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.

Okay, We're Feeling a Little Jilted

Obama is running to the center on this. There's no cover on the side of Russ Feingold and Chris Dodd--there are too many McCains, Grahams, Liebermans, McConnells and Bonds out there who will hammer him for being weak on defense:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) today announced his support for a sweeping intelligence surveillance law that has been heavily denounced by the liberal activists who have fueled the financial engines of his presidential campaign.

In his most substantive break with the Democratic Party's base since becoming the presumptive nominee, Obama declared he will support the bill when it comes to a Senate vote, likely next week, despite misgivings about legal provisions for telecommunications corporations that cooperated with the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program of suspected terrorists.

In so doing, Obama sought to walk the fine political line between GOP accusations that he is weak on foreign policy -- Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called passing the legislation a "vital national security matter" -- and alienating his base.

"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," Obama said in a statement hours after the House approved the legislation 293-129.

This marks something of a reversal of Obama's position from an earlier version of the bill, which was approved by the Senate Feb. 12, when Obama was locked in a fight for the Democratic nomination with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

Now, the reality of this is, there will be raw feelings and all that, but there will be a sense of being stabbed in the back that comes from this, too.

Does that mean you go and vote for McCain? No, because McCain couldn't tell you from one day to the next where he stands. But I guarantee you one thing--if there's a Democrat in the White House on January 21, 2009, this legislation will come up again. This is not the end of it, not by a longshot.

No Republican is ever going to sit idly by and let a Democratic President have this kind of power. We will see every possible limitation on Presidential power reintroduced into our lexicon should that happen.

Obama is betting there will be a terrorist attack on the United States, apparently, and that's sad. So what if there is? No amount of warrantless wiretapping would stop it. No amount of invading the privacy of Americans would make a difference. This legislation doesn't protect anyone--it just robs them of their privacy so that politicians can appear to be doing what amounts to busywork in the face of a crisis. We have to find a way to not lose our minds if a terrorist hits our country. We must survive it, close ranks, and do what is necessary to protect Americans any way we can, even though we know there's virtually nothing we can do to stop the next attack. We must never allow a terrorist to think they can stampede us into abandoning our principles for the false promise of a little security.

--WS

Looking Beyond the FISA Bill

You didn't really expect them to do the right thing, did you?

That's okay. I was naive once. We've all been a little naive. The issue with telecom immunity boils down to this--there was no way that the telecom companies that illegally assisted the government with an illegal warrantless wiretapping program that did nothing to protect the American people were ever going to face true legal jeopardy. There was no way they were going to pay the penalties. No way were the decision makers going to face the music. There was no chance of a perp walk similar to the one we saw yesterday with the people at Bear Stearns. There was no way their cadre of lobbyists was going to allow legislation to come out of the Congress that would eviscerate these companies and cost them billions in liabilities.

With Fred Fielding in the White House and Michael Mukasey at the Justice Department? Forget it. Only a naive, pie-in-the-sky worshipping bobble-eyed hippie would have hoped it would all turn out right. Have we been able to set aside the freakout and accept such a bummer outcome all along? Did we know it was all going to turn to shit?

We may never know the full extent of what happened--nor should we care to. Someone waved papers at someone else across a table and someone had more intestinal fortitude than someone else. Someone got beat, and beat badly. That's all there is to it.

You can go read Jessalyn Radack and you can go read Glenn Greenwald and I will tell you--everything they're saying is correct.

But there is one thing no one knows--and that is, how bad was the thing that was used to threaten the Democratic Party to roll over on this issue? How bad was the thing they were threatening to use against anyone who opposed them? Was it the fact that there are archives on every Democratic politician kept sealed away--archives of their personal conversations, archives of their monetary dealings, details of their sex lives?

Here's one thing I do know--nothing is outside the realm of possibility. Nothing is too crazy, too paranoid or too outlandish to rule out. Did someone threaten to destroy the careers of a few prominent Democrats? Did a few lobbyists band together and threaten to have someone's dog shot and killed on a suburban street? Did someone produce photos of a lawmaker pressed naked against the headboard of a cheap hotel bed?

Something had to have been done to produce this result. Something awful.

You are never going to beat these people with outrage. You are never going to beat them with righteous indignation. You are never going to beat these people by citing the US Constitution as proof they do not respect the rule of law.

Because that's a fool's paradise in America, circa 2008.

No, you're only going to beat these people by quietly and purposefully organizing strong opposition to their efforts by backing candidates for office that have a chance of defeating them in primary races or in general election races. We need better Democrats now, not necessarily more Democrats, just better ones. We need to get rid of the Steny Hoyers, Jay Rockefellers, and the concern trolls like Harold Ford Jr. and James Carville. Their time is over. Not one thin dime, to any of them. They are craven fools who have sold us out.

The only way to beat them is to assume that, for the next ten years, you're not going to win anything. Assume that it will take that long, or longer, to find grassroots candidates who believe in what is right and are willing to fight against the people who are selling us out. Assume that there's a good possibility you'll never get there. Assume you'll get half way there and your candidate will sell you out.

That's how it works in the grown up world. You take what you can get. You fight to get whatever you can. But if you toughen up and learn to expect disappointment and frustration, those times when you do win and when you do make a massive impact will be all the more fulfilling. If you're up against tight-fisted, mean and nasty people who will say or do anything to hold on to what little they have then you've got to get just as mean and just as nasty and be willing to go where they won't--like, door to door in the rain signing up voters or being the only person you know who cares.

It is time to grow up--we're not going to get what's right. We're not going to get what's fair. We're going to get a cold, hard, bitter tasting pill to swallow. The question is--do you give up? Do you fight harder? Do you take this as a legitimate grudge against the people who sold you out and use it against them when they are weak and vulnerable and damn them to hell with it? When you're both exhausted and on the ground, and when your opponent reaches out to you for mercy, do you slap their hand away and stomp them into the ground and remember back to this moment and savor the victory?

