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Dodd's Filibuster Threat Stalls Wiretap Bill
otakuj462 sends in an important followup to this morning's story on telecom immunity legislation. "Senator Chris Dodd won a temporary victory today after his threats of a filibuster forced Democratic leadership to push back consideration of a measure that would grant immunity to telecom companies that were complicit in warrantless surveillance... [T]he threat of Dodd's filibuster... persuaded Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, to table the act until January. A compromise on the immunity will ostensibly be worked out in the interim period."
You can find Chris Dodd's voting record on this site. I live in CT, by thw way.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Don't you wish the rest of congress could grow a spine?
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
If you like Dodd's move, be sure to contact his office and express your support. Let him know he is doing the right thing.
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
They used filters and monitors and logging to spy on all traffic passing through key peering nodes on the say-so of the white house and the intelligence agencies even though such spying was illegal at the time it happened. I say we should hang AT&T, Verizon and the others out to dry for what they did. If it means they make less profit this year, tough, its their own fault for following the directions of G.W.Bush and his cronies instead of following the law (and demanding warrants for the spying)
Despite the favourable outcome in this case, isn't a filibuster a kind of Denial Of Service attack on democracy?
Blancmange
Don't look at this as a permanent victory either guys- the pressure needs to be kept up on all of the members of the Senate, especially those that may be on the fence (the other spineless democrats). Calls and emails made a difference today- Orrin Hatch was livid about "the blogs" spreading misinformation, and Reid obviously heard by the end of the day that his constituents were not happy that he was going to try and ram this bill through. When this comes back up in January, be heard. And better yet, contact your senator between now and then and let them know you won't accept retroactive immunity.
Democrats want immunity for big business. Republicans want big government.
Are the parties flip-flopping again or are they finally coming into parity with the fact that they're just one big party with two masks so the people get a sense they they're getting a change every 4 or 8 years?
The threat of a filibuster shouldn't have even been necessary if the government was really for the people by the people.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
It was quite refreshing to listen to Dodd describe in fair detail the crap that's been going on:
The installation of systems poorly suited to specific taps but ideally suited to dragnet surveillance. In major fiber exchanges that aren't where the main foreign fiber trunks or satellite dishes are (i.e. the San Fransisco case that started it). And now we learn that Qwest balked because they wanted to put a dragnet on a switch center that handled almost entirely local traffic.
Then Orrin "destroy their computers" Hatch started speaking. About how the American government didn't do {the bombings in Beruit, the Bali nightclub bombing, the bombings in Kenya, the London tube bombings, the Madrid train bombings, and (of course) 9/11}, the Turrists did. And I'm sitting here trying hard not to scream "And how would dragnet surveillance of domestic calls have stopped a single damn one of those things!?!?"
Glenn Greenwald had a good report on this today; incredibly, only 10 senators voted against this bill. Reid allowed the bill to proceed despite Dodd's hold (the only one Reid has disallowed). You'd think Reid was bought and paid for by AT&T or something.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
In the Constitution, See Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3:
Which means no retroactive anything is legal. I'm amazed that the media continues to overlook this critical bit.
On second thought, no I'm not. There can be no compromise on this. The telcos colluded with Bushco to perform illegal acts, and granting them immunity after the fact is not allowed.
Let's see...
He seems to like the Thought Crime concept. Rather than merely punishing people for bad actions, he supports the idea that we should try to guess if a criminal might hate his victim. Extra years in prison for Thought Crime makes sense to him.
He's OK with the government taking people's legally owned firearms during an emergency or major disaster. (as in Katrina... where the cops were followed by thugs preying on the now-unarmed residents) Got a disaster? Time to steal from the people!
He somehow thinks that firearm suppliers should be held liable for the actions of firearm users. If this seems sane to you, consider applying it to computers or vehicles. (on the plus side, that kind of liability would put Microsoft out of business and solve all our traffic problems)
He likes the PATRIOT act. Oh dear...
He's a CAN SPAM kind of guy.
He's OK with shovelling money to sugarcane growers.
Ron Paul also wants to pull out of the UN
While I don't favor this, you would be hard pressed to argue that the UN has had a very productive impact in most of the activities they have undertaken. And even when their stuff has worked, it has usually been with the US doing most of the legwork. The UN is mainly an organization that allows its members to say they support international partnerships, while performing relatively few useful functions of its own.
remove the constitutionally protected women's right to choose
Last time I checked a woman's right to choose was protected by a Supreme Court decision, not the Constitution. Whether or not one supports abortion is another matter, but lets be clear on that.
remove public education
Not a bad idea considering the Constitution provides no basis for the federal government to be involved in education, and our schools are failing anyway. Plus, our students did better comparatively against other nations before the US Dept of Education was instituted.
The Dodd Gambit is a success.
And as he reluctantly tabled the bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was heard muttering "Dodd Gambit" under his breath.
Ron Paul does not want to "prevent women from having an abortion" as you have said.
He wants Roe v Wade overturned so that individual states can make their own decisions.
Have you ever even read any of his papers on abortion (by the way, he was an OB/GYN for years delivering over 4000 babies)
Either you are misinformed or intellectually dishonest. In case it is the later,
See this:
http://ronpaullibrary.org/topic.php?id=21
Libertas in infinitum
For the Democrats (e.g. Dianne Feinstein who can be reached at 202-224-3841), one motive is the obvious one: telecoms contribute to campaigns.
Much more is at stake for the Republicans, since the president broke at least several federal statutes relating to wiretapping. While this is all something that "everybody knows", that has no legal significance and no one bears any meaningful responsibility to do anything about it. But if the EFF lawsuit (among others) doesn't have its legal basis legislated right out from under it, then it will be revealed in a court of law that the president committed federal crimes. The telecom immunity legislation was designed by the executive branch to extend immunity not just to telecoms who broke these laws, but to anyone in the government who asked them to do it (PDF): Obviously the EFF lawsuit presents a pickle for the Republicans if it is legally shown that Bush was complicit in lawbreaking, and they don't want the lawsuit to proceed further. But this is a problem for the Democrats too. Once it becomes legally evident that Bush broke the law, it becomes incumbent upon them to do something about it, or they are breaking the law with their inaction. Everyone knows Bush is a criminal, but nobody wants to be responsible for knowing. Politics as currently practiced is a fragile thing, home to a glassy web of unspoken agreements and hard-won compromises. A development like this would come stampeding in on all that like a bull in a china shop. This telecom immunity law will make a lot of headaches go away for a lot of people- the telecoms themselves are actually minor players here.
The committee that wrote the immunity bill had eight democrats on it, of which six voted for it: Rockefeller (WV), Feinstein (CA), Bayh (IN), Mikulski (MD), Nelson (FL), and Whitehouse (RI). Only Feingold (WI) and Wyden (OR) voted against.
In addition, Dodd's first attempt to stall the legislation failed, 76-10. Only 9 other Democrats supported him.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The idea that "inventing rights not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution" is somehow beyond the pale is directly contradicted by the plain meaning of the 9th Amendment.
The SCO lawsuit makes me wish my company were in Utah. We need a new building.