Schumer to oppose telecom immunity

This is a big deal. This is huge. Much bigger than the opposition by Dodd and Feingold that we all knew was going to be there all along. Although more than seventeen people nationwide might have voted for Dodd if, when he was campaigning he spoke so eloquently and floridly as he did yesterday on the Senate floor.

Schumer is something of a weather vane in the senate - with his support the effort to strip telecom immunity from the FISA overhaul just might get somewhere. Here's hoping...

~~BG

Offended by the notion of telecom immunity?

If so, take Jane's advice and call your wobbly senator, right now, while there is still a chance to strip the odious telecom immunity provision from the FISA legislation.

Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold are pissed off, fired up and itching for a fight, and they need your help. If you are represented by one of the senators whose contact information is listed below the fold, get on the phone and call their office and register your opinion. As always, be polite and respectful to the staffer who answers the phone. No matter how pissed off you are at the idea of telecom immunity, the person on the other end of the line is not who you are mad at, so please, don't unload on them.

If you are represented by one of the following Senators, give them a jingle and make your voice heard:

• Bayh (202) 224-5623
• Carper (202) 224-2441
• Obama (202) 224-2854
• Inouye (202) 224-3934
• Johnson (202) 224-5842
• Landrieu (202)224-5824
• McCaskill (202) 224-6154
• Mikulski (202) 224-4654
• Nelson (FL) (202) 224-5274
• Clinton (202) 224-4451
• Nelson (NE) (202) 224-6551
• Pryor (202) 224-2353
• Salazar (202) 224-5852
• Specter (202) 224-4254
• Feinstein (202) 224-3841
• Webb (202) 224-4024
• Warner (202) 224-2023
• Snowe (202) 224-5344
• Collins (202) 224-2523
• Sununu (202) 224-2841
• Stevens (202) 224-3004
• Byrd (202) 224-3954
• Lincoln (202)224-4843
• Reid (202) 224-3542
• Coleman (202) 224-5641
• Durbin (202) 224-2152
• Smith (202) 224-
• Stabenow (202) 224-4822
• Kohl (202) 224-5653
• Leahy (202) 224-4242
• Schumer (202) 224-6542

After you call, you can leave a comment at the end of this post, and at Fire Dog Lake. Let us know what the staffer you speak with tells you.

The Spy Who Posted His Professional Resume

No, it's not Instaputz...

A retired University of Tennessee professor is accused of conspiring to provide military secrets to a Chinese graduate student.

J. Reece Roth was indicted Tuesday on 18 charges related to violating the Arms Export Control Act and trying to defraud the U.S. Air Force.

The charges involve work performed by Roth and the student on an Air Force contract to develop flight controls for weapons-deploying unmanned aircraft.

The government says Roth failed to get permission to involve a foreign national in the work, carried sensitive documents on a lecture trip to China and directed wire transmissions of restricted technical data to China.

Roth's attorney says his client has done nothing illegal and conducted himself ethically and honestly.

Being the "wily" spy that he allegedly is, Roth seems to have committed the greatest sin that a spy can commit--he put his entire professional resume online. Here is the heavily edited version, and I'm just keeping all of the open references to working with foreign entities of interest, with China and with Chinese educators:

The most recent version of the professional resume [over ten pages in length] that Roth posted online and updated on January 3, 2008

J. Reece Roth, Ph. DProfessor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering and IEEE FellowPlasma Sciences Laboratory (http://plasma.ece.utk.edu)Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The University of Tennessee
Knoxville, Tennessee
Dr. J. Reece Roth obtained an S. B. in Physics from MIT in 1959, and a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1963 with a major in Engineering Physics. He joined the NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio in 1963, where he was Principal Investigator of the Lewis Electric Field Bumpy Torus Project until 1978. He is presently Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; an Honorary Professor at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, P.R.C; and an Interim Honorary Professor of the Shenzhen Campus of Tsinghua University, China.

...is an Honorary Professor, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 1992;

...and Interim HonoraryProfessor of the Shenzhen Campus of Tsinghua University, China, 2006-2008.

Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering

Iranian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering

City of Hong Kong

Slovak Research and Development Agency

Prof. Roth published a 1985 textbook Introduction to Fusion Energy, which is now in its fifth printing, and a Chinese edition of which was published in 1993 by the Tsinghua University Press, Beijing.

Prof. Roth iscurrently writing a three-volume textbook, Industrial Plasma Engineering, the first volume of which was published by the Institute of Physics Press of Great Britain in January, 1995, and a Chinese edition of which was published in 1998 by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Press.