The next fight is forming. They're not sitting there feeling sorry for you. They're celebrating. They popped corks last night and drank themselves silly because they won and we lost.

Are you going to take that?

Explosive New Charges of Covering Up Eavesdropping

The other word for it is "stonewalling" and that's exactly what they're doing. They're stonewalling any attempt to investigate their lawbreaking. I will guarantee you one thing--the convenient excuse of an out-of-date E-mail system that has no audit or back-up tapes is the only think keeping these people out of a Federal prison.

The Bush administration is refusing to disclose internal e-mails, letters and notes showing contacts with major telecommunications companies over how to persuade Congress to back a controversial surveillance bill, according to recently disclosed court documents.

The existence of these documents surfaced only in recent days as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by a privacy group called the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The foundation (alerted to the issue in part by a NEWSWEEK story last fall) is seeking information about communications among administration officials, Congress and a battery of politically well-connected lawyers and lobbyists hired by such big telecom carriers as AT&T and Verizon. Court papers recently filed by government lawyers in the case confirm for the first time that since last fall unnamed representatives of the telecoms phoned and e-mailed administration officials to talk about ways to block more than 40 civil suits accusing the companies of privacy violations because of their participation in a secret post-9/11 surveillance program ordered by the White House.

At the time, the White House was proposing a surveillance bill—strongly backed by the telecoms—that included a sweeping provision that would grant them retroactive immunity from any lawsuits accusing the companies of wrongdoing related to the surveillance program.

It won't happen now. This article should be the skewer through the heart of any effort to bring telecom immunity before the Congress.

The recent responses in the Electronic Frontier Foundation lawsuit provide no new information about the administration's controversial post-9/11 electronic surveillance program itself, but they do shed some light on the degree of anxiety within the telecom industry over the litigation generated by the carriers' participation in the secret spying. One court declaration, for example, confirms the existence of notes showing that a telecom representative called an Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) lawyer last fall to talk about "various options" to block the lawsuits, including "such options as court orders and legislation." Another declaration refers to a letter and "four fax cover sheets" exchanged between the telecoms and ODNI over the surveillance matter. Yet another discloses e-mails in which lawyers for the telecoms and the Justice Department "seek or discuss recommendations on legislative strategy."

The declarations were filed in court by government lawyers only after U.S. Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco, who is overseeing the case, ordered them to fully process the Electronic Frontier Foundation's FOIA request for documents showing lobbying contacts by the telecoms. The government initially resisted even responding to the FOIA request, but White found that disclosure was in the public interest because it "may enable the public to participate meaningfully in the debate over" the pending surveillance legislation.

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has already been hemmed in on this issue:

Four former senior intelligence officials wrote a strong letter yesterday to Director of National Intelligence McConnell, calling the Administration's hard line on telecom immunity an impediment to negotiations on the pending FISA legislation.

The letter, signed by former Senior Director for Combating Terrorism at the National Security Council Rand Beers, former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council Richard A. Clarke, former Deputy National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Donald Kerrick and former assistant general counsel at the CIA Suzanne Spaulding, acknowledges that the "sunset of the Protect America Act (PAA) does not put America at greater risk."

These intelligence professionals note that "[t]elecommunications companies will continue to cooperate with lawful government requests, particularly since FISA orders legally compel cooperation with the government," and find it unclear that "the immunity debate will affect our surveillance capabilities," as McConnell had asserted. Contrary to the Bush Administration's dire claims, the letter notes that the "intelligence community currently has the tools it needs to acquire surveillance of new targets and methods of communication."

NO IMMUNITY. That should be the rallying cry of everyone who gives a shit. It cannot and should not happen, ever. These lawsuits must go forward and we must know what was done in our name to spy on Americans. The only way to go forward is to reveal what was done, come clean about it, let the trials happen, let the guilty be tried as well, and trust in the rule of law.

And, as if this needs to be said, we should never tolerate fearmongering, crying wolf, or plain basic lying designed to incite fear of terrorist attack. We need our intelligence agencies to operate as transparently as possible and without politicizing their mission:

Q: Even if it's perception, how do you deal with that? You have to do public relations, I assume.

A: Well, one of the things you do is you talk to reporters. And you give them the facts the best you can. Now part of this is a classified world. The fact we're doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die, because we do this mission unknown to the bad guys because they're using a process that we can exploit and the more we talk about it, the more they will go with an alternative means and when they go to an alternative means, remember what I said, a significant portion of what we do, this is not just threats against the United States, this is war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Q. So you're saying that the reporting and the debate in Congress means that some Americans are going to die?

A. That's what I mean. Because we have made it so public. We used to do these things very differently, but for whatever reason, you know, it's a democratic process and sunshine's a good thing. We need to have the debate. The reason that the FISA law was passed in 1978 was an arrangement was worked out between the Congress and the administration, we did not want to allow this community to conduct surveillance, electronic surveillance, of Americans for foreign intelligence unless you had a warrant, so that was required. So there was no warrant required for a foreign target in a foreign land. And so we are trying to get back to what was the intention of '78. Now because of the claim, counterclaim, mistrust, suspicion, the only way you could make any progress was to have this debate in an open way.

I think the intention of the FISA law was to keep the Executive Branch from abusing its powers, and not to give cover to the Republican Party thirty years after the fact, but I'm funny that way. I pay attention. Telling the American people that they're going to die--your Republican Party in action.

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.

Special Closed Session Tonight in the House

I have CSPAN on right now--live in the Senate, killing time on the House side:

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Democratic leaders agreed Thursday to a rare closed-door session - the first in 25 years - to debate surveillance legislation. Republicans requested privacy for what they termed "an honest debate" on the new Democratic eavesdropping bill that is opposed by the White House and most Republicans in Congress.

