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Telecom Amnesty Opponents Back New Amendment
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "With the telecoms all but assured of amnesty for their participation in illegal spying, there's now one last amendment in their way — the Bingaman amendment. Because President Bush is unwilling to sign FISA reform without immunity, and because Blue Dog Democrats fear for their reelection unless FISA reform as a whole passes, most compromise positions are already off the table. So the new amendment seeks to sidestep part of the problem by moving it to a later date. It would put the court cases and amnesty provision on hold until a report is completed detailing exactly what happened, allowing Congress to consider denying amnesty at that time. There's an EFF campaign to support both this and the Dodd-Feingold amendment, which would strip immunity altogether."
The trouble is that we have a choice between the Republicans who want amnesty and the Democrats who are afraid not to grant it. What kind of pressure can we bring?
Obama has an amazing ability to raise money from small donors. If the donors went on strike, Obama would react.
Enough of us have to tell the Democrats that we won't donate if amnesty passes but we might donate if it doesn't. The pressure from his supporters has forced Obama to react by telling us to suck it up. More pressure might force him to change the way he intends to vote.
So I was browsing Wikipedia and came across the following definition for "fascism":
Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
Hm. Committed nationalist militants working in collaboration with "traditional elites", such as large telcos.
Discuss.
The standard narrative for Dem caving is that they fear for their electability or whatever. It's also possible that they just believe what they vote for.
"If a policeman ordered you to rob a bank, do you think you deserve amnesty?"
Of course. Any action forced at gunpoint - or other threat of punishment from a force-wielding body - should be granted amnesty.
The UN is nothing but the sum of its members.
And the US have been largely responsible for castrating it. Look at the use of veto in the UNSC in the past 30 years. Even USSR did not fuck it up that much.
I advocate mid-term votes on each of your congresscritters, with ballots such as that below (for each):
I think congressperson X:
Get the people really involved!
Then the government can tell the telecoms to destroy all documents relating to this. The telecoms can tell any future investigators that those records were destroyed, please refer to the current administration. Who have probably since moved to Dubai.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Coming at your point another way, without things like immunity and a 5th Amendment, there is less incentive to violate the status quo by doing something revolutionary, e.g., behaving ethically.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear