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Retroactive Telco Immunity Opponents Buying TV Ad
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Whether they're mad at the Republicans for creating the mess, the Democrats for caving in, or both, many are still pissed off over the grant of retroactive immunity for spying on American citizens for no reason. And now some of them are trying to do something about it — they're buying an advertisement on cable TV. While it's not entirely clear what good, if any, this will do given that it's too late, at least it's cheap to participate — they're looking for $6 donations. The ideas is that, if more grass-roots groups do this kind of thing, their 'representatives' won't be able to afford to blow them off as easily."
A TV ad?
Blarney: mad.
One does just fine
With simple sign.
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
if I wouldn't end up on a spamlist for every new tree-hugging wackjob cause that comes down the pike.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
The link is to a Wired blog. The direct link is http://getfisaright.net/promote. And they're not asking for donations of $6, they're asking people to pay to run the ad - which might be $6, or could be a lot more, depending on the market and time of day. I think it would be a lot more efficient if they set up a fund to accept donations and ran the campaign from there.
Apparently they know how to get FISA right, but not how to get their advertising campaign right.
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
These liberals are just using this as an excuse to keep the loophole in the law so that they can accuse the Government of spying (yet another conspiracy theory!) and get rich! That's why all of the liberal leaning states are the wealthiest in the country - they sue innocent corporations! That's why the Trial Lawyers support the Liberal Democrats! They're trying to destroy our Republic, Capitalism, and the American way!
Then, they have the stupidity to try to ban our guns! They use the "Civil Liberties" as a screen but when it comes to the freedom to bare arms, do they fight for that? Nooooooo! We should put the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights! Then those Liberals will fight for it!
Sincerely,
Average American who is educated by TV and Radio.
I think they might suddenly find that airtime costs far more than they originally estimated.
"Oh, you want to buy a 30 second slot for your ad saying that our parent megacorp shouldn't get immunity? Sure thing. That'll be 10 billion dollars please."
For less blowjobs.
I record my sleeptalking
Frankly it's hard to call this news in any sense, when it can just as easily be summarised as 'Another bad home-made political advert added to a pay-to-play-on-TV youtube.'
These are important issues folks, but let's not wet our pants every time someone mentions wiretapping.
Clinton to her credit abstained
Regardless of where you stand on the telco wiretapping, the legislative issue on wiretapping was only whether or not a bunch of greedy lawyers want another set of deep pockets to go plundering. Left wing leaders don't care about the spying. They just want another set of excuses to try and destroy the American economy even more than all their environmental regulation already has. The sad thing is that Republicans open themselves up over and over again for this sort of plundering by the left, as some twisted form of appeasement. They should have just made the wiretapping illegal, should have let the banks fail and homeowners get foreclosed, and stood for something rather than borrowing ever more on the backs of the taxpayers for others moral hazards.
This is my sig.
Never has a nick matched a post so well.
I couldn't find the HTML tags for humor and satire.
and then throw them out again.
Never vote for an incumbant again, at least
for another 3 election cycles.
I don't care, throw them out. You think you
have a 'good guy' in congress? You're wrong.
Throw them out.
All of them. /that/ is the fix for so called special interest lobbies. Take away their power.
That is the only fix.
Better that the government never get anything
else done.
"Whether they're mad at the Republicans for creating the mess, the Democrats for caving in...
The 110th Congress Composition: 282 Democrats - 274 Republicans - 2 Independents. So please tell me how Republicans created this mess?
Every Sunday morning, during the political talkshows commercial breaks, I scream at my TV because of the stupid ExxonMobile, BP, etc commercials telling everyone how much they care about the environment because they are investing millions into renewable energy research. It makes me cringe to think that these companies are only doing "research" to patent technology breakthroughs that they can hold hostage to squeeze every last dime out of the pumps. I want someone to call these people on their bullsht and I would love for the next commercial to be someone calling them on their sht. The company saysme.tv from TFA is adding an upload section so people can make their own commericals and pay to have them aired. I think this is genius and if they were a public company I would invest heavily.