The second volume was published in July, 2001, and a Chinese translation is in preparation.

Since the early 1980’s, Prof. Roth has warned his students not to buy oceanfront property for their retirement because of the effects of global warming, and has devoted the first chapter of his fusion energy textbook (1985) and his industrial plasma engineering text (1995) to the issues of energy conservation and global warming.

"Mechanisms of Sterilization, Decontamination, and Surface EnergyEnhancement by Exposure to the One Atmosphere Uniform Glow Discharge Plasma (OAUGDP)",Paper No. D -1, Proceedings of the 12th Asian Conference on Electrical Discharges, November 19 -22, 2004, Shenzhen, P.R.C. (available at http://aced2004.tsinghua.edu.cn/)9.) Roth J. Reece (Invited)

I don't know about you, but anything this guy did was probably done by accident and by virtue of the fact that he was working on things well beyond a layman's understanding. I am not making the case that he is innocent. I am making the case that Professor Roth traveled the world, working on very complex subjects, and anything he may have transferred could have been done innocently and by accident. For some reason, I suspect that there has been a "misunderstanding" here.

It's just a hunch.

Don't look now, but I think maybe the Democrats won one...

Remember FISA? Remember how the sky was falling and we were all gonna die at the hands of 'terrists' and evil doers because our Democratic representatives all secretly hate America and want to negotiate the terms of our surrender to al Qaeda? That's what the more deranged wingnuts say, anyway, and if repetition equals right, then they nailed it...[/snark]

Via the prolific Steve Benen, we learn that the GOP is quietly retreating from their quest to repeal the Fourth Amendment, and hoping no one notices as they shift from fearmongering about terrorism to fearmongering about taxes.

Fine by me - the process of civil discovery is our best shot at finding out just how far these criminal bastards went. There is a prayer of that being disclosed so long as the telecoms aren't immunized.

This calls for an organized mass mooning

Skeletor is forging ahead and activating the domestic spying satellite system; civil liberties concerns be damned. Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. Chertoff dismissed Congressional concerns as "unwarranted."

DHS claims that the system will not be used to intercept communications, but nobody believes them, since lying is their default position and they have been listening in on our conversations and spying on us all along, anyway.

McCaskill lets me down yet again

Claire McCaskill just can't get it right. She continues to disappoint spectacularly. I don't think she's even trying to represent her constituents any longer. She knows we all pretty much hate her by this point, and she is pinning her hopes for a political future on Obama being elected and appointing her head of the GAO or something. But as far as I can tell, she has pretty much written off having a career in the Senate. That's what it looks like, anyway, her performance has been so lame.

I am really pissed off at her over FISA. For me, it's all about the Constitution, and I put a pretty steep premium on the Fourth Amendment. So when I get a weak-kneed, pathetic response like this, I crank up the livid a couple of notches, and go right to full-tilt, write-a-check-to-the-ACLU outraged.

Dear [Blue Girl]

Thank you for contacting me regarding efforts to revise the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, also known as FISA. I appreciate hearing from you, and I welcome the opportunity to respond.

On February 12, 2008, after months of debate, the Senate passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2007 (S.2248) by a vote of 68-29. I voted in favor of this effort to modernize the 30-year-old FISA in order to allow us to effectively monitor terrorist communications overseas.

As the FISA Amendments Act was debated on the Senate floor, I voted in favor of three amendments introduced by Senator Feingold (D-WI), all of which sought to add further safeguards against Executive Branch surveillance on innocent Americans. Unfortunately, these amendments failed to garner enough votes to pass. However, the Senate-passed FISA Amendments Act does include several measures to improve our national security without violating the constitutionally protected privacy rights and civil liberties of law-abiding Americans. For example, it would require the government to obtain a warrant whenever the target of surveillance is a U.S. citizen as well as bolster the authority of the FISA courts to oversee the eavesdropping activities of the National Security Agency.

