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US House Rejects Telecom Amnesty
The US House has just approved a new bill that rejects the retroactive immunity to telecommunication businesses and denies most of the new powers for the US President to spy on citizens without a warrant. "As impressive as the House vote itself was, more impressive still was the floor debate which preceded it. I can't recall ever watching a debate on the floor of either House of Congress that I found even remotely impressive -- until today. One Democrat after the next -- of all stripes -- delivered impassioned, defiant speeches in defense of the rule of law, oversight on presidential eavesdropping, and safeguards on government spying. They swatted away the GOP's fear-mongering claims with the dismissive contempt such tactics deserve, rejecting the principle that has predominated political debate in this country since 9/11: that the threat of the Terrorists means we must live under the rule of an omnipotent President and a dismantled constitutional framework."
This country is turning into Nazi Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarized_pluralism
When you don't have the push-pull tug-of-war going on, whatever side is running off keeps running faster and faster until you get USSR (Left, Socialist) or Nazi Germany (Right, Fascist). Normally everyone gets tired of pulling and meets in the middle to figure out what goes where; remove that and bye bye country, hello Iraq or Russia or Iran or North Korea or whatever else. History has shown this in every sustained single-party rule case (a single, unified party is a dictator; it's one entity with one goal and one mind); common sense and logical analysis will prove it pretty fast too.
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This is absolutely outrageous. I find it difficult to believe that such people exist as those that post in support of these cowardly, craven Democrats. The reason, as everyone who has the least clue knows, these Democrats voted against the telecom's immunity is to allow trial lawyers to sue with class action status. This will no doubt result in even larger campaign contributions to the DNC. I won't say that the telecoms are as pure as the wind driven snow, but it is obvious that they acted in good faith to aid this country in an time of crisis. Does no one remember what is was like following the 9/11 attacks? When this country is attacked again, and more Americans die, I hope that people of this mind set can sleep well, resting assured that there may many deaths, but at least the trial lawyers and the Democrats made plenty of money.
This has nothing to do with privacy, this has everything to do with the Democrats protecting their greedy lawyer constituency. The Democrats are pretty much universally against any bill that in any way limits the ability of lawyers to rape you or corporations. We can debate the merits of whether eaves dropping is a good idea or not, but Congress has passed more liberal laws in recent years allowing for broader monitoring. The telephone companies should not be able to be held liable for complying with lawful government requests. If you have a beef with whether a request is lawful or not, you need to take that up with Congress or the administration. Law enforcement can be held liable for violating civil rights beyond what congress has authorized, but it is not the telecoms job to ejudicate that. I don't want the telecoms deciding what they want to allow or not.
What should happen, is the telecoms should receive indemnity if they keep logs of all monitor requests and forward them to a congressional oversight committee for review. About half the people against this immunity thing look at it as a back door to get the telecom companies not to cooperate with the law for fear of possible prosecution. The other half simply want to protect the greedy lawyers.