The closed-door debate was scheduled for late Thursday, after the House chamber could be cleared and swept by security personnel to make sure there are no listening devices.

The last private session in the House was in 1983 on U.S. support for paramilitary operations in Nicaragua. Only five closed sessions have taken place in the House since 1825.

President Bush vowed to veto the House Democrats' version of the terrorist surveillance bill, saying it would undermine the nation's security.

Bush opposes it in part because it doesn't provide full, retroactive legal protection to telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on their customers without court permission after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

About 40 lawsuits have been filed against telecommunications companies by people and organizations alleging they violated wiretapping and privacy laws. The lawsuits have been combined and are pending before a single federal judge in California.

UPDATE I - PALE RIDER

Explanations--we go to the brilliant Kagro X at DKos:

FISA fight: Leadership maneuvers you'll actually like
by Kagro X
Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 03:26:39 PM PDT
FISA fight got you down? Fed up with the Congressional Democratic leadership? Tired of watching Dems cave, and Republicans use the rules to run roughshod over them?

Perhaps you've heard about how House Republicans have used the motion to recommit to trip up various versions of the FISA bill that don't give retroactive amnesty to the telecom companies. And perhaps you're concerned that despite the much-improved FISA language coming to a vote in the House this week, it'll be undercut by another such motion.

Well, dig this:

The RESTORE Act, H.R. 3773, passed the House last year without including retroactive amnesty for the telecom companies and sent it on to the Senate.

When the Senate took up the issue, it opted not to deal with H.R. 3773, but instead passed its Rockefeller-backed FISA bill (S. 2248) that did include retroactive amnesty. And there was a tremendous uproar among immunity opponents over the procedure the Senate used, making the Bush-backed Rockefeller legislation the base bill, and the immunity-free Judiciary committee bill the substitute, creating an uphill battle for the fight against immunity. That situation created a lot of ill will toward Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Everyone remembers that.

But here's the interesting part. Rather than send S. 2248 to the House once it passed, Reid sent the bill on a little detour. With the unanimous consent of the Senate, he stripped out the language of H.R. 3773 and substituted in the language of S. 2248, vitiated the passage of S. 2248, and sent the amended H.R. 3773 back to the House.

That put the House in the position of considering the Senate amendment to H.R. 3773, as opposed to the original version of S. 2248. What difference does that make? Well, it makes no substantive difference, in that H.R. 3773 as amended now included retroactive immunity, along with all the other garbage we didn't want the Senate to pass.

But as I've stressed a number of times, control of procedure can, in the end, control the substantive outcome.

So, what's a House that's opposed to retroactive immunity to do? Amend H.R. 3773 to take it back out, of course. And that -- along with a number of other substantive improvements -- is what Chairmen Conyers and Reyes plan to do, in the form of an amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 3773.

Sounds like a joke, doesn't it? The sort of thing people say when they make fun of the legislative process: the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 3773.

Only guess what's special about offering an amendment to the amendment that isn't true of just starting over with a new House bill that doesn't have immunity in it?

You can't move to recommit an amendment to an amendment.

So the House gets to strip immunity (and the other junk) back out of H.R. 3773, and the Republicans can't just undo that work with a motion designed to peel off Blue Dogs. If the amendment to the Senate amendment passes, it pops right back out of the House and goes back to the Senate on the express bus, no stops.

And there's more. It arrives back in the Senate in privileged form, as a message from the House (the message being: we amended your crap) the consideration of which is not subject to filibuster. To be sure, the Republicans (or anyone willing to stand in their shoes) can filibuster the actual debate on the House amendment to Senate amendment, but they can't filibuster the question of whether or not to even have that debate, as they can with most other legislation.

UPDATE II - PALE RIDER - 1152PM Eastern

Senate still in session, DiFi and Boxer are speaking out against an amendment condemning Berkley, CA. Conrad cuts through the crap and calls for yeas and nays...

This is the bullshit that goes on. They are trying to get through budgetary matters in the Senate, no word from the House. I suspect Boehner is crying, though, and maybe Blunt is holding up a picture of a terrorist holding a gun to a puppy's head.

Senator Allard is trying to define a child from conception and play some sort of game with SCHIP--it's unborn child/pro life stuff and it's designed to hold up legislation. Once in a while, you see this, and it's making sausage in public, is all it is.

I'm going to bed--we'll talk in the AM.

Updates as warranted--if this post disappears, it means there's no news made tonight.

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.

FISA and the FBI

Here's a comment that I posted elsewhere--

At the breakfast yesterday, [Kenneth] Wainstein highlighted a different problem with the current FISA law than other administration officials have emphasized. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, for example, has repeatedly said FISA should be changed so no warrant is needed to tap a communication that took place entirely outside the United States but happened to pass through the United States.

But in response to a question at the meeting by David Kris, a former federal prosecutor and a FISA expert, Wainstein said FISA's current strictures did not cover strictly foreign wire and radio communications, even if acquired in the United States. The real concern, he said, is primarily e-mail, because "essentially you don't know where the recipient is going to be" and so you would not know in advance whether the communication is entirely outside the United States.

Privacy advocates have raised concerns that the Senate bill contains a provision that would allow the attorney general to erect a new barrier to future privacy cases brought under the nation's foreign intelligence surveillance law.

Contrary to current practice, the Senate bill would halt such lawsuits if the attorney general certifies that the assistance provided by the telecom carrier is lawful. The only check on that certification would be a court review as to whether the attorney general "abused" his discretion, which experts said yesterday is the lowest possible standard of judicial review.

"This provision is yet another example of the executive branch 'just trust us' mentality when it comes to intelligence matters," said Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

You know, when I see something like this reproduced and commented upon here--as if it were actually true--it makes me realize that we're fighting a losing battle with people who will say anything to stay in power.

Here's Glenn Greenwald, to smack this shit down once again:

The only reason why Congress began considering amendments to FISA in the first place was because a FISA court earlier this year ruled that a warrant was required for foreign-to-foreign calls incidentally routed through the U.S. via fiber optics. Everyone -- from Russ Feingold to the ACLU -- agreed that FISA never intended to require warrants for foreign-to-foreign calls that have nothing to do with U.S. citizens, and thus, none of the bills being considered -- including the bill passed by the House -- requires warrants for such foreign-to-foreign calls. Here is Rep. Rush Holt, a member of the House Intelligence Committee and one of the key architects of the House bill, explaining what the House bill actually does:

Ensure that the government must have an individualized, particularized court-approved warrant based on probable cause in order to read or listen to the communications of an American citizen. . . .
The RESTORE Act now makes clear that it is the courts -- and not an executive branch political appointee -- who decide whether or not the communications of an American can be seized and searched, and that such seizures and searches must be done pursuant to a court order.

Under the House bill, individualized warrants are required if the U.S. Government wants to eavesdrop on the communications of Americans. Warrants are not required -- as [Time Columnist Joe] Klein falsely claimed -- for "every foreign-terrorist target's calls."

While the government (in order to prevent abuse) must demonstrate to the FISA court that it is applying its surveillance standards faithfully, the warrant requirement is confined to the class Rep. Holt described. Klein's shrill condemnation of the House FISA bill rests on a complete falsehood (that's not surprising; the last time Klein wrote about FISA, he said that "no actual eavesdropping on conversations should be permitted without a FISA court ruling" and then proceeded to defend a FISA bill which, unbeknownst to him, allowed exactly that).

So, once again, we have to stomp our feet and patiently explain why you can't believe anything a member of the Bush Administration or the Republican Party has to say--they are lying and they know it. This is the smokescreen that they are trying to use to cover up systematic abuse.

Here is an excerpt from a filing dated MAY 17 2002
from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and it details abuse of intercept BEFORE 9/11:

In November of 2000, the Court held a special meeting to consider the troubling number of inaccurate FBI affidavits in so many FISA applications. After receiving a more detailed explanation from the Department of Justice about what went wrong, but not why, the Court decided not to accept inaccurate affidavits from FBI agents whether or not intentionally false. One FBI agent was barred from appearing before the Court as a FISA affiant. The Court decided to await the results of the investigation by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility before taking further action.

In March of 2001, the government reported similar misstatements in another series of FISA applications in which there was supposedly a "wall" between separate intelligence and criminal squads in FBI field offices to screen FISA intercepts, when in fact all of the FBI agents were on the same squad and all of the screening was done by the one supervisor overseeing both investigations.

To come to grips with this problem, in April of 2001, the FBI promulgated detailed procedures governing the submission of requests to conduct FISA surveillances and searches, and to review draft affidavits in FISA applications, to ensure their accuracy. These procedures are currently in use and require careful review of draft affidavits by the FBI agents in the field offices who are conducting the FISA case investigations, as well as the supervising agents at FBI headquarters who appear before the Court and swear to the affidavits.

In virtually every instance, the government's misstatements and omissions in FISA applications and violations of the Court's orders involved information sharing and unauthorized disseminations to criminal investigators and prosecutors. These incidents have been under investigation by the FBI's and the Justice Department's Offices of Professional Responsibility for more than one year to determine how the violations occurred in the field offices, and how the misinformation found its way into the FISA applications and remained uncorrected for more than one year despite procedures to verify the accuracy of FISA pleadings. As of this date, no report has been published, and how these misrepresentations occurred remains unexplained to the Court.

Instead of correcting the problem, which actually dated back to the Clinton Administration, the problem got worse:

At the end of 2006, the FBI's Telecommunications Intercept and Collection Technology Unit compiled an end-of-the-year report touting its accomplishments to management, a report that was recently unearthed via an open government request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Strikingly, the report said that the FBI's software for recording telephone surveillance of suspected spies and terrorists intercepted 27,728,675 sessions.

Twenty-seven million is a staggering number given that the FBI only got 2,176 FISA court orders in 2006 from a secret spy court using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

According to the math that means each court order resulted in 12,742 "sessions," all in regards to phone, not internet, surveillance.

That's a lot of terrorism. You'd think there were bombs going off on Main Street in Podunk, Idaho on a daily basis.

The only explanation is that the FBI is running wild, collection all manner of information on US persons, and handing that information over to the Bush administration. Is the FBI complicit in the wholesale spying of the Bush administration on the Democratic Party? On anyone opposed to the policies of the Bush Administration?

There aren't even 27.7 million illegal aliens in this country. How could there be 27.7 million terrorists?

If they grant immunity to the telecom companies, we will never find out why they had to listen in on 27.7 million conversations in 2006. We will never get to the bottom of this.

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.

There are some things I want to blog about before we all die at midnight

The National Lawyers Guild has rebuked Justice Antonin Scalia for remarks he made in an interview with the BBC in which he excused torture as acceptable and perhaps even Constitutional in some instances.

[Get this -the Constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment does not apply when torture is used as an interrogation technique, because that isn't technically punishment. Seriously. This is why people hate lawyers.]

They have called on him to recuse himself from any and all cases that might come before the court involving interrogation techniques and the application of torture to extract intelligence information. “The Guild is appalled that a sitting Justice of the United States Supreme Court has ventured in a public forum his belief that it is justifiable to attempt to extract information from persons in custody by the use of torture. A justice of the highest court in the land, sworn to uphold the Constitution, whose views so undermine the fundamental right of security of the person guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, is unfit to sit on that Court,” said Marjorie Cohn, President of the Guild.

[Way to go Marjorie, and the rest of the NLG! This is why most people are like me - I get really damned defensive and ready to come to blows when someone says anything negative about my lawyer, who happens to be a pillar of virtue and integrity and a veritable scion of Adams.]

Hows that Surge™ workin' out for ya? Coalition -allied civilian guards announced Saturday that they were abandoning their posts in a volatile area south of Baghdad to protest the killing of at least 12 civilians over the last month by American airstrikes. The proverbial straw that broke the camels back came Friday when three members of the Sons of Iraq were gunned down by American forces who appeared to target them. The Sons of Iraq are largely credited with the reduction in violence throughout the country, especially in area that lack adequate police forces. Members receive about ten dollars a day in compensation and are given vests to make them readily identifiable to coalition forces. A tribal leader who has worked with the American forces said that the helicopter landed, the soldiers debarked, and deliberately fired on the Iraqi guards. "When we signed the contract with the U.S. forces, it was dependent on working jointly with them," the tribal leader said. "If they want us to come back, we will, but we need to make another contract that will guarantee our rights and prevent a repeat of such mistakes." By Saturday night 2000 had stood down and abandoned their checkpoints in the area where the shootings took place.

Oopsie! The FBI is blaming an "apparent miscommunication" with an as-yet-unnamed internet service provider that, instead of delivering the emails of a single individual named in a FISA warrant; delivered all of the emails that were sent to or from a small domain name. This is akin to a resident of your apartment complex being named in a warrant and the rental office turning over the keys to all 100 units. Marcia Hofmann, an attorney for the Electronic Freedom Foundation said it raised troubling questions about what happens when technology collides with civil liberties. “How do we know what the F.B.I. does with all these documents when a problem like this comes up?” Ms. Hofmann asked.

Tonight I nod respectfully to all those who served in the Balkans, especially Kosovo. The declaration of independence and the resulting celebrations are providing a few people around me with a feeling of quiet gratification tonight. Well done, Soldiers. Well done, Airmen. You saw your mission through, you halted a genocide, and you brought your men and women home alive, each and every one. Enjoy watching the payoff on cable over the next couple of days as the Kosovar Albanians you saved from genocide revel in the independence you made possible.

Well, that's a wrap - it's midnight-thirty in DC, and I'm still alive in KC. No one in my house has spontaneously succumbed to terrorism, at least not at this point.

If my luck holds out, I'll see you in the morning. If I wander into something interesting in the meantime, I'll update. Now, consider this an open thread and a communications hub. We're all in peril, you know, so let us know you're okay in comments, lest we fear the worst...

Had Enough Fear Mongering?

We have conflicting pieces of information.

Here's Mike McConnell:

Some have claimed that expiration of the Protect America Act would not significantly affect our operations. Such claims are not supported by the facts. We are already losing capability due to the failure to address liability protection. Without the act in place, vital programs would be plunged into uncertainty and delay, and capabilities would continue to decline. Under the Protect America Act, we obtained valuable insight and understanding, leading to the disruption of planned terrorist attacks. Expiration would lead to the loss of important tools our workforce relies on to discover the locations, intentions and capabilities of terrorists and other foreign intelligence targets abroad. Some critical operations, including our ability to adjust to dynamic terrorist threats that exploit new methods of communication, which sometimes requires assistance from private parties, would probably become impossible. And the difficulties we face in obtaining this essential help from private parties would worsen significantly if the act expires or is merely extended without addressing this issue. Without long-term legislation that includes liability protection, we will be delayed in gathering -- or may simply miss -- intelligence needed to protect the nation.

Now, here's Richard Clarke:

Let me be clear: Our ability to track and monitor terrorists overseas would not cease should the Protect America Act expire. If this were true, the president would not threaten to terminate any temporary extension with his veto pen. All surveillance currently occurring would continue even after legislative provisions lapsed because authorizations issued under the act are in effect up to a full year.

Simply put, it was wrong for the president to suggest that warrants issued in compliance with FISA would suddenly evaporate with congressional inaction. Instead - even though Congress extended the Protect America Act by two weeks - he is using the existence of the sunset provision to cast his political opponents in a negative light.

For this president, fear is an easier political tactic than compromise. With FISA, he is attempting to rattle Congress into hastily expanding his own executive powers at the expense of civil liberties and constitutional protections.

Finally, here's the oft-maligned Nancy Pelosi, showing some spirit:

The President is misrepresenting the facts on our nation’s electronic surveillance capabilities. Last August, he insisted that Congress pass the Protect America Act; but this week, he refused to support an extension, which can only mean he knows our intelligence agencies will be able to do all the wiretapping they need to do to protect the nation. That surveillance can be undertaken under broad orders authorized under the PAA or under orders that can be obtained through the FISA court.

The President knows the facts; if he did not want the PAA to expire this weekend, he should have supported an extension of it, as the overwhelming majority of House Democrats did on Wednesday. Having guaranteed the lapse of the August law, the President should now work in a cooperative way with Congress to pass a strong FISA modernization bill that protects our nation’s security and the Constitution.

Now, who are you going to believe?

I told a friend last night that we now live in a banana republic, and even the bananas are indignant about having to put up with this shit.

UPDATE I -PALE RIDER

You can sense that Andy isn't ashamed to let the pee run down his leg...

FISA: High Noon at Midnight Friday [Andy McCarthy]


In today's article, I catalogue some of the problems with the Senate bill which would overhaul FISA — while explaining that the bill absolutely must be passed by the House or our foreign intelligence collection is going to collapse. It would be unconscionable for Democrats to allow that to happen while our nation confronts an enemy hell-bent on reprising 9/11 and while we have 200,000 men and women in uniform relying on the continuing flow of information from our intelligence services.

Well it looks like the unconscionable is about to occur. I am hearing from several sources that the House is planning to recess on Friday without taking up the Senate bill. That would mean the lapse of our surveillance authority at midnight.

This is a game of roulette with our national security, spearheaded by the Democratic leadership in the House, which is following the lead of the party's two presidential contenders, Sens. Obama and Clinton. Both of them voted against the emergency authorization last summer, and Obama voted against the Senate bill on Tuesday (Clinton did not bother to vote). Make no mistake. The MoveOn.org crowd is calling the shots on that side of the aisle.

President Bush has to keep pounding this, as does Sen. McCain. This is not politics, folks. For grown-ups, this is life and death.

Uh huh, uh huh. So, Ummmm....why the veto Andy? Huh? Why, if this was so goddamned important, did he veto it? Telecom immunity isn't going to mean a hell of a lot if the terrorists do their dirty work, is it?

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.

FISA Showdown Today in the Senate

Scroll Down So You Can Read About The Fundraiser (SDSYCRATF)------------

We're watching. We're hoping. We're a blogging team with one workstation down and the other swamped with other things going on. We have our ears to the ground. We're paying attention.

We read Glenn Greenwald:

FISA does not expire on Friday. Only the Protect America Act, which amended FISA by increasing the President's powers, expires.

FISA -- which was passed in 1977 and amended multiple times since, including after 9/11 -- continues in full force and effect even if the PAA expires.

So every time you see the media talking about how the Democrats want to shut down the eavesdropping we do on terrorists, quote them Glenn's brilliant little summation. Then tell whoever is spouting such nonsense to STFU.

UPDATE I - PALE RIDER

The Shame of the Show-Me State (Which one, right?) Kit Bond tries to link giving blanket amnesty for telecoms to the issue of whether those companies will help when a child is kidnapped. What a shameless, despicable liar.

Bond tries to claim that the 4th Amendment rights of Americans will be protected--yet, he fails to note that CIA Director Hayden doesn't even understand the 4th Amendment and that DNI McConnel has said that Americans shouldn't expect privacy on the Internet anymore. Hilarious.

Russ Feingold speaks--the Senate should not be having a cloture vote today. The Senate should vote to improve the bill and add amendments.

"The conduct of the minority has been very disturbing on this."

You got that right.

Feingold CALLS OUT THE VICE PRESIDENT. Yes!

UPDATE II - PALE RIDER

Cornyn is crying about "cooperation" like the sob sister that he is. This is what Texas sends to the United States Senate? Good Lord.

The Republicans can lie like no other party. They will say anything to please a few campaign contributors.

Cornyn claims everything was done "within the law."

OK, then why can't we see the documents we need to see? People with clearances are blocked from seeing them. Perhaps we could just stop the fearmongering and admit what this is really about--the Bush administration has been caught spying on their political enemies. Retroactive immunity isn't worth exposing that fact.

Does Cornyn or any other Republican want to bring up Sibel Edmonds? Didn't think so.

UPDATE III - PALE RIDER

Saxby Chambliss--my God, what a tragic waste of a human being--lists a number of things that terrorists could do. All of which are under surveillance now, as they have always been and all of which will be even if this law expires.

Fearmongering is all these crazy bastards are good for. Lying and fearmongering. He doesn't even have an understanding of the legislation. He's just reading the carefully worded misdirection his staff wrote for him twenty minutes ago.

UPDATE IV and FINAL - PALE RIDER

WOW. Looks like their feeble arguments persuaded no one. It appears to be party line. Harkin didn't vote, Nelson didn't vote, and who gives a shit about Lieberman?

YEAs ---48
Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Biden (D-DE)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lincoln (D-AR)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-NE)
Obama (D-IL)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Webb (D-VA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)

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!

Claire McCaskill and the telecoms

Dodd will lead the charge and filibuster today to stop retroactive immunity for the telecom companies that were more than happy to spy on you and me at the whim of the president.

And even my Democratic senator appears to be willing to play along.

This is just embarrassing (especially when one stops to consider that the seat held by McCaskill is the same seat once held by Harry Truman!)

It is one thing to be for sale, but to be for sale at fire-sale prices is just humiliating. When she was the Jackson County prosecutor she locked up prostitutes and their johns, and put the johns on teevee.

Now she has joined their ranks.

Back here in Missouri we have been more than a little pissed off at her since August, when she put her leisure time ahead of the Fourth Amendment. And then there was her pathetically lame response to my concerns when I contacted her office to express my outrage.

This morning I called her office to let her know what I think about telecom immunity - and the staffer I spoke with couldn't - or wouldn't - tell me how she intends to vote. But I'm pretty cynical, and I think I have a pretty good idea. After all, telecoms have a lot deeper pockets than this midtown housewife and full-time Nana.

I may not have a ton of money to throw around, but I have time to visit open secrets . org

Alcatel USA

$1,000

Level 3 Communications

$2,500

Sprint Nextel

$5,000

Verizon Wireless

$2,500

AT&T Inc

$1,000

CenturyTel Inc

$2,000

Embarq Corp

$2,000

TDS Telecommunications

$2,000

Time Warner Telecom

$1,000

I couldn't (legally) contribute several thousand dollars even if I had it to give, so I'm as pissed off about the low, low price tag as I am the selling out of the Bill of Rights.

Right now, I am counting days to 2012, when I can support a primary challenger to take away the seat she so obviously does not deserve to occupy.

UPDATE I - PALE RIDER

If you click those links, you'll see this nifty breakdown:

.

Update II - Blue Girl, via fellow WTWC blogger Gadfly:

Here’s the list of the 12 Democratic Senators who voted to kill the Senate Judiciary Committee’s FISA renewal plan without telecommunications company immunity:

Sens. Evan Bayh (D-IN), Tom Carper (D-DE), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Tim Johnson (D-SD), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), and Ken Salazar (D-CO).

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

What Do You Have To Do To Get Fired Around Here?

There are days when nothing bothers me. There are days when a few things bother me, but I calm down and deal with it, usually by losing my ever-loving mind for a few minutes.

TODAY is a day where everything bugs me.

In a world where we are told that if we don't fix things like the FISA program--a program that was never broken in the first place--we might get "hit" again by the terrorists, you see THIS story:

WASHINGTON - Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.

A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI's lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. Poor supervision of the program also allowed one agent to steal $25,000, the audit said.

In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation "was halted due to untimely payment," the audit found. FISA wiretaps are used in the government's most sensitive and secretive criminal investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies.em>

Are you pissed off yet? Because here's the kicker:

"We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence," according to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

That's right--we "so desperately need" to take away privacy rights in this country, we're willing to do whatever the government tells us. Don't worry, they say. Everything's fine. So long as you let us do whatever we want, the terrorists won't hit us. And after we've given up those rights, we're told we need to give immunity to the companies who were helping when they weren't supposed to be helping.

NOW we find out they weren't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. In fact, they were quick to pull the plug when the money wasn't paid to them in a timely fashion. And the people responsible for doing this? Incompetent.

The result? Lost evidence.

Why does FBI Director Mueller still have a job? Can someone answer a question for me--what do you have to do to get fired from your goddamned job these days?

Blogging at work is not the answer.

This round goes to Dodd!

Christopher Dodd won a significant battle today when Majority "Leader" Reid withdrew the FISA overhaul that would have given retroactive immunity to telecoms that spied on American citizens.

Dodd left the campaign trail yesterday and flew back to Washington from Iowa to personally lead the charge. Of the four Democratic Senators running for the presidency, he was the only one to do so. "I respect immensely the people who spend a lot of time on these issues. But this is a critical moment," Dodd said on the Senate floor. "This is one of these moments you need to be here for this, to engage in this debate and discussion. They don't happen everyday, but this is an important one. This goes right to the heart of who we are. This isn't about selling your soul, it's about giving it away, in my view, if you don't stand up for these rights."

While he did not technically filibuster the bill, he did debate pretty much non-stop for eight hours, and when he ceded the floor to his Democratic colleagues, he remained engaged in the debate from start to finish. "Everyone who spoke on the floor said they were grateful for Dodd taking a stand," said a staffer to the Senator who asked not to be named. "They said if it weren't for him they wouldn't be having this much-needed debate."

Congratulations, Senator. That one you won today? You won it for all of us, and I appreciate your efforts on behalf of civil liberties and the Constitution. Thank you for standing up. And I mean that from the bottom of my bleeding, liberal heart.

(Hat-tip to Huffington Post)

Russ Feingold Gets it Right

And let's just savor the words of a competent, decent Senator for a change:

Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold
In Opposition to the Flawed FISA Bill
As Prepared for Delivery

December 17, 2007

Mr. President, this grant of automatic immunity is simply unjustified. There is already an immunity provision in current law that has been there since FISA was negotiated – with the participation of the telecommunications industry – in the late 1970s. The law is clear. Companies already have immunity from civil liability when they cooperate with a government request for assistance – as long as they receive a court order, or the Attorney General certifies that a court order is not required and all statutory requirements have been met.

This is not about whether the companies had good intentions or acted in good faith. It is about whether they complied with this statutory immunity provision, which has applied to them for 30 years. If the companies followed that law, they should get immunity. If they did not follow that law, they should not get immunity. A court should make that decision, not Congress. It’s that simple.

Congress passed a law laying out when telecom companies get immunity and when they don’t for a reason. These companies have access to our most private communications, so Congress has subjected them to very precise rules about when they can provide that information to the government. If the companies did not follow the law Congress passed, they should not be granted a “get out of jail free card” after the fact.

We have heard a lot of arguments about needing the cooperation of carriers in the future. We do need that cooperation. But we also need to make sure that carriers don’t cooperate with illegitimate requests. We already have a law that tells companies when they should and when they shouldn’t cooperate, so they are not placed in the position of having to evaluate independently whether the government’s request for help is legitimate.

Instead of allowing the courts to apply that law to the facts – instead of allowing judges to decide whether the companies deserve immunity for acting appropriately -- the Intelligence Committee bill sends the message that companies need not worry about complying with questionable government requests in the future because they will be bailed out.

This is outrageous. Even more outrageous is that fact that if these lawsuits are dismissed, the courts may never rule on the NSA wiretapping program. This is an ideal outcome for an administration that believes it should be able to interpret laws alone, without worrying about how Congress wrote them or what a judge thinks. For those of us who believe in three independent and co-equal branches of government, it is a disaster.

Mr. President, for all of these reasons I oppose cloture on the motion to proceed to the Intelligence Committee bill. I fear we are about to make the same mistake that we made with the Patriot Act. We passed that law without taking the time to consider its implications, and we didn’t do enough during the reauthorization process to fix it. As a result, three federal courts have struck down provisions of the Patriot Act as unconstitutional. And that is right back where we are going to end up if we don’t do our jobs and fix the Protect America Act. I urge my colleagues to vote No on cloture.

------------------------------------

Let's remember that Senator Feingold and the equally impressive Senator Chris Dodd are working their asses off to hold on to the most basic freedoms that Americans seem to have forgotten they were entitled to. Feingold is ready to challenge the intelligence community--DNI McConnell in particular--and he should be given our support. When it comes time to find people with the courage to lead, these men should be considered at the forefront of their profession. While their colleagues stuff money in their pants and laugh at the American people, these men are doing the good work we need them to be doing. We need new leadership in the Senate, today more than ever. When Joe Lieberman can endorse John McCain and still hold his Senate seniority and his perch as Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is all based on his years serving as a Democrat, NOT an Independent, then there is no reason to keep the current Senate leadership. None.

In the age of Fear, these two men are pillars of Knowledge. You kill Fear with Knowledge, plain and simple.
------------------------------

UPDATE: Streaming C-Span at work, I note the fine speeches by Dodd and Ted Kennedy.

Senator Kit Bond, the Shame of Missouri, is up, arguing that his reason for supporting the FISA bill is because the NSA told him they were going to follow the law.

Just a question for you folks from Missouri--aren't you ashamed of this man and his lack of "Show-Me State" credibility? He's speaking about FISA like a rambling, incoherent old man who hasn't read any of the legislation. He's trying to bring the Truong case into this, and is inadvertently (or purposely?) making himself look so entirely ridiculous in public as to not be believed.

The Truong case has nothing to do with Telecom Immunity and the FISA laws. Truong was a case about a PHYSICAL search, not a warrantless wiretapping issue. Kit Bond is fighting like a madman with Senator Inhofe for the most incompetent Senator title, and seems to be winning it this afternoon.

UPDATE 2: 3:38PM Eastern

Dodd is speaking, Dodd is educating the people about the FISA laws. This is what informed comment is all about--a Senator who knows the issues, knows the law and can speak intelligently. Missouri is represented by an imbecile who will be forgotten as soon as he's hounded out of office. Dodd and Feingold are earning their stripes this week.

Dodd asks:

"Who knows what this or any future administration might cook up?"

I dunno--a phony war with no end that kills thousands of Americans, perhaps?

UPDATE 3: 3:33 PM Eastern

Go to this link to stream C-SPAN if you can:

http://www.c-span.org/watch/cs_cspan2_wm.asp?Cat=TV&Code=CS2

Dodd speaks about Thomas More being cross examined--More is asked as to whether he wouldn't cut down every law in England to get to the Devil. No, More said, because after the Devil comes after me, what law will be left to protect me?

Dodd also says: Don't tell me the legal departments of AT&T and Verizon didn't know what the law was...

The idea of walking away from Habeus Corpus and allowing torture...Dodd regrets not doing more to stop the loss of those rights. Dodd is drawing a line in the sand.

Excellent stuff, excellent stuff. Can't live blog it properly. This is history in the making, the push back we have longed for.

Why not your medical records next time? Why not your financial records next time? Why not grant immunity to companies that turn those over?

Where are the wingnuts who used to bellyache and scream about privacy rights?

UPDATE 4: Orrin Hatch 3:40 PM Eastern

Feeble, attempting to say that this is all about protecting people in the US and all over the world. Says we can't talk about what we've done to "protect" Americans. What a lot of bullshit. Surrending your rights doesn't mean you're doing anything to protect Americans.

Hatch says it's the "confused speculation" that has caused a threat to national security.

Irrational fears? Expose classified information? Hatch thinks it's about revealing classified methods and classified information. Hatch thinks it's all about conspiracy theories.

The Bush Administration has done more to reveal classified information--you know, like the identity of Valerie Plame--than any attempt at getting at what the intel agencies have been doing with unfettered access to US telecom networks.

Hatch thinks its about 9/11. Uh, then why did the Bush administration go to the well BEFORE 9/11 to start warrantless wiretapping efforts?

Shameless, shameless.

UPDATE 4: 3:50 PM Eastern

While Hatch blathers on and on, trying to become the next Republican Senator to link FISA and telecom immunity to issues that it really isn't linkable to, I found this on Digby's site, and this is Al Gore explaining why FISA matters, and why we need to get behind Dodd and Feingold:

On this particular Martin Luther King Day, it is especially important to recall that for the last several years of his life, Dr. King was illegally wiretapped-one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government during this period.

The FBI privately called King the "most dangerous and effective negro leader in the country" and vowed to "take him off his pedestal." The government even attempted to destroy his marriage and blackmail him into committing suicide.

This campaign continued until Dr. King's murder. The discovery that the FBI conducted a long-running and extensive campaign of secret electronic surveillance designed to infiltrate the inner workings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and to learn the most intimate details of Dr. King's life, helped to convince Congress to enact restrictions on wiretapping.

The result was the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA), which was enacted expressly to ensure that foreign intelligence surveillance would be presented to an impartial judge to verify that there is a sufficient cause for the surveillance. I voted for that law during my first term in Congress and for almost thirty years the system has proven a workable and valued means of according a level of protection for private citizens, while permitting foreign surveillance to continue.

Yet, just one month ago, Americans awoke to the shocking news that in spite of this long settled law, the Executive Branch has been secretly spying on large numbers of Americans for the last four years and eavesdropping on "large volumes of telephone calls, e-mail messages, and other Internet traffic inside the United States." The New York Times reported that the President decided to launch this massive eavesdropping program "without search warrants or any new laws that would permit such domestic intelligence collection."

During the period when this eavesdropping was still secret, the President went out of his way to reassure the American people on more than one occasion that, of course, judicial permission is required for any government spying on American citizens and that, of course, these constitutional safeguards were still in place.

But surprisingly, the President's soothing statements turned out to be false. Moreover, as soon as this massive domestic spying program was uncovered by the press, the President not only confirmed that the story was true, but also declared that he has no intention of bringing these wholesale invasions of privacy to an end.

At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently.

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution - our system of checks and balances - was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men."

Amen.

Hatch now tries to say that this will protect people overseas, that it will protect foreign persons.

Fucking-a, every time this comes up, I wanna blow a gasket.

NO! Foreign persons are NOT covered by FISA and foreign persons can always be targeted without a warrant.