As you may know, I joined 18 other Democrats in voting against Senator Dodd’s (D-CT) amendment to remove provisions granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies (telecoms) that cooperated with the Bush Administration’s wiretapping program. Please keep in mind that this is a limited immunity that applies solely to the telecoms, not the government. I just don’t think we should punish these companies for their good-faith reliance on government assurances that they were assisting in a legal effort to combat terrorism. If the government violated our surveillance laws by eavesdropping without the necessary warrants, then it is the Administration – not the telecoms – that needs to be held accountable. That’s why I supported Senator Specter’s (R-PA) amendment, which would have substituted the federal government in place of telecoms as the defendant in lawsuits, allowing existing legal actions to move forward in an appropriate manner. While this measure was rejected, the underlying legislation would still allow citizens to sue the government for past violations and telecoms for future violations of the new law. As your United States Senator, I remain determined to get to the bottom of any government misconduct. (emphasis added)

Currently, the Senate-passed FISA legislation needs to be reconciled with the House-passed version. I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind as Congress continues to debate this important issue.

Again, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future regarding other matters of interest or concern to you.
All best,
Senator Claire McCaskill

Claire, you ignorant slut. The telecoms have fully staffed legal departments , and I presume that all of those attorneys on staff took at least one course in Constitutional Law when they were in law school, and presumably the Fourth Amendment was addressed.

Those attorneys knew that the government was asking them to abrogate the Constitution, and gave the go-ahead anyway. Hell, they probably insisted on indemnity contracts to make the government the payer in any future awards because they knew damn good and well what they were signing off on.

And now, this crazy woman wants to immunize them, and in so doing, immunize this criminal president. That's what her "solution" amounts to - let the telecoms (who donate a significant amount of money to McCaskill) skate away with no consequence, and the American taxpayers foot the bill for damage awards, and Bush skates away scott free?

What the fuck, over?

Get this through your bleached-blond head, Claire. You have been had. Immunity isn't about protecting the telecoms. It's about protecting Bush. He would never, in a million years, fight this hard if his ass wasn't the one in jeopardy, and you ought to know it.

If you want to get to the bottom of it, you oppose immunity for these companies - who started spying on us before September 11, by the way - and you let the civil courts sort it out. The discovery process of a civil trial is the best chance we have of determining the real, bedrock truth about just how far these criminal bastards have gone.

By insisting on immunity, McCaskill is aiding and abetting the criminal Bush.

Hold her accountable for that.

Not one dime, not one moment of my time.

It is really pretty simple...

...but it clean evades the dipshit-in-chief.

If we are in such peril, and need the FISA overhall so fucking bad , like the shrieking chimp on my teevee right now is insisting, then take the telecom immunity out of the bill and it will pass overwhelmingly.

Present the telecom immunity as a separate bill and let it stand or fall on it's own merits or lack thereof.

But it isn't about protecting Americans, it is about giving the craven fascist fuckers who didn't even hesitate to spy on you and me, by listening to our calls and reading our emails, a petticoat to hide behind.

UPDATE - 10:00 a.m., by Blue Girl

It just gets better...GOP lawmakers are pissed off that the telecoms aren't showering them with donations as they fight the mean old Democrats who want to wreck their businesses over that "god damned piece of paper."

UPDATE II - PALE RIDER

Great minds! I was just bringing this over to post here:

Roll Call reports that congressional conservatives are “grumbling” and “griping” that their efforts to protect telecoms haven’t yielded more contributions from the industry:

With the House Democrats’ refusal to grant retroactive immunity to phone companies — stalling the rewrite of the warrantless wiretapping program — GOP leadership aides are grumbling that their party isn’t getting more political money from the telecommunications industry. […]

In a reflection of the sensitivity of the subject matter, and an apparent recognition that they would undermine their own messaging by appearing to be motivated by fundraising concerns, Republicans on and off Capitol Hill declined to comment on the record. […]

“There’s no question that from time to time staff, and maybe some Members, say to fellow travelers: ‘Are you giving us some air cover? Are you helping us help you?’”

COVER? That's what we're calling extortion money now? Cover??? And that's ALL this is about--ramping up the donations to support a collapsing party that is on the wrong side of the issue. They are using the fear of terrorist attack to try to ram through legislation on behalf on an industry that is EXPECTED to shell out campaign money to the Republicans--it's a shakedown and a scheme, and that's all it ever was from the start. Someone in the NRCC sat down and said, how do we get telecom companies to pay out? What do we give them? Immunity! Holy fucking shit. And it gets leaked on Roll Call??? How could anyone be so stupid as to reveal what this is actuall all about? These bastards are now caught, and expect the rats to flee from THAT sinking ship.

These shameful fucking crooks can't get out of town fast enough with that roll of bills in their pants, can they?

In case anyone hasn't figured it out, the GOP is facing a wave of retirements from the House, a corrupt fundraising apparatus that is mired in corruption, and a losing brand that is tied to a hundred years of war in Iraq, more fiscal disaster, and a nominee in John McCain who gets less and less appealing by the nanosecond.

