and clearly stating the dangers, we fail to heed sun tzu’s 2500 year old proven warning to know your enemy. you go ahead and keep drawing your comparisons, but parts of that logic were flawed then and are more dangerously flawed today.

Left by adam on February 12th, 2008 at 12:13 pm

It’s funny that nationalism is decried when it’s in other countries and celebrated when it’s our own.

Left by Preston on February 12th, 2008 at 2:18 pm

preston-are you referring to a specific country or opposition to patriotism?

Left by adam on February 12th, 2008 at 3:43 pm