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US Senate Votes Immunity For Telecoms
Ktistec Machine writes to let us know that the telecom companies are one step closer to getting off the hook for their illegal collusion with the US government. Today the US Senate passed, by a filibuster-proof majority of 67 to 31, a revised FISA bill that grants retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies that helped the government illegally tap American network traffic. If passed by both houses and signed by the President, this would effectively put an end to the many lawsuits against these companies (about 40 have been filed). The House version of the bill does not presently contain an immunity provision. President Bush has said he will veto any such bill that reaches his desk without the grant of immunity. We've discussed the progress of the immunity provision repeatedly.
In case you're curious of how the respective candidates for president voted on the amendment to block retroactive immunity:
McCain: No
Obama: Yes
Clinton: Did not vote
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/110/senate/2/votes/15/
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00015
Worth noting: Barack Obama voted against telco immunity. Hillary Clinton couldn't be bothered to show up.
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Is this it
To strike it, Obama voted for it, Clinton did not vote, McCain against it.
She didn't. Couldn't be bothered apparently. Interestingly enough both McCain and Obama found the time to vote. Here's the vote itself if you are wondering how your Senators voted on it.
At least my other Senator (Schemer) had the balls to vote against it. For all the good it did.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
She decided not to jeopardize her campaign and just didn't vote at all. Obama voted against immunity. Most "blue dog" democrats voted for immunity.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/110/senate/2/votes/15/
As linked in another post. Obama voted to strike the immunity clause from the bill.
NO Republicans voted against. Lindsey Graham, one of my state's (SC) senators, was the only Republican not to vote at all. I'm hoping that this was because he was against it but couldn't go against the party so much as to vote against it, but we'll see.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Once again, another /. mistake:
Senators voted 67 to 31 to shelve the amendment offered by Sens. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). They did not vote for the bill yet (that's to come soon though).
Not quite. If a law is rule unconstitutional, it is null and void. In the eyes of our Constitution, the law never existed to begin with.
What's next? Retro-actively making something illegal and then putting you in jail for it?
Again, the Constitution expressely forbids this.. for now.
More and more I think I may vote for Ron Paul, even if he's inconsistent.
"No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."
It doesn't get much clearer than that!
(For those of you who do not know legalese, "ex post facto" means "retroactive".
No, retroactive prosecution is specifically prohibited in the Constitution. Retroactive immunity, however, is not.
Amendment IV of our Constitution: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. I would make a joke here about not welcoming our corpo-government overlords, but I wish I could find more of a sense of humor about this type of thing. The founders of our country knew this was going to happen, and worked extremely hard to avoid it, and the citizens of our country are sleep-walking right into it.
Here's Senator Dodd's thoughts about telecom immunity
Obama voted to block the immunity, yet you seem to be implying otherwise...
Denny
Erecting the wall of separation between church and state is absolutely essential in a free society. - Thomas Jefferson
It's not over yet. It goes back to the House and into conferencing. The House is adamantly against telecom immunity; last week, the House leadership sent a letter to the Senate condemning it. I believe there's a strong chance that telecom immunity won't be able to make it out of the House, but it might be a good thing to call your Representatives (and Senators, since they're on the conferencing committee too.)
I think you mistyped that. In your link, a "yea" is a vote to strike the provisions granting immunity.
But there isn't a restrictions against reducing or eliminating liability for criminal activity after the fact. For instance, if a criminal defendant was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death, and the Congress subsequently outlaws capital punishment, the death sentence is reduced in accordance with the new law. If they change their mind and reinstate the death penalty, the hypothetical criminal defendant is not eligible for an increase in his sentence. In particular, it is well established that Congress can pass laws in gray areas to clearly specify that something isn't criminal, even after convictions based on the old law, or to eliminate even very broad classes of liability after the commission of the offending action.
In this case, there is a claim of criminal activity that the Justice Department refuses to prosecute because it does not believe it was illegal. The plaintiffs have chosen to pursue civil cases on a theory of civil liability for those actions, based on Federal law. Congress may choose clarify (or eliminate, depending on your point of view) the law to state that the given behavior was not a crime. In this case, it clearly does not run afoul of Congressional power to do so. If that happens, there is no longer even a colorable argument that the plaintiffs have been been harmed, so the cases will be dismissed.
At this point, the Senate has kicked the bill back to the House. The House will need to vote on this version, or a new version, to kick back to the Senate. If the House passes, without change, the version the Senate passed (not likely), then it goes to GWB for signature/veto/pocket veto.
More likely is the House makes a few changes and kicks the bill back to the Senate.
In short, there is no final bill until the House & Senate compromise and each pass an identical bill; it's likely that neither of the current versions will be the final bill, since each house refused to pass the others' version.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Once again, Clinton chose not to vote on this amendment. That does not mean that she was not present. She was able to vote on the immediately preceeding amendments. She backed out of this one because she lacks integrity and backbone.
Source: http://holdfastblog.com/2008/02/12/fisa-vote-tallies-part-ii/
"Voting with the Republicans were the following eighteen Democrats (again, rough count):
Bayh, Inouye, Johnson, Landrieu, McCaskill, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Stabenow, Feinstein, Kohl, Pryor, Rockefeller, Salazar, Carper, Mikulski, Conrad, Webb, and Lincoln. Joe Lieberman also voted against stripping retroactive immunity.
Not present and voting was Senator Hillary Clinton, the only presidential candidate serving in the Senate to miss the vote."
There you have it, Republicans in lockstep, and those Democrats mentioned are traitors. Including Sen. Clinton, in her silence, she consented. The roll call for Sen. Dodd's attempts to strip the immunity provision out read much the same. I would like to believe that all those listed have no political future (and this of course includes "all Senate Republicans who weren't mentioned by name"). Sadly, I'm probably wrong on that.
The House of Reps passed their version of this bill without amnesty. When the two bills go into "conference", wherein the two chambers negotiate how to change their versions to come up with the single version that will be voted on in each chamber, the House can insist on no amnesty. Which, since amnesty did not pass in the Senate by an overwhelming (just a large) majority, the House might succeed in getting.
So sign the petition to pressure the House to stand up for keeping amnesty out of the final bill. It's the last chance you have to keep some privacy rights when on the phone (hi, Dick!).
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make install -not war
Just an FYI, the common advice for getting a Congress member to pay any modicum of attention to criticism is to send it via some tangible form: physical mail or fax transmission. Emails and online petitions and so forth appear to be generally ignored or held in much lighter regard. You can get the appropriate contact information for your senators via looking them up here: http://senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm (the equivalent for the House would be https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml). As for voting histories, those are likely available with more digging on either senate.gov or house.gov. I think this is the relevant roll-call record for this issue: http://senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00019
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Numbers.
Check.
Please.
Thanks.
There are 51 Democrats in the Senate. 17 voted against this amendment (meaning they voted for telecom immunity).
90% of what now didn't vote for what?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
Politics are complicated, as are sound bites.
Obama abstained from the final vote instead of voting against the overall bill. And given the margin, calling out Clinton seems pointless (since positions are usually known ahead of time).
The Democrats have a bare majority in the Senate which passed the bill *with* immunity. Many Democratic Senators offered amendments to strip immunity or add oversight, but they were all voted down.
The Democrats have a bigger majority in the House which already passed the bill *without* immunity.
Here's a link to the recent senate voting records including the FISA bill. Go there regularly, monitor your senator. It's WAY more important then anything else on this site. http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/legislative/a_three_sections_with_teasers/votes.htm
I cannot disagree with this strongly enough, especially the idea that governments are somehow harmless today. The right to life is one of the most fundamental. If I do not have the ability to defend my life, I have no other rights. The police rarely get to the scene of violence in time to prevent anything. Also, many people still live outside of cities where guns are as much tools as weapons (e.g. protecting my sheep from coy dogs).Lastly, I think the UK has amply demonstrated that taking away guns cannot be done successfully enough to change the equation. In urban areas where they have had success seizing weapons, thugs *rent* weapons out for crimes, plus the fact that knife and other kinds of muggings, convenience store robberies have gone up because they know people are defenseless. Police often refuse to go after the criminals because no one was hurt, so violent crimes take priority (apparently some corners/stores are robbed pretty much on a regular schedule). Yes, their gun crime went down some, but it simply displaced a lot of the crime, and it did not go down enough that I would be comfortable giving up my right to defend myself when I know (and have experienced) that the police will not and physically can not defend me. An attorney locally in a city council meeting was reduced to throwing chairs at a shooter to try to defend himself after the attacker killed two police officers guarding the room *and took their guns* for use against the room's occupants. One of the council members actually had a carry permit but did not have his weapon with him. Bad mistake: carrying the thing for a hundred years without needing it is better than needing it once and not having it.
Google is playing by China's rules by adhering to their laws (even if it isn't necessarily moral). The Telecoms colluded with government officials to break the law (which wasn't necessarily immoral). The difference here is that what Google is doing in China is legal (since China has made the law such that it can be) and what the Telecoms did was illegal.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
The House has already indicated that it wants amnesty rejected, by passing their version of the bill without it, even as amnesty faced very vocal (though ultimately failed) opposition in the Senate. And John Conyers (D-MI), Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to head White House lawyer Fred Fielding insisting that there's no basis for amnesty. The House Intelligence Committee also rejected amnesty in approving the House bill. The Senate counterpart to Conyers' committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee, was the one that produced a Senate bill rejecting amnesty (that failed to pass the Senate); the Senate committee chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) denounced amnesty as his bill was defeated, in solidarity with the House provisions. House Speaker Pelosi helped rescue the House bill from an October attempt by Republicans to stop it. So I think the House version of this "RESTORE Act" is a serious attempt by the House (its Republican minority notwithstanding) to stop amnesty.
But you're right not to have "faith" in politicians. Faith is a way of knowing something that can't be proven, and no one can know what these liars will do until after the check has cleared. But hope is different. It's a way of wanting something that hasn't been proven, fuel for doing something to get it. Which is why signing the petition to pressure the House to stand by its partial progress against amnesty is worth doing. Because giving up hope means being defeated, and that's how you help the forces against you win. Signing the petition is another small but useful blow against them.
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make install -not war