Halle-Fucking-Lujah!

The House just told George Bush to fuck off and die, and his little dog, too.

And whadya know? A crack appeared in the Bush facade!

Here is what happened this morning...after the spineless assholes in the Senate voted to roll over for telecom immunity and campaign contributions a couple of days ago, the House decided this morning that they would just let the current bill expire, and go on and leave town for a one-week recess.

In the wake of the Senate capitulation to perfidy and fascism, the House has been squabbling about how to proceed. The Republican boot-lickers - surprise, surprise - want the House to roll over like the Senate sycophants and give the telecoms immunity for listening in on your conversations and reading your email - but there seems to be a spine or two present in the lower chamber.

Yellow feathers are filling the air, and rivers of piss are running on the Republican side of things right now. The repugnant ones are indignantly setting up quite a chickenhawk-squawk, accusing Democrats of severely hampering intelligence operations and putting the country at risk! Terrorists will kill all 300 million of us by sundown Saturday if they don't capitulate the rest of the Fourth Amendment right now! (Boehner, change your Depends and man up, you sniveling chickenshit.)

Well, the House has aWol's attention - for the first time, a crack is appearing in the facade of feclkessness.

He has delayed his trip to Africa this weekend, saying he will stay in Washington to get the bill signed. "If we have to delay, we'll delay, " he said. "The House should not leave Washington without passing the Senate bill," he whined, pleadingly adding that insistence on Constitutional principles on behalf of the Democrats would "put the American people at risk."

I disagree - I happen to think that it is an affront that anyone would even suggest that Constitutional abrogation and domestic spying should be overlooked and the companies that played ball and spied on us should receive immunity from facing the consequences of their actions. All the little idiot has to do is give up on the insistence that telecoms be excused for their illegal behavior, and he will have his bill to sign.

And by the way - the next time someone tries to peddle that tired old trope that Republicans value personal responsibility - I am going to bust up laughing, in my rudest guffaw, right in the face of whoever is so stupid.

UPDATE: Check out the comments on this post at the WaPo blog...there is zero support for the Republican fearmongering. People finally get it, and I thank a God I don't believe in, and a Constitution I do.

Time to get on the horn, Missouri!

It is time to remind our 'Democratic' Senator just who, exactly, she works for.

Telecoms may be able to contribute more than we can - but they can't vote. That is the exclusive province of us lowly rabble, the American citizenry, and with the blogosphere gaining prominence in the political arena every single day, it is a stupid politician indeed who sells out his or her constituency for thirty pieces of silver - and so far, that is precisely what Claire McCaskill has done.

She has drained my well of good will, and if she doesn't get her act together and start acting like a true-blue Democrat who deserves to occupy Harry Truman's seat - right god-damned now - she will face the wrath of angry bloggers who will have spent five years calling for her political head when she runs again, and I promise her this, I will be leading the charge. She needs to do a gut-check right now - the FISA issue and telecom immunity alone will destroy her chances for reelection - and she can take that to the bank.

Here is her contact information - ring her phones off the hook. Make her fax machines squeal non-stop and flood her inboxes. Let her know just how pissed-off you are.

Click the link below to send her an email:

http://mccaskill.senate.gov/contact.cfm

And here are her phone and fax numbers:

Washington, DC
Phone: (202) 224-6154
Fax: (202) 228-6326

Cape Girardeau
Phone 573-651-0964
Fax 573-334-4278

Columbia
Phone:573-442-7130
Fax:573-442-7140

Kansas City
Phone: 816-421-1639
Fax: 816-421-2562

Springfield
Phone: 417-868-8745
Fax: 417-831-1349

St. Louis
Phone: 314-367-1364
Fax: 314-361-8649

Now get busy, Missouri, and get her damned attention. Our Constitution is in jeopardy and our Senator is doing absolutely nothing to save it. Let her know you are watching, documenting and pissed off!

What do you give the federal agency that already has everything, including your Fourth Amendment rights?

A Billion dollar biometric database, of course!

The task is already underway. Digital images of fingerprints, palm prints, faces and physical characteristics are already being integrated into the FBI's IT system, and the database is being assembled in a secure, climate-controlled two-acre basement in Clarksburg, VA.

This month, the FBI will award a ten-year contract that will vastly expand the amount and type of biometric information the FBI receives and retains, and will be able to draw on in future law enforcement investigations. The project will give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals world wide. If the planned system, known as Next Generation Identification, is successful, it will collect a wide variety of biometric information in one place for identification and forensic purposes.

The day is nigh upon us when law enforcement authorities will be able to rely on iris patterns, scars, face shape and bone structure data, and perhaps even speech and gait patterns, to solve crimes and identify criminal and terror suspects.

In addition, the FBI will, upon request by employers, retain the fingerprints of employees who undergo criminal background checks so employers can be notified if employees have even minor brushes with the law.

Currently, a request reaches the FBI database for searches every second of every day, and about 100,000 matches are either verified or ruled out every day. More than 55 percent of these requests are for background checks of civilians who work for the federal government in sensitive positions, and jobs that involve children and elderly. At the present time, these sets of prints are destroyed or returned to the employers when the checks are completed, but that will soon change. The FBI is planning what they refer to as a "rap-back" service that would allow employers to request the records be retained; that they can be notified if their employee gets popped for an unpaid parking ticket.

As biometrics are used more and more for identification purposes, privacy advocates are asking questions about the ability of Americans to avoid unwanted scrutiny. Why bother with a national ID card when the feds have all the biometric data of your very corporeal being and can ID us all by our cheekbone structure? Some critics say that before the project proceeds, proof should be provided that the technology actually works, and can pick a criminal out of a crowd, rather than just collect a bunch of intimately personal data on Americans. "It's going to be an essential component of tracking," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's enabling the Always On Surveillance Society."

[The Washington Post article originally ran the Saturday before Christmas - the slowest news day of the entire year. I thought the issue merited actual attention, so I waited until now to address it.]

Call Senator Reid Right Now!

He is on the verge of sticking a thumb in your eye on a Friday afternoon! Flood his office with phone calls and emails! Fill his voicemail! Run his staff ragged!

He is threatening to ask for a 'motion to Proceed" on FISA - the bill that Senator Dodd placed a hold on! Reid wants to let the Telecom's off the hook for breaking the law and spying on you!

The phone number to his office is 202-224-3542.

If you can't get through to his office, acll the Capitol switchboard. That number is 202-224-3121

Here is the link to his senate email forum:

reid.senate.gov/contact/email_form.cfm


Call right now and tell him just exactly how pissed off his fecklessness makes you!

(Can you say Majority Leader Feingold?)

Remember the Constitution?

Well now. It isn't like we (meaning us dirty fucking hippie lefty bloggers) didn't tell you these bastards couldn't be trusted. We told you that if you gave them an inch they would take a mile. Sure enough, they decided to take two, since they're small.

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.

In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime.

These requests go against internal Justice Department recommendations that warrants be sought by federal prosecutors, based on probable cause. Because the orders are sealed at the request of the government, it is difficult, if not impossible to determine how often the orders are okayed or declined.

This month, a federal judge in Texas denied a request by a DEA agent for data that would identify the location of a suspected drug trafficker by the GPS chip in his cell phone. Magistrate Judge Brian L. Owsley did not just deny the request, he was scathing in his opinion, stating that the agent's affidavit failed to make the case and offer the "specifics necessary to establish probable cause, such as relevant dates, names and places."

Then the judge opted to publish his opinion and make it a part of the public record.

In his opinion, he offered the details of the case, explaining in detail the shortcomings of the agents argument, in which the agent failed to provide "sufficient specific information to support the assertion" that the phone was being used to facilitate criminal activity.

The agent offered no substantiation of the allegation, instead merely arrogantly asserting that the suspect trafficked in narcotics and used the phone to do so. Owlesly wrote in his opinion that the agent simply stated that the agency had " 'determined' or 'identified' certain matters," but "these identifications, determinations or revelations are not facts, but simply conclusions by the agency."

Federal agencies are routinely applying for orders based on an absurdly low standard, when they should be seeking warrants based on probable cause.

And we warned you.

We told you that if you gave them special powers under the guise of "tracking terrorists" that in a New York minute they would be abusing their new, extra-Constitutional powers and going after Americans with them. We told you that if they were given a taste of that sort of power they would use it instead of shoeleather to prosecute criminal cases.

But instead of heeding our warnings, we were mocked, ridiculed and asked, in all seriousness, why we hated America and wanted the terrorists to win? And anyway, what did we have to hide? Hmmm?

This sort of thing might be right up some quivering, pissing coward's alley, but not mine. I actually give a rat's ass about the Constitution and liberty and freedom. I fear my government a hell of a lot more than I fear a few foam-flecked fundamentalists and their reich-wing enablers.

Extra-Constitutional powers granted to combat terrorism were quickly abused and misused by law enforcement to make criminal cases.

Next stop? Spying on political opponents.

Who is to say that isn't already happening?

It sure would explain the cowardice and spinelessness of a whole bunch of Democrats in congress.

I don't know about you, but the very first day that Congress is back in session, I will be calling all of my elected representatives and demanding a repeal of that un-American apostasy known as the Patriot Act.

Excuse Me? No, We Do NOT Need to Do That

I'm sorry--did you say that we need to CHANGE the definition of privacy?

WASHINGTON — As Congress debates new rules for government eavesdropping, a top intelligence official says it is time that people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information.

Kerr's comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Lawmakers hastily changed the 1978 law last summer to allow the government to eavesdrop inside the United States without court permission, so long as one end of the conversation was reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S.

The original law required a court order for any surveillance conducted on U.S. soil, to protect Americans' privacy. The White House argued that the law was obstructing intelligence gathering because, as technology has changed, a growing amount of foreign communications passes through U.S.-based channels.

The most contentious issue in the new legislation is whether to shield telecommunications companies from civil lawsuits for allegedly giving the government access to people's private e-mails and phone calls without a FISA court order between 2001 and 2007.

Hell no. We're NOT going to do that.

For an official like that--and no wonder it was one of the vast number of assistants and deputies who threw this idea out there to test the reaction--to suggest that the American people have to suck it up and eat a little humility and part with their rights is ludicrous. But what do you expect these days? What do you expect when your outrage is outpaced by your inability to keep up with all the insane things we're supposed to be outraged about.

We never needed to amend FISA for the existing threats to our country. We amended FISA because the Republicans knew they were going to be caught spying on their political enemies, not terrorists. We need better Democrats to learn these issues and fight for the privacy rights of all Americans. You do not turn the eavesdropping intelligence apparatus of this country back onto its own citizens--at least, not without first getting a warrant to ensure that no one is abusing their power.

Republicans will, on January 20, 2009, at about 2PM Eastern, rediscover:

1. The Constitution
2. Privacy Rights
3. The Bill of Rights
4. Every other thing they've taken a dump on

And they will start jumping up and down and screaming about privacy as soon as a Democrat takes office. They will agitate as if the Republic itself is in danger of imminent collapse. They won't just do it for the gun nut lobby or for the paranoids and for the Black Helicopter crowd--which is about all that's left of their shrinking constituency.

No--they'll rediscover that they were supposed to be Americans during the period from January 20, 2001 to January 20, 2009. They're suddenly remember the rule of law and Habeus and the right to be free from unlawful search and seizure. They'll scream as if they've been stabbed with a million poison pens.

I say, let us have that debate now.

When I talk about better Democrats, what I mean is that I want to see Democrats step up and fight hard--don't give the telecoms immunity. They already have all the immunity they need. What we need is accountability. If they broke the law, let's sort out punishing and fining them and get BACK to the rule of law in this country.

I suspect we need to see a few hundred people marched off to jail. So be it.

It's all for our own good...really! I mean, if you can't trust your government, who CAN you trust???

You know what they say - picture, 1000 words, yadda yadda

Jay Rockefeller: Bought and Paid For

Take a good, long look folks.

This is Senator Jay Rockefeller.

This is what a craven, self-serving, for-sale politician looks like.

This is the son-of-a-bitch that sold us out on FISA and okayed immunity for the telecoms. This is a piece of human offal, deserving of every ounce of scorn and derision you can muster.

Disgusting. I can spit invective like Mark Twain, and words utterly fail me.

My buddy Cernig at the Newshoggers did the legwork to prove that he sold out the Constitution.

Not only that, the miserable fucker let it go cheap.




As Cernig so succinctly put it..."Does anything more need said?"

It was obviously the work of Emmanuel Goldstein

Yesterday on ABC’s This Week, Joe “Uncle Schmendrick” Lieberman used the flaccid attempt at terrorism in the UK to push for greater domestic surveillance in the United States. “I hope these terrorist attacks in London wake us up here in America to stop the petty partisan fighting going on about…electronic surveillance.” Holy Joe intoned. “We’re at a partisan gridlock over the question of whether the American government can listen into conversations or follow email trails of non-American citizens.”

This is a falsehood, or as we learned in kindergarten, a lie. Which makes Lieberman a LIAR. The NSA program illegally spied on American citizens, and the FBI is in hot water for abusing the National Security Letters loophole to seize information about American citizens. The “Gridlock” that Joe “Sore Loser” Lieberman bemoans is the result of a criminally corrupt White House that claims to be above the law, and refuses to explain itself.

Lieberman’s fear mongering grew tiresome some time ago. And boy do I have a bone to pick with the people of Connecticut. WTF, mates? You turned him out in the primary, then you elected the sore-loser sonofabitch as an independent? The Senator does not represent you, Connecticut. He represents AIPAC and the worst elements of Zionism. But he certainly no longer represents any American ideals.

Feh.

I turn my face away from him in disgust.

And what do you know…my tongue didn’t cleave to the roof of my mouth.

Comey: Cheney kiboshed career of Justice official who opposed domestic spying

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey’s written responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee are as dramatic and revealing as his testimony before the committee. Via his written responses, the Washington Post reports on a meeting that took place the day before at the White House:

"Mr. Comey has confirmed what we suspected for a while -- that White House hands guided Justice Department business," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). "The vice president's fingerprints are all over the effort to strong-arm Justice on the NSA program, and the obvious next question is: Exactly what role did the president play?"(emphasis added)

According to Comey, the hospital visit was preceded by a March 9, 2004, meeting at the White House on the Justice Department objections. It was attended by Cheney; Gonzales; Card; Cheney's counsel then, David S. Addington; and others, Comey said.

Comey also named eight Justice Department officials who were prepared to quit if the White House had not backed down, including FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, current U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg of Alexandria and Jack Goldsmith, who headed the Office of Legal Counsel and led an internal legal review of the surveillance program.

Comey said that the review "focused on current operations during late 2003 and early 2004, and the legal basis for the program." He declined to answer detailed questions about the program or the review, citing restrictions on classified information.

Bush confirmed the existence of the surveillance effort after news reports in December 2005, saying it was authorized after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and was vital to protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. The program has since been put under the auspices of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees clandestine eavesdropping in the United States.

What exactly were they doing? Ashcroft is no civil libertarian – so what line did they cross and how far over it did they go? I shudder to think.


[Crossposted from WTWC]

What will it take to put impeachment back on the table?

Waiting for impeachment, I feel like I'm eight years old again, schlepping across the country in the back of a station wagon en route to DisneyWorld - Are we there yet???

Just when I start to think that the lowest levels of mendacious chicanery have been plumbed, we learn of the existence of a whole new sub-basement of perfidy. Logic dictates that we have to be nearing the gates of hell.

Is the realization dawning on you yet that your entire fucking country has been hijacked? The ideals that have allowed us to get away with projecting an aura of American Exceptionalism around the globe for the past half-century have been subverted, and the civil liberties that formed the justification for the original perception of exceptionalism were stripped away. The liberties that were not stripped away, were ignored, scoffed at and scorned by the authoritarian elites, whose offenses against liberty and the Constitution know no bounds.

Under the Bush maladministration, the American Way was taken out in the woods, and two were put behind the ear.

I am having a hard time getting my head around the idea that some of these Stalinist tactics actually came to be employed in my country. Mr. Yoo betrayed America when he conceived of the specious NSA domestic spying program.

…Mr. Bush backed down in the face of the threat of mass resignations, Mr. Ashcroft's included, and he apparently agreed to whatever more limited program the department was willing to approve. In the interim, however, the president authorized the program the Justice lawyers had refused to certify as legally permissible, and it continued for a few weeks more, according to former deputy attorney general James B. Comey's careful testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Under the Constitution, the president has the final authority in the executive branch to say what the law is. But as a matter of presidential practice, this is breathtaking.

These are important topics for public discussion, and if anyone doubts that they can safely be discussed in public, they need look no further than Mr. Comey's testimony. Instead of doing so, Mr. Bush wants to short-circuit that discussion by invoking the continuing danger of al-Qaeda.

"And so we will put in place programs to protect the American people that honor the civil liberties of our people, and programs that we constantly brief to Congress," Mr. Bush assured the country yesterday, as he brushed off requests for a more detailed account. But this is exactly the point of contention. The administration, it appears from Mr. Comey's testimony, was willing to go forward, against legal advice, with a program that the Justice Department had concluded did not "honor the civil liberties of our people." Nor is it clear that Congress was adequately informed. The president would like to make this unpleasant controversy disappear behind the national security curtain. That cannot be allowed to happen.

