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."

Comments

Evil men doing good things

[Harmonious Botch]

This is separation of powers at work, just like the founding fathers intended. Even if they don't really believe the ideals of freedom of speech, rule of law, no unreasonable searches, etc, they are supporting them because they don't want the president to be stronger than they are.

Re:Evil men doing good things

[thanatos_x]

Not to put the founding fathers on a higher pedestal than they deserve, but you make a few illogical conclusions...

The colonies back then lacked any strong form of government. The articles of confederation were quite horrible from the perspective that none of the states wanted to help out other states; they each viewed themselves are independent entities. I'm not an expert, but i suspect the states under the articles loosely resemble the EU, which works fine - except that it was built on top strong governments that already worked. Clearly something needed to change, or the US wouldn't exist.

From this they made the constitution, and the current form of government. Perfect? Hardly. There were numerous compromises made, some of which the founding fathers hated. For example:

"In 1784 the provision banning slavery was narrowly defeated. Had one representative (John Beatty of New Jersey), sick and confined to his lodging, been present, the vote would have been different. "Thus," Jefferson later reflected, "we see the fate of millions unborn hanging on the tongue of one man, and heaven was silent in that awful moment.""

The problem was that they faced a deadline, and they knew there were differences between what they wanted and what the states would accept. They chose to abandon idealism as little as possible, but did abandon it for the sake of getting something that would work. Getting 80% of what they wanted was better than chaos and perhaps foreign rule. However the fact that the document has held up remarkably well for over 225 years is impressive. Judge them how you want, however the men did have vision. Whether they saw forward into a future where things completely unimaginable could happen, or they simply looked into human nature and governments and attempted to provide a framework to allow no man undue influence over the actions of another, I cannot fully say. They may have gotten lucky, and ourselves as well in the process.

Re:This sucks.

[Animats]

It doesn't matter if Bush vetoes it. Under current law, there is no telecom immunity. EFF vs. AT&T goes forward.

Re:OT

[jb68321]

Hm I suppose you MAY have missed the article that came out (from the Wall Street Journal no less) that talked about a huge NSA spying program, which includes -everyone- in the city of Detroit, everyone they talked to, among millions of other people whose emails, etc got flagged by some NSA program. I'd link but their site requires subscription. The NSA pulled bank, phone, credit card, etc records for millions of innocent individuals and shared them with many other government agencies.

This type of government-funded, classified-budget project, plus all the other recent revelations about warrant-less wiretapping (demanded by the Bush administration officials on account of their terrorist-finding programs) amounts to a huge case against the Bush administration itself. If the administration had not demanded the info, which is illegal itself thanks to the Constitution, the ISPs would not have had to give up info... not that they had to, and doing so was also illegal IMHO. Anyways you can't possibly say it was only the ISP's fault without acknowledging the government was giving them hell in the meantime.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_security_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org

This Might Not Survive Conference Committee

[MichaelCrawford]

This bill has only been passed by the House of Representatives. The Senate has already passed a bill that gives Bush everything he wants. What happens now is that the two bills will be "reconciled" by a conference committee, that will then yield the bill that actually gets passed - or not.

What You Need To Do Now:

If you are a US citizen, visit Congress.org and enter your zip code in the Search box to find out who your Representative and Senators are. Then write them a letter urging them to uphold the House's version of the bill in the conference committee.

Don't bother with email; if you can't write a letter, call them on the phone.

Emphasize the importance of the Constitution and the rule of law.

Urge them not to compromise, if the President does veto the final bill. It would be much better not to pass a bill at all than to allow this travesty of justice to continue.

My letter is going to point out that all the telcos knew they were breaking the law when they committed their crimes. Such criminal acts should be treated as such. IMHO, there shouldn't need to be civil lawsuits filed by those who were spied upon; all of the telco employees involved, as well as all the government officials involved, should be put in prison for a good long time.

You can't prosecute a sitting president, but what you can do is impeach him, and that's what should happen to Bush.

Re:Its about damned time...

[statemachine]

Hmm, another person who didn't read the link. Bush discarded the information given to him by the intelligence community and made up his own. Here's that link again: 935. I can't help you if you're not willing to read it.

Re:Its about damned time...

[SoupGuru]

I was under the impression that the ACLU stayed away from 2nd Amendment issues because there are many other organization that will step in should the situation arise. The NRA being one of them.

Re:Its about damned time...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

That's what it started out as. Now, it's an organization dedicated to defending those parts of the Constitution it approves of and those interpretations that match its agenda. The ACLU has made it quite plain a number of times that it will not, under any circumstances defend the Second Amendment. As long as that's its position, I, among many others, want nothing to do with it. Time for you to start supporting the ACLU then.

There is only so much money to go around and the NRA - which only cares about 2nd amendment issues - has an order of magnitude more funding than the ACLU does. Do you refuse to support the NRA because they won't take on other civil rights cases?

Re:Its about damned time...

[Original Replica]

The slur is on the R, we don't expect THEM to value freedom

Before the Neo-Cons, there was a time when the Republican party was actually conservative."Conservatism in the United States comprises a constellation of political ideologies including fiscal conservatism, free market or economic liberalism, social conservatism, libertarianism, bioconservatism and religious conservatism, as well as support for a strong military, small government, and states' rights." About the only aspects they still have from that old ideology is their love of a strong military, and religious conservatism.

Re:Its about damned time...

[bckrispi]

Sorry, but being wrong is not an impeachable offense, much less treason.

Sorry, right back at you. A President may be impeached for any "High crime or Misdemeanor". An 18th century synonym of "Misdemeanor" is "an act of incompetence". If being wrong about something winds up costing half a trillion dollars and 4000 American lives isn't incompetence, I don't know what is.

Re:Its about damned time...

[HTH NE1]

How about violation of his oath of office, to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States"? Or, as he put it, "a fucking piece of paper"?

"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face; it's just a fucking piece of paper!"
--Words of Treason from sitting U.S. President George W. Bush

Re:ACLU is biased?

[bill_mcgonigle]

I have heard arguments that feel the definition of a "militia" is not specifically spelled out in the 2nd Amendment and is open to interpretation and that therefore what the founding fathers meant when writing about a "well regulated militia" might mean something more/different than what the ACLU interprets it to mean.

Fortunately, the Constitution comes with Cliff's Notes, the Federalist Papers. Here's what Madison had to say on the issue of the Federal military usurping power from the States (to the people of New York, specifically, in Federalist #46):

Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence.

I'm not sure Madison could have been more clear on what a 'militia' meant in 1789, nor what its purpose was.

For the Supreme Court or the ACLU to ignore the relevant historical context is simply statist activism in disguise.

"Keep and bear arms"-If they did mean specifically "citizens" or "individuals" do you think the founding fathers meant ALL types of arms? It was pretty limited back then...cannons, pistols, rifles, swords, so maybe at that time they did. If they meant all types of arms then, do you think that would be appropriate now? There are quite a few people I can think of that don't really need to be carrying around grenades or rockets. :) My ex-wife is one example.

They meant the citizenry should be able to defend itself against an oppressive regime. Certainly small arms would be the most useful for this. WMD's probably not. Grenades, yeah, probably. The calculation is that it's beter for your ex-wife to have a grenade than for her to be put in a prison camp. Sorry, you may have to take one for the team. :)

If they did mean individuals and arms in general and not specifically "small arms" and non-automatic weapons, then there is a constitutional right for individuals to actually own those types of weapons and where can I get mine?

Ah, now you're beginning to see the lurch our forbearers have gotten us into!