If SaysMe TV does work, all of us who are pissed at the direction things have taken the past 8+ years should remember it and use it in the future. I am very angry about FISA, and intend to punish those of my congresspeople who voted for it. Sadly, I don't think SaysMeTV will help us in this fight. Still, it's a great tool if it works.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I'm not gonna pay. It is not because I liked or agreed with the wiretapping. However I support the Immunity. In general going against the Immunity is saying I hate big companies because they have more money then I do. Having them fined or jailed will do nothing positive. If you fine them you pay the fine as it will increase costs. If you put the guys in jail you pay to put someone who isn't a threat to society, and pay to keep him there. This case took a while and didn't get marked illegal 100% there was a split, meaning even if they did hire lawyers to determine if what they were doing is legal or not they may have gotten the same mixed answers. Thus coming down to a risk analysis. Do it and get some liberal hippies pissed off at us who are already hate us anyways, don't do it and have possible retribution by the government. Especially think about the times were Bush was at a all time high, going against national security was unpatriotic. Google said no and their stock fell, facing legal problems. By not passing this Immunity it would give the government a method of forcing companies to do illegal things... The question is why isn't the government taking responsibility for telling the TelCos to do that. The Government should give each of those customers and the people who they called during the illegal search $100 for each call they illegally wiretapped, and take it out of their assets.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'm done with party politics. The leadership of both political parties have shown that they are willing to trade the legal principals of our founding fathers for short-term political gain. The parties have acted to retain their own power and authority at the expense of our Bill of Rights. This is simply unacceptable.
But the solution cannot be found in insular political organization. That is, organized liberals cannot fix this. Nor can organized conservatives. The only solution here is for the population of liberals and conservatives to realize they have a greater sense of purpose by opposing the GOP/DNC lock on national politics. Political enemies must become friends in order to oust the real enemy of freedom. And they have a lock on all the power the state can muster.
I sadly believe that our republic has already fallen, and the "great experiment" is now over.
The last thing these people (should) want is to bring this issue into the consciousness of the general public. And I hardly doubt companies like AT and T and their clones need donations. At best the call for donations is a sleazy publicity stunt. At worst it shows how cheap and money grubbing they are.
is the price of getting put on a mailing list too high to pay for a bit more freedom ?
Read radical news here
Americans are being sent off to forced labor camps RIGTH NOW for standing up to corporate jewish nazis! ITS TRUE! I READ IT ON INDYMEDIA SO IT HAS TO BE TRUE! And if you don't believe me UR A NAZI!!!
"many are still pissed off over the grant of retroactive immunity for spying on American citizens for no reason." 1. I don't think they are spying "for no reason" 2. They are intercepting calls made to/from a foreign country. If you want sympathy for the cause, make sure you describe the issue accurately.
she has nothing to lose now. she cant make it to presidency, wont probably be making it to vp, so she doesnt need any big buck telcos donating her. she has campaign 'loan debts' which she loaned herself, but hey, she's gonna have another book written soon and just pay them off to herself easily.
Read radical news here
immunity for spying on American citizens for no reason.
It is neither "spying on American citizens" nor "for no reason." It's pathetic that you've got to make it sound like something more sinister than it is in order to try and scare people to your side of the fence on the issue. If Microsoft had written that article summary, people would be screaming "FUD!"
The truth of the matter is conversations originating overseas from known or suspected terrorist organizations to their contacts in the U.S. may be monitored. Your chats with Grandma about what to get little Jimmy for his birthday are of no interest to anyone and cannot be legally intercepted without a warrant. Trying to find out what next big operation terrorists are planning against us ought to be everybody's interest, and perhaps it would be if most Democrat weren't afflicted with Bush Derangement Syndrome.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
You should do something, besides just complain, because the U.S. government has become extremely corrupt. For example, the government is already fighting a war with Iran. There is talk of "diplomacy", but that is only to limit awareness of what the corrupters are doing. The situation is the same as before invading Iraq. There was talk of diplomacy, but the leaders in Iraq knew that the U.S. government would invade, no matter what was said. The purpose of invading Iran seems to be the same as the purpose of invading Iraq: to restrict the supply of oil even further, so that oil prices will rise even further.
Before I even looked at the /. comments, I clicked through to the Wired article, found the link to saysme.tv, and tried to buy an ad. However, I live in St. Louis, and was very disappointed to see that they don't yet support my area, nor any nearby cites up to and including Chicago and Memphis.
Of course, I'm not a cable subscriber, I watch satellite TV. Anyone know if/when DirectTV and DishNetwork will be supported?
Also, while some areas are cheap, some are expensive. I expect that satellite TV will also be expensive. They need a way to put money down for a part of an ad, which would run when enough people sign up for that area.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
many are still pissed off over the grant of retroactive immunity for spying on American citizens for no good reason
Their was a reason for the spying. You may think it was good, most Slashdot members appear to believe that it was not a good reason, but a reason was given (after the fact). That reason being, they were spying on international calls believed to be involved in terrorism.
