Over the next few days the senate is once again going to try to immunize the Bush administration and its multi-billion dollar corporate allies from the acknowledged, illegal domestic spying program under the guise of national security. This issue is much broader than just the financial security of a handful of companies. It is the most important single piece of legislation that has come up in the last two years. The shameless shredding of the constitution and utter disregard for the rule of law HAS to be opposed. The government will insist you pay every one of your parking tickets and pay for your city sticker and keep in line with each and every obscure city/village ordinance no matter the circumstances. But the most powerful can do whatever the goddamn hell they want, apparently.
Verizon,
AT&T, Sprint and all the rest knew full well what they were doing was illegal. They all have compliance departments- entire sections of their in-house legal counsel- dedicated to making sure that any turnover of information is done under a legal warrant or court order and that it is limited to the exact terms of that warrant.
One telecommunications company,
Qwest, actually followed the law and refused the Bush administrations preposterous argument for handing over the private information and communications records of U.S. citizens without a warrant. Why should all the others get a free pass?
Qwest should be rewarded for doing its civic duty by not having to join their industry counterparts when they give depositions, go in front of Congress, pay fines or face lawsuits. If we simply excused the lawbreaking of the other companies, why would
Qwest or any other company not simply do the easy thing and give in next time?
Unfortunately, the supposedly liberal democratic party has not only done NOTHING to even attempt to oppose this administration, they have HELPED pass Cheney's agenda along. For the last year they've even had their vaunted majority that they begged for and got. Now they claim that's not enough support to stand up to the most unpopular president in U.S. HISTORY... no, they have to bow down to King George until we elect a Democratic president and give them 60% control of the Senate, a highly improbable number to achieve within one election. In December, we finally had a Democratic senator stand up and say enough is enough and oppose both the Republicans and the Democrats led by the cowardly and inexcusably weak
Harry Reid.
Chris Dodd showed that even one senator alone could make a difference if he has the support of the people.
Harry Reid was forced to pull back the
FISA bill that would grant retroactive immunity to the telecom industry (and why do you need immunity if you haven't broken the law?).
Harry Reid and his accomplices acknowledged that in addition to
Senator Dodd's filibuster, the thousands of phone calls and e-mails that had flooded nearly every Senator's office made it near impossible for them to get anything done. Now they've let over a month pass and waited for the midst of primary season to bring the bill back, hoping we won't care enough to do it again.
You want to do something? Call your state's senators at both their
Washington AND local offices. Let them know to support
Chris Dodd in stopping this version of the
FISA bill, tell them to pass the version WITHOUT retroactive immunity instead. Also, e-mail Edwards to bring up the issue in the Presidential debates (Hillary brought it up a couple times but just in passing and as more of a talking point against Bush) and call and e-mail Clinton & Obama (as well as our other Illinois
senator, Dick Durbin and all the others) to ACTIVELY support Dodd this time and not let this travesty through. And definitely contact
Senator Chris Dodd (and
the other senators who supported him) to let him know he still has our support. The insanely rich telecom companies don't need protection from our government... WE do! These companies broke the law and STOLE our information and gave it (actually sold it) to the government in direct violation of the
U.S. Constitution. If we let that pass unpunished what line will the credit card companies or banks or even hospitals feel free to cross in the future?
For contact info for all the senators go to
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm If you want to keep up with what is happening on this issue go to
Firedoglake.com,
emptywheel.firedoglake.com,
TheYoungTurks.com or any other progressive blog or website and it should be pretty easy to find. The pathetic, corporate controlled Democratic party sure as hell isn't going to do anything on its own. Since the Senate isn't worried about missing their Christmas vacation this time, we're gonna need even more people calling and e-mailing their senators than we did six weeks ago. Sorry for the length of this thing, it was only supposed to be a paragraph, lol.
posted by Weapon X 
