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Telecom Amnesty Foes On the Move
ya really notes a blog posting up at Wired reporting that foes of the Telecom Amnesty Bill have mounted a campaign on Barack Obama's own website. Though the group was created only days ago, on June 25, it has grown to be the fifth largest among 7,000 such groups, just short of Women for Obama. Although it is widely known that Obama changed his stance from opposing telecom immunity to supporting it, many have not given up hope of getting him to switch once again. Meanwhile, left-leaning bloggers and libertarian activists have joined forces to raise $325,000 in the fight against the legislation. "Their Blue America PAC is already targeting House Democrats who voted for the bill, including placing a full-page ad in the Washington Post [an image appears in the Wired story] slamming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who claimed credit for creating the so-called compromise bill. The coalition plans to follow-up with a Ron Paul-style money bomb, which will be used to target key Senators..."
This is what happens when someone promises intangible things and bases their entire campaign upon promising 'change' and 'hope,' two things which mean whatever you want, and mean different things to different people.
Too bad he couldn't actually give real promises and expectations other than 'hope' this and 'change' that.
Bloody sheep. You all deserve the hell you're creating for us.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
A saner course of action would be to vote for a small party, or express your disgust by not voting at all. Don't be part of the problem by keeping the duofascists in power.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Although it is widely known that Obama changed his stance from opposing telecom immunity to supporting it, many have not given up hope of getting him to switch once again.
Now don't get me wrong, he has taken a weak position and plans to vote for the (bad) bill even if they aren't able to have the provision removed
Before he had said he was absolutely against retroactive telecom immunity. Now he says he will vote for the bill even if it has the immunity in it. It is that simple. He flip-flopped and is exactly what the summary says. Did I miss something?
To put it in a historical analogy (which is bound to be a huge success), you're planning to defeat the evil Cubans by supporting the Soviet Union? Do you honestly think the republicans are the democrats' biggest enemy? They are the closest allies! The two major parties are closer to each other than to any other entity. As I said, don't be part of the problem.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Or, unlike you, he's actually seen security briefings detaling the threats we face. Let's not boil this down to "those who agree with you" and "stupid people".
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Fuck forgiveness.
I'm a lot more inclined to put some heads on some pikes as a warning to future generations. That'll work much better than "passing a law" as to "make it illegal in the future"... guess what, it's illegal NOW. Why do you think they're asking for immunity?
The whole problem is that the current administration has run rough-shot over the laws by violating them and then thumbing their noses at us and show us how little teeth the current batch of laws has over them. And your solution is to pass a law? Screw that. I'm all in favor of taking a tier 1 telcom company and burning it to the ground so maybe next time they'll actually protect the citizens rights instead of kowtowing to a schmuck president. After that, THEN pass a law and poeple will actually take notice.
They had a duty to us, the citizens, and they screwed us. Fuck 'em. And unfortunately, they're just a poor substitute for the REAL criminals.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
People who say Obama is pro-warrantless-wiretapping don't know WTF they're talking about; he's supporting a bill which will make it illegal in the future, but the only way to get that bill passed for the future..
It is illegal now. Why not leave it that way?
Are you so naive to think that electoral calculations did not play a part in Obama's stance?
Exactly right. AT&T deserves to be shutdown completely and made an example of. You know, kinda how this whole site cries for the same thing to happen to Microsoft BECAUSE THEY PUT A BROWSER IN THEIR OS. The vagaries of scale on this site are just unbelievable sometimes. "Bundle a browser...lock 'em up and throw away the key! Illegally wiretap American citizens? Eh, they learned their lesson, then won't do it again..."
What's most sickening is how so many people are SCREAMING to have this bill blocked, yet the politicians are actively voting against the wishes of their constituency. They're not even pretending to care anymore.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
Is the goal to express disgust? Or to make someone lose? Those aren't the goals. The goal is to give the power to those who would use it properly, to select a prsident, and to decide which parties have enough support to be given the recognition and funding to participate in the debate.
Any party that gets 5% of the vote gets federal funding and is likely to be in the debates. Since 50% of the people don't vote at all, that's a lot of potential for the green or libertarian parties to get noticed. Heck, if those 50% just voted completely randomly, it would be a landslide change in politics.
the only way to get that bill passed for the future (with a President who's sworn to veto anything w/o the provision and a Republican party with enough votes to prevent that veto from being overridden) is to forgive what happened in the past.
Frankly, with all the rancor on both sides, this country needs a little forgiveness
So the message is: Your masters can get away with anything.
No wonder Cheney can hunt the most dangerous game with impunity, he knows damn well that even if he shoots people in the face, there's nothing the People will do about it. That would mean the "left" would "won"! Can't have that!
Slaves to their "sides", sheeps, argh!
You can't take the sky from me...
The immunity offered by this bill is retroactive only; it does not extend into the future. People who say Obama is pro-warrantless-wiretapping don't know WTF they're talking about; he's supporting a bill which will make it illegal in the future, but the only way to get that bill passed for the future (with a President who's sworn to veto anything w/o the provision and a Republican party with enough votes to prevent that veto from being overridden) is to forgive what happened in the past.
Why does congress need to pass any bill with an immunity provision? Wait for the next president, and then pass the law. It is only six months away (Thank God!) Whoever it is, the next president will be an improvement over W. Deal with any other FISA issues that may need to be handled (although IMHO FISA is fine as is, if anything, the standards for getting a wiretap need to be tightened, but I'm not holding out hope for that in the current climate of fear.)
Another important issue is that someone needs to be held accountable for the illegal wiretapping. It is it not the telcos, then it should be the NSA and DOJ. Make the agency directors who pressured the telcos (and possibly the White House officials who ordered them to do so criminally responsible for abuse of power and for creating illegal wiretaps. Then and only then can the telcos be let off the hook.
In other words, someone need to be held accountable.
This is one of those compromises that should not be made.
What things are we going to allow corporations to do on the presidents assurance that it is legal? Which amendments will we stop at?
It is important that the message is sent that the president can't simple say "this is legal" and congress makes it so retro-actively.
The compromise is at least as bad as the one that made Judge "torture memos" Alito attorney general. There are situations where a compromise is warranted, and the lesser evil, but there are others where the compromise still leans too far towards "strong executive" (That's the PC word for dictatorship I think) and must not be agreed to.
This isn't compromise in the sense that you get the freeway I badly need, I get the bridge to nowhere.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
So, to get back at him, you're going to "vote republican across the board".
Son, you need to think it through. You've got a good heart but you're head is spinning a little too fast. I say this from love.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So let the bill be vetoed, why is passing a bad law better than having a better law vetoed. Can someone explain why we need this law anyway. Let's be honest here, the terrorist threat to America is the biggest hype job ever pulled on the American people. I mean we have had 2 major terrorist attempts on American soil (on the same building even) from foreign nationals in what, our entire histoy. Their is enough questionable information regarding 9/11 that I don't think we will ever truely know what happened or who was involved.
But that day was also the day the 4th went from a celebration to a time of mourning.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
No. Right now, the Democrats have a small majority in the House and a single-vote majority in the Senate. An Obama victory would bring Democratic gains in both houses. In fact, even those who believe McCain will win invariably admit that the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate will grow larger.
Plus, Bush has done so much to tilt the balance of powers in favor of the executive branch, that it would be fairly easy for a President Obama and Democratic Congress to overturn this FISA law.
And, (this is important, so pay attention), this FISA bill only gives civil immunity to the telecoms. They could still be charged with a civil rights violation by an Obama Administration Department of Justice. In fact, everything Obama wrote about Constitutional Law while at the UofC (we were there at the same time) indicates that his view of privacy is very strong, and that he'd be willing to use the DOJ for this purpose (which happens to be the purpose for which it was intended).
IF this FISA bill passes with the immunity intact I will be disappointed, but it's not going to make me suddenly believe that a John McCain administration could be anything but a bigger disaster than Bush. Remember, all the same neocon extremists that have been whispering in George Bush's ear will be shouting in John McCain's ear (the good one). And because of McCain's imagined "tough-guy" image and hot temper, he'll be very vulnerable to the cowboy-culture suggestions that the neocons have used so successfully to manipulate weak leaders like Bush and McCain.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Why not prosecute the government for illegally getting the information in the first place?