I'm not defending the ISP's or the Government, but the original post is misleading IMO.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Consul corporate security clones There Cohiba digicash infowar USDOJ CDMA sniper Qaddafi supercomputer are INSCOM Aldergrove Legion of Doom BRLO other Rand Corporation ASIO cracking Downing options Street high security Abbas lock picking namely Albright Europol Consul Rumsfeld NATO bluebird false George W. Bush nitrate analyzer South Africa mindwar Armani Skipjack CISU positives world domination LABLINK Kh-11 or secure try Defcon!@#d%d&*(";dd;,[NO CARRIER
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
Obama (D, Illinois) - Yea
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Surveillance is not a denial of rights, suppression of freedom, nor any form of physical harm. Surveillance is how we defend the populace. If a police officer asks me where I am going, I tell him. I know the process is to catch a bad guy and suppress his freedom. I like that.
From your "CHANGE MY ASS" comment, I take it you're not planning to vote for Barack Obama for President this November. If you are eligible to vote in the United States, do you prefer John McCain or Bob Barr?
They should publish the names of every senator that voted to pass it in red ink on some of the major national news papers near the front page as well as a rolling ticker on the commercials they will be airing. We want names. We are taking down names.
What about the right to arm bears? That's pretty fundamental to America and I think that right needs to be protected too.
Stephen Colbert is gonna be pissed....
I know it can be hard to follow a candidate that doesn't get any airtime but he was against this from the beginning.
If you look at the votes for it every republican voted for it and almost every democrat did. The few hold out were Kucinich and the types that seem to vote for what is right not what is good for the government. Oddly enough, one of the no votes came from Hillary, a politician I really dislike but must give her credit here.
Thanks Obama for voting yes on this.
Thanks McCain for not bothering to vote although we know where you would have voted.
The Dems don't want to impeach Bush and they don't want to do away with laws like this because when they are in power they too will get to abuse the power of the office.
votenader.org
And before anyone points out that he "caused Gore to lose in 00" remember this. Bush got over 10% of the vote from registered Dems in Florida. At least 3 other candidates besides Nader received enough votes that if they had gone to Gore he would have won. The GOP stole the election.
Read the nader page and see how Obama and McCain are so very close to being the same candidate.
Really? Define many. Sounds like a vague "I don't know how many so I'm covering my ass" term. I would venture to speculate that in a country where man-on-the-street interviews reveal that most of Obama's supporters can't name one single thing he's accomplished that caused them to support him, these same people wouldn't know what the fuck you mean by retroactive telco immunity, nor would they care. This has about as much chance of being stopped as the Social Security slush fund/Ponzi scheme.
Your wallet: the only place Democrats want to drill.
The 110th Congress Composition: 282 Democrats - 274 Republicans - 2 Independents. So please tell me how Republicans created this mess?
Congress no longer does anything but produce pieces of paper upon which the US President will scrawl his latest edicts.
They are simply a vestige of the former Republic, like the Roman Senate under Caligula. Purely decorative, or at most whipping boys to placate the masses.
Not just maybe, we already have evidence (contemporaneous documents, sworn testimony, official reports from relevant investigators, etc.) that they monitored purely domestic calls, including calls involving reporters, politicians, and other public figures, and that they started before 9/11.
What we're looking for now is any indication that these weren't the "few bad apple" sort of abuses that they're being painted as, but rather were part of a coordinated pattern of misuse of intelligence resources to conduct oppo research and possibly blackmail. It's following the same arc as the torture story and the US Att. story (It never happened! Well, only once, or a few times at most. It was bad apples! There's nothing wrong with doing it anyway! There's no story here. he memos authorizing it were not official! The President knows nothing! You can't prove any of this!!!) with the exception that the rear guard is fighting harder to cover Bush's xxx^H^H^H Cheney here than in the other cases.
--MarkusQ
Much ado is made about the violation of the 4th amendment embodied in the passage of the FISA bill. While I find that to be more than sufficient to find the passage of that bill to be a violation of the oath to defend The Constitution, I believe the violation of the 1st is more troubling.
The 1st Amendment documents fact that our right to petition the government for redress of grievances cannot be infringed. Bringing a civil suit is exactly what it is talking about. The judicial is the branch of government that has the authority to grant redress. It is the sole prerogative of the judicial to decide whether a law has been infringed. Congress can change the laws going forward, but once a petition for redress reaches the court, it is out of the hands of the legislative.
