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Dodd, Feingold To Try and Filibuster Immunity Bill
shma writes "This morning the senate has a scheduled cloture vote to cut off debate on the FISA bill which grants retroactive immunity to telecoms who engaged in warrantless wiretapping. Senators Russ Feingold and Christopher Dodd have pledged to try and filibuster the bill, but require the vote of 40 senators to keep the filibuster alive. The article states that a similar 'threatened filibuster failed in February, when the Senate passed a measure that granted amnesty and largely legalized the President's secret warrantless wiretapping programs.' Should they lose the cloture vote, the bill is all but assured of passing. A proposed amendment stripping the immunity provision from the bill is also expected to fail."
I simply don't understand why the Bush Administration doesn't want to use retroactive warrants. Spy on whoever you want just make sure you submit the warrants to the FISA courts later.
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
Once again, you'll have to choose for the candidate that goes backward the slowest...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Call and remind your representative that he or she has an oath of office and a public image to sustain, and voting for this bill cannot possibly be a supportive action for either.
Seriously, if this thing passes and becomes law, it should be the job of every /.er to write to their local newspaper and lambaste their representative for voting in support of a bill which violates every citizen's constitutional rights, and aids, abets, and forgives those who broke the law in ante facto.
Conversely, if a /.er's rep votes against it, that /.er should write in support of their representative's action.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
As this bill was brought forth by the Democrats and expected to pass by a Democrat controlled majority why isn't this marked with a "Democrat" tag?
Yeah, must be that evil, lame duck Bush Administration using his monarchy powers to get this through with the Republican Sith... ]sic[
Both parties are in favor of increasing government control. On one side, you have a party that's voting to increase power because it's what they want to do, regardless of what their constituents have to say. On the other, you have a party that secretly wants to increase power, but has more vocal constituents. So instead of just voting to increase power, they vote to increase power and say things like "it's an election year" and "we can't afford to appear soft on ."
There's *always* an election coming up. If you don't vote for people with a backbone when the chips are down, and keep accepting the excuses, nothing will ever change.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
People laugh at Jesse Ventura when he goes on Larry King and condemns both parties for exactly this kind of bill. But that's one ex-pro-wrestler who has Washington pegged PERFECTLY.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it. That's the line of crap they give us proles & the Telcos have squadrons of attack lawyers who should have knew better, if in fact they were consulted at all. Qwest had enough sense to say no, the rest of them can die in a fucking fire.
There is a war going on for your mind.
* Global Poverty Act (S.2433)
* Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act (S. 230)
* Lugar-Obama Nonproliferation Legislation
There's three, related to three very different topics, and all were an improvement in my opinion.
As for McCain-Feingold... he violates the spirit of it every time he catches a ride in his multi-millionaire wife's company plane. With respect to McCain-Lieberman, he both spoke against it to the press as the vote came up a few weeks ago, and then didn't bother to show up and vote one way or the other on the bill itself. Unlike Obama and Clinton, he wasn't in a contested race for POTUS nomination at the time.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
You head on down to the Capitol building. I'll meet you there.
They were asked to help their country and got some bad legal advice.
The companies knew they were breaking the law. They have the best FISA lawyers in the world on retainer but decided to break the law anyway.
But it really isn't about the corporations or the outcome of law suits. By granting them immunity the illegal Bush programs will never make it to court and thus the public will never know exactly what went on or how extensive the spying is. Do you seriously believe the Bush administration is obeying any laws at all in an area they can keep in the dark just by mumbling "National Security"?
I met Dodd once. He was trying to sneak a relative into an event where I was interpreting for foreign dignitaries. The woman working security told him his guest did not have the proper credentials to enter the VIP area. His response was quick:
"But I'm SENATOR Dodds."
She wasn't impressed:
"Yes, I know that. And HE doesn't have the proper credentials."
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Come on, do you really think there's a non-trivial number of people willing to take up arms against the government at this stage? Hell, most of the most strident 2nd amendment boosters are the ones that are most vocally defending these types of bills and defending the President's right to take away our civil liberties in the name of "security".
Saying we have the right to overthrow the government by force is nice and all, but if you think it's actually going to happen any time soon, no matter how many freedoms are taken away, you're delusional. The only way to overthrow governments these days is via military coup, and the military doesn't seem in any hurry to get into politics in this country, and I doubt we'd be in any better shape if they did.
House Democrats who flipped their votes to support retroactive immunity for telecom companies in last weeks FISA bill took thousands of dollars more from phone companies than Democrats who consistently voted against legislation with an immunity provision, according to an analysis by MAPLight.org. CBS News.
Why am I not surprised?
His British what?
I am not a crackpot.
Most Democrats did vote against the bill, 128-105, with only one Republican voting against and ten not voting. It's fair to point out that nearly half the Democrats in Congress, including many of their leaders, are also involved in this attempt to subvert the rule of law and the Bill of Rights, but to try and pretend that the Republicans aren't the greater offenders here is just wrong.
Attention moderators: if reading facts that contradict your opinion makes you want to flame someone, that doesn't mean he's writing flamebait, it just means you should be less flammable.
You simply gather together a bunch of morally bankrupt lobbyists and get major corporation to fund them and provide them with sufficient capital to funnel that cash to a bunch of criminal politicians. Also you arrange for a proportion of those bribes to go to, well, somewhat less than Christian leaders of the various Christian right organisations, to ensure a whole lot of blind, listen to the words but ignore the actions, voters , do the right 'er' wrong thing.
To push it all along you get the government department that is meant to ensure that mass media organisations do not become monopolistic, do not become a one eyed voice for the majority shareholders ands sociopath corporate executives, to do the exact opposite a work towards turning mass media into a propaganda network for endless war and corporate fascism.
Now it also helps if you get the telecoms to start monitoring everyone who disagrees or might even consider disagreeing as well as every opposition politician and their supporters, to keep one step ahead of them and to ensure you can enact measures to isolate them.
There you go, everything you need to over throw a government and blow me down but, you don't have to look to far to see the evidence of it. Now I can think of one reason why the immunity bill might make it through. It really all boils down to how much dirt the telecoms were able to dig up on the various political leaders and how much of this dirt would appear as evidence if those telecoms were prosecuted. Take a very careful look at the ones voting for immunity, they are likely not voting for the telecoms immunity from prosecution, so much as they are, voting for their own immunity from prosecution, really nasty stuff.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen