FISA - The Next Few Days Are Critical

We all know Senator Chris Dodd is under siege--but there are 14 Senators who oppose Telecom Immunity.

Glenn Greenwald has been out front on this issue, so he has our support. I want to highlight, in its entirety, a letter from a commenter named pow wow:

[And, yes, commenters DO make a difference!]

from a letter to Glenn Greenwald by pow wow:

FISA & What's At Stake
As I understand it, John Edwards came out publicly to oppose either warrantless surveillance, or immunity, or both, last fall sometime [his current stump speech includes a line about ending "illegal" spying on Americans]. I don't remember the details, and it's hard to tell how much the campaign has been following the intricate ins and outs of the FISA debate.

So to try to help counteract the latest White House PR push for immunity for their well-heeled secret corporate surveillance partners, here're a few reminders and links about the core provisions of the amendments to FISA (beyond the brazen immunity provisions) that will be on the floor of the Senate this Thursday, in spite of Chris Dodd's hold on the Intelligence Committee bill, courtesy of "Majority Leader" Harry Reid:

These two bills (the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committee FISA bills) are about (in addition to immunity in the Intelligence bill's Title II) "Link Analysis" and the "largest database ever assembled in the world" - as indirectly confirmed by the House Judiciary Committee's report on its FISA bill "RESTORE," which cited the following two news articles as describing activity that the RESTORE Act (and thus obviously the two Senate bills) would permit:

...The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.
For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

[snip]

The usefulness of the NSA's domestic phone-call database as a counterterrorism tool is unclear. Also unclear is whether the database has been used for other purposes.

[snip]

For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events. - Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY, May 11, 2006

Http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

...Matt Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania and a former researcher for AT&T, said the telecommunications companies could have easily provided the F.B.I. with the type of network analysis data it was seeking because they themselves had developed it over many years, often using sophisticated software like a program called Analyst's Notebook.
"This sort of analysis of calling patterns and who the communities of interests are is the sort of things telephone companies are doing anyway because it's central to their businesses for marketing or optimizing the network or detecting fraud," said Professor Blaze, who has worked with the F.B.I. on technology issues.

Such "analysis is extremely powerful and very revealing because you get these linkages between people that wouldn't be otherwise clear, sometimes even more important than the content itself" of phone calls and e-mail messages, he said. "But it's also very invasive. There's always going to be a certain amount of noise," with data collected on people who have no real links to suspicious activity, he said.

[snip]

But critics assert that the further the links are taken, the less valuable the information proves to be. - Eric Lichtblau, the New York Times, September 9, 2007

Http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/washington/09fbi.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Both articles were cited in Footnote #27 of the House Judiciary Committee report on RESTORE, released October 12, 2007:

Http://www.rules.house.gov/110/text/110_hr3773rpt_judiciary.pdf

This is not about the 'foreign to foreign on a U.S. wire' problem that has been used as justification for these revisions/eviscerations of FISA - that issue is separately addressed and resolved in these bills. This is a brand new world of spying being authorized by Congress against innocent Americans (under Title I of the Senate bills) without any meaningful Judicial Branch check. New corporate and government spying authority which is being accompanied by a simultaneous effort to hold immune from lawsuits the cooperating corporations, that would block off Judicial Branch review to prevent the Supreme Court from having an opportunity to rule that these spying authorities openly violate the Fourth Amendment.

http://intelligence.senate.gov/071025/report.pdf

This is collusion between the Executive and Legislative Branches of government to end-run the Constitution, and to try to avoid any check from the Judicial Branch which would stop and reverse this deliberate invasion of our privacy and knowing violation of our Constitution. If Members of Congress could be impeached, on this issue the American people would easily convict those complicit in this collusion, and would throw them out of office with the contempt they have so thoroughly earned.

Both Chris Dodd's Congressional Record floor comments in December and Russ Feingold's website contain excellent summaries, arguments, and details about this issue - they have all the information Edwards would need to get up to speed on this matter.

The course our nation is on will not self-correct if left to its own devices.

------------------------
Excellent stuff!

Here, courtesy of Christy Hardin Smith, is the contact list for this issue: [hey! Where's Claire? Claire! Claire???]

Senate phone numbers are here; and Sen. Harry Reid's phone number is: (202) 224-3542. And Sen. Mitch McConnell's phone number is: (202) 224-2541 -- tell him national security and the rule of law should never be used as a political football, and that taking political marching orders from Rove is so 2002.

We should focus first on the 14 Senators who promised to help Sens. Dodd and Feingold. Here are their fax and phone numbers:

Feingold (202) 224-2725 (202) 224-5323
Dodd (202) 224-1083 (202) 224-2823
Obama (202) 228-4260 (202) 224-2854
Sanders (202) 228-0776 (202) 224-5141
Menendez (202) 228-2197 (202) 224-4744
Biden (202) 224-0139 (202) 224-5042
Brown (202) 228-6321 (202) 224-2315
Harkin (202) 224-9369 (202) 224-3254
Cardin (202) 224-1651 (202) 224-4524
Clinton (202) 228-0282 (202) 224-4451
Akaka (202) 224-2126 (202) 224-6361
Webb (202) 228-6363 (202) 224-4024
Kennedy (202) 224-2417 (202) 224-4543
Boxer (415) 956-6701 (202) 224-3553

Better Democrats, Please

Can we get some real Democrats?

Or at least some who know how this game is played?

You see, we are a nation founded on Liberty, but some among us have a pretty screwed up idea of what constitutes Liberty. Unfortunately the poltroons in need of a refresher course are our elected representation.

If they will not hold this administration accountable, they do not represent me.

If they will not make the obstructionist pricks in the GOP actually fillibuster a bill, they do not represent me.

If they think they can govern from the center, they do not represent me.

If they will not uphold the Fourth Amendment, they do not represent me.

If they will not uphold the First Amendment, they do not represent me.

If they will not restore Posse Comitatus, they do not represent me.

If they will not restore the Insurrection Acts of 1807, they do not represent me.

If they will not restore Habeas Corpus, they do not represent me.

If they will not revoke torture as official policy of this administration, they do not represent me.

If they will not vote for common-sense troop protections like the Webb Amendment, they do not represent me.

If they compromise on any part of the Constitution, they do not represent me.

If they do not stand up to the Deserter in Chief, they do not represent me.

If they do not take concrete steps to end the occupation of Iraq, they do not represent me.

If they get on board with a decades-long occupation of Iraq, they do not represent me.

If they do not represent me, I will support primary challengers.

***************

I was pissed off at the MoveOn ad, too - but not because it offended me. I was pissed off about it because I knew the frothing fuckwits would get worked up into a lather and draw fortification from it, at just a time when the public was getting there on their own.

But once it was out there, it was the job of the Democrats to defend the First Amendment, and ask pointedly "where was the criticism when Kerry was swift-boated and when Cleland was smeared?

Instead, they lined up to take turns shredding the first amendment. Here is the thing about the First Amendment - it guarantees FREE speech - it does not guarantee that speech will be tasteful, or that no ones feelings will get hurt. It just means that it is FREE.

It means that I can tell Claire McCaskill that she is a disappointment and a disgrace and I am seriously starting to resent all the time that I spent on her campaign.

Fat lot of good it did me, for the way her votes have fallen.

Every single Democrat who has fallen in line needs a primary challenger. The rot in Washington is to the core in both parties. Democrats who won't stand up now need a primary challenge. If you are a Representative who wants to abdicate your responsibility to impeach this criminal administration, you need a primary challenger. If you are a senator who can not defend the Constitution, you need a primary challenger. If you are a Democrat who does not protest the long-term occupation of Iraq, you need a primary challenger.

The answer here is not to fall into an abject funk - it is to get pissed, and stay pissed, all the way from today through the first Tuesday in November 2008.

And I just did something I have never done before. I made a donation to MoveOn. Not only that, throughout the rest of the month, I am donating half of every donation that comes in to this blog to MoveOn, just because it will agitate the fuck out of the squawking chickenhawks on the right. I want yellow feathers to fill the air. I will not be happy if less than three foam-flecked fuckwits fall over twitching, having stroked out at the audacity of us dirty fucking hippies.

In closing, I want to remind every Democratic politician that elections have consequences - and so do their votes. They need to keep in the front of their mind that a failure to act upon the consequences we hit the Republicans over the head with in 2006 will lead to more consequences. It's called a stiff primary challenger with netroots fundraising support, bitches.

(hat tip to Pale Rider for his help with this post. The closing paragraph is almost all him.)

The post where I call out Harry Reid

Just about an hour ago, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation requiring the pull-out of American forces from Iraq. Per the House legislation, the draw down would start in 120 days, to be completed by April.

Now it goes to the Senate.

Harry Reid, you feckless dolt, don’t bend over and spread ‘em when Joe “More War!!!” Lieberman threatens to filibuster.

Calling the threat to filibuster a filibuster is just procedural masturbation - and an insult to my intelligence.

Let the fucking idiot Senator from AIPAC talk for as long as he can. Bring out the roll-away beds and make the bastard stand there until his ankles swell and his lips crack and he can’t go on another second.

But don’t you dare call for a cloture vote from the get-go and then say the bill was filibustered. That is just a lie.

Democrats, listen up: you were sent back to the majority because Americans are sick to death of this idiotic, criminal, war-of-choice started by a mendacious fool and his equally-fucked-up in the head neocon chickenhawk “advisors” – none of whom have any skin in the game.

Now, do your duty and don’t take the screwing that the Pubbies have been dishing out. They are nothing more than schoolyard bullies, and we all know that bullies are every last one cowards at their very core, and they crumble when they are called out.

So call them out.

And stop calling a parliamentary jacking-off a filibuster. Some of us didn’t sleep through Civics class, and we know you are full of shit. Which puts you a hell of a lot closer to the Pubbies in the public mind than you want to be.

So man up and call ‘em out.