While I completely agree that the infringement of the 4th in the name of the war on terror is wrong, it is not a clear attempt to usurp the sovereign power of the American people to control the powers of government. The violation of the 1st amendment's right to petition for redress is the most egregious portion of the FISA bill.
As an aside; one can also see the attempted shift in the balance of power with the newly merged PRO-IP/PIRATE acts. The way it has worked (in all cases, as far as I know), is that government cases against the people were criminal, and required proof beyond a reasonable doubt. People's cases against the government or agents of government are civil, requiring preponderance of evidence. Some are holding hope for the possibility of criminal action, but even so, with the FISA bill, we lost the right to preponderance of evidence. With PRO-IP/PIRATE, the government is taking preponderance in place of beyond reasonable doubt. It is extremely telling and disturbing to me that the government is simultaneously saying that the people cannot be trusted with preponderance, and that the government need not be limited to beyond reasonable doubt.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Now is the time to start getting the word out -- and testing out which methods do or don't work. Check out Get FISA Right's strategy on our wiki for our thinking on how this fits into the bigger picture.
jon
PS: Here's the YouTube video for the ad.
Seriously, listening to you meatballs talk "politics" is making me go psyduck over here.
It's like this. You don't really have a democratically elected government. Once upon a time, you did - but along the way somehow you managed to convince people that all schools of political thought fall into one of two slots, hence a two-party system.
Queue up the "im voting for the lesser evil" crowd, mix in a lil' MTV "rock the vote" bullshit, to get as many uninformed voters going to the polls as possible to flip a coin, and the results of your elections are completely meaningless.
But hey, if republicans are bad guys, that means democrats are good guys, and Obama must be a super progressive liberal, right? Except for his support of (and willingness to expand) the death penalty, his plans to scrap funding for NASA and other science endeavors, and his full support of warrantless wiretaps.
Hey, if we can't make it legal, lets just make it impossible for victims to get any recourse! Brilliant! Didn't see that comin', did ya consititution? Which is another topic, the musty old document written by a bunch of slave owning mesogynists whom the Americans have deified. All this talk of what the founding fathers intended, what's "constitutional". I know what they intended. They intended for white land-owning males to rule everyone else. Anything less is "unconstitutional"
All of this whitewashed with a bunch of "greatest country in teh world" horseshit. The phrase "greatest country in the world" should be a goal, not a goofy self-affirmation, because it has never, ever, been true.
The whole point is to show what a waste of fuckign time a grass roots effort like this is. Both Dems and Reps have thrown you under the bus at this point. You've happily marginalized all other options.
This is a big waste of time and money, probably put together by some ad exec somewhere, who's selling the space to himself.
In terms of getting things right, geez, I'd think on Slashdot of all places people would understand the idea of a prototype. Get FISA Right has only existed for a month, and we got the ad together in less than three weeks -- we wanted to get something up in time to help (at least a little) with Strange Bedfellows' August 8 money bomb. There's plenty of room for improvement, and we'll have plenty of chances to apply the learnings.
i agree the bailing out of the banks and all the crap they are pull
The problem is one of moral hazard and responsibilities of both political parties. Republicans are supposed to be the bulwark against the excesses of Washington and they've honestly been terrible.
The expansion of the budget deficit under Bush, and I am a Republican, has been utterly foolish and wasteful. The bottom line is, Democrats are the ones that are supposed to be the ones that want to tax and spend and, even if sometimes it is needed, they are the ones that should do that.
But, the real problem is that, if you've got the Feds bailing out a bunch of banks - and the sweetheart deal for Bear Sterns so that rich people could keep some of their stock, was utterly wrong. If the Fed can come up with 200 billion to bail out rich people, its basic fairness that advocates for the left wing and the poor might ask , geez, maybe they should be able to get some money to bail them out too. So, we need to have some leadership in Washington that is capable of saying no, and Bush just isn't doing the job.
I almost welcome an Obama Presidency so that those Republicans in the Congress that had the courage to vote against this bailout will be the Republicans we rebuild our party around, and in doing so, I should hope we focus on the positive messages of free enterprise, individual thrift and responsibility, or at least an acceptance of one's own failures, and less on ridiculous and wrong headed crap like picking on gays and supposed national security.
This is my sig.
1) Buy shares in traditional media
2) Buy laws that pwn new media
3) Wait for people incensed about #2 to give you their money via #1?
4) Profit!
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
it aint so anymore. recent bills mandate that every person can only donate $3000. no telco can donate $10 m to any campaign. nobody. thats why hillary sunk in debt - she relied on big contