“I do think this is a total farce with regard to the immunity [for telecommunications companies]. It basically guarantees the immunity,” Feingold said. “It doesn’t simply have the impact of potentially allowing telephone companies to break the law. It may prevent us from ever getting to the core issue … which is the president ran an illegal program that could’ve been an impeachable offense.”
firedoglake:
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Telcom immunity means we will never find out what happened in the PAST. OK, that's bad. Cases that can't be used as precedent can, over a long period of time, erode the legal system as we know it. That's bad, too.
But changing the definition of who can be surveilled under a basket warrant to remove any requirement that the surveillance subject be a spy or a terrorist or any kind of bad guy--that's way beyond bad.
My personal guru for all things FISA, David Kris, has two posts up over at Balkinization. The first one has some definitions and basic premises. The second, made my blood run cold.
Here's the money quote:
It is interesting to compare the pending legislation to the TSP as it may have been implemented just prior to, and just after, the January 2007 FISA Court orders. There appear to be two main differences. First, the pending legislation applies only to targets located abroad, while the January 2007 orders may have allowed surveillance of targets in the U.S. (as long as they were making international calls). Second, more importantly, the pending legislation focuses only on the target’s location (or the government’s reasonable belief about his location) not his status or conduct as a terrorist or agent of a foreign power. In other words, there is no requirement that anyone – the FISA Court or the NSA – find probable cause that the target is a terrorist or a spy before (or after) commencing surveillance. [emphasis mine]
Read the whole article. And then call your senators.
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Recapping: every Senator that votes for this bill is wiping his or her ass with that "goddamned piece of paper" called the Constitution, specifically the Fourth Amendment.
Call Barack Obama's Senate office -- 202-224-2854 -- and tell him he needs to vote NO as well as support a filibuster.
Harry Reid has indicated he would "try" to strip retroactive immunity from the bill, but we saw how hard he tried the last time the Senate approved a bill like this. Dodd and Feingold and a few others will stand up for the rule of law but how hard a fight we can manage is to be determined.
Today is the day. Tomorrow is probably too late. Make a phone call.