Yes, even the normally staid Washington Post has had enough – I may get pissy with the Post sometimes, but that’s because I grew up with it and have Katherine Graham standards for the nation’s local paper, and I simply expect journalistic integrity from them. (I am of the age that my worldview was cast by Walter Cronkite and the Washington Post.) My long-standing fondness for the paper feels justified when they get it right, like when they followed the money and brought down a corrupt president, and Katherine Graham was willing to go to jail for contempt to protect the journalistic integrity of her paper. Like they currently exhibit by employing Dana Priest. Like they just exhibited today by denouncing the subversion of the Constitution and the Rule of Law.

We stand at the precipice people. If you are willing to sacrifice your freedom for a false illusion of safety in an inherently unsafe world, then Ben Franklin was right – you deserve neither safety nor security.

You feel free to capitulate to tyranny and surrender America without a fight.

You may be happy to be relieved of your liberties and responsibilities, but I will never surrender to fear, and you certainly do not speak for me.

I, for one, will never accept tyranny, I will never accept these assaults on my liberty. We knew how to deal with tyrants who abused our civil liberties back in 1776. If our government refuses to honor the will of the people and be set right, will we prove ourselves worthy descendants?

[Cross-posted from the blog you should be reading, Watching Those We Chose]

No way in hell...

Buried on page A14 of today’s Washington Post is a story worthy of outrage and page-one coverage…and this buried nugget wasn’t even penned by Walter Pincus.

The Bush administration is urging Congress to pass a law that would halt dozens of lawsuits charging phone companies with invading ordinary citizens' privacy through a post-Sept. 11 warrantless surveillance program.

The measure is part of a legislative package drafted by the Justice Department to relax provisions in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that restrict the administration's ability to intercept electronic communications in the United States. If passed, the proposed changes would forestall efforts to compel disclosure of the program's details through Congress or the court system.

The proposal states that "no action shall lie . . . in any court, and no penalty . . . shall be imposed . . . against any person" for giving the government information, including customer records, in connection with alleged intelligence activity the attorney general certifies "is, was, would be or would have been" intended to protect the United States from terrorist attack. The measure, which has not yet been filed, is contained in a proposed amendment to the fiscal 2008 intelligence authorization bill.

The immunity measure has stoked controversy following public uproar over news reports of warrantless access to both telephone conversations and records as part of the administration's post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism policies. It is part of a larger debate about the proper balance between guarding national security and civil liberties and the extent to which private companies have acted as an arm of the federal government. In March, the Justice Department inspector general found that the FBI had secret contracts with three telephone companies to obtain Americans' phone records, claiming "exigent circumstances," when, in many instances, none existed.

This would have the effect of letting the telecom companies off the liability hook for facilitating the government’s domestic spying program and violating your civil liberties and mine.

The ACLU and other rights advocacy groups oppose the measure, while the government asserts that the only reason we have not been blow to bits and de-headed by terrorists is due to the patriots at AT&T who gave them access to our phone records.

Government lawyers crafted the immunity bill using terms deliberately vague in referring to activity that "would be or would have been" aimed at protecting the country from attack to avoid indicating whether a company cooperated.

But civil libertarians charged that blanket immunity would amount to a legislative pardon to telecommunications companies and others that have aided the government's warrantless surveillance, without explaining the pardon's basis.

"To let them off the hook now sets a dangerous precedent by encouraging them to continue to engage in illegal collaborations with the government in the future," said Kevin Bankston, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which last year filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T, charging that the company allowed the government to unlawfully monitor U.S. residents.

The measure would gut Congress's efforts to conduct inquiries into the administration's surveillance program because a subpoenaed company or government official could invoke immunity, said Tim Sparapani, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has sued the government to force a halt to its wiretapping program.

The government asserts that the blanket immunity is necessary to protect sensitive national security information. "If companies are alleged to have cooperated with the government to protect our nation against another attack, they should not be held liable for any assistance they are alleged to have provided," Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said.

The immunity would be limited to assistance from Sept. 11, 2001, to the date the measure becomes law.

Yeah…this bunch has been so trustworthy and honest, a veritable Upright Citizens Brigade, that we should just go ahead and trust them on this…NOT!

Personally, I agree with Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon…"If somebody intentionally breaks the law . . . that's not something you should just ignore." Yet that is exactly what this legislation would do.

Contact your elected representatives today and tell them to give this legislation the appropriate reception when it comes up: Roaring fucking laughter.