Prosecute the government? Who is going to prosecute the executive branch for violating a federal law? The Justice Dept, that's who, except they're part of the executive branch, and have already said they don't think the President broke any law*. So prosecution is right out.
Instead, someone could sue the government for violating their civil liberties, except since nobody knows whether or not the government actually spied on them, nobody has the standing to bring such a case against the government.
Thus the civil suits against the telecoms. The ultimate purpose of these suits, other than to redress their wrongs**, is to cause information on exactly what they did and who they tapped on behalf of the government to be revealed in discovery. Thus those who were spied on can know that this happened, and then have legal standing to sue the government. I don't the legal reason why the telecoms suits don't have the same standing issue, I just know that the suits against the government were blocked by the courts immediately due to standing, while the suits against the telecoms weren't.
So you see, the telecom suits are merely a stepping stone to reaching the real target, which is the federal government. This is also why telecom immunity is not about protecting the telecoms, but protecting the government itself. By preventing lawsuits, they're preventing the discovery that could reveal the government's hand. That's why telecom immunity is so reprehensible.
* Ludicrous on its face, since from the President's only words his program performed warantless wire tapping against parties in the U.S., which is unambiguously against the law. It's another case of the "It's not illegal because the President doesn't have to obey the laws" reasoning, which will never stand up in court, but the goal is not to have it tried in court.
** I can appreciate feeling pressured by the feds, but seriously, if they can't even be bothered to show a trumped up warrant, how can you justify cooperating with an obviously illegal act? Qwest didn't, and what terrible consequences befell them for daring to stand up to the government?
The enemies of Democracy are
I'm in complete agreement, my friend. I'm afraid that every few years we're going to have to take one (or more) of these rapacious corporations and slam them up against a wall a few times, just to show them that we (citizens, consumers) are in charge, not them.
In the next ten years, we're going to see the beginnings of warfare between corporate interests and the interests of the people. With the behavior of the RIAA, I'd say that the shooting war has already started.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Frankly, with all the rancor on both sides, this country needs a little forgiveness
This may be true. But forgiveness applied to someone who's in denial is called "enabling". It just encourages them to do it some more. The first step to forgiveness is a confession. When the telcoms publicly tell us exactly what they have done that may have violated the law or the privacy of the people whose communications they handle, once they are willing to stand up and accept responsibility for their own actions, then we can discuss forgiveness.
You'll notice that none of the people who are angry at Obama over this scrap are trying to get McCain to change his position. For most of those people, it's because they support Obama. They don't consider their vote for him to be a waste, but they consider this move to be a bad decision. "If you vote for someone you don't really want to see in charge then you're screwing up the system." Well, these people want to see Obama in charge, and so they want him to hear what they think. Except for the real hypocrites here, of course: the McCain supporters, who look for any way to paint Obama as not being true to his message, while McCain has been flip-flopping so much in the past three months that he could almost try out for the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team.
So what are they doing now? They're doing kinda what you're supposed to be doing in a Democratic society. Rather than sitting around whining about the evils of the two parties, they mounting a strong campaign to let their selected nominee know that he is not representing their interests with this decision and are trying to get him to see the light. You know, they're participating in government. Rather than just putting in a vote for some libertarian candidate and saying, "Well, my guy didn't win, so you can't blame me," they're actually trying to change the landscape. That's what activists do, y'know - they're active.
To keep spouting this adolescent "lesser of two evils" crap is getting tiresome. In this election, there is A LOT OF FUCKING DIFFERENCE between the two candidates. There is a lot of difference in the way they want to run the war, there is a lot of difference in the way they want to run domestic issues. I apologize that Americans are still a bunch of sheep who can't get John Wayne or Eric Cartman or whoever your perfect candidate is supposed to be elected to the White House, but in this election, a vote for Obama against a vote for McCain is seriously going to mean something, and I'm sorry that the 25%-less-of-a-tool candidate that the DNC is running still isn't enough for your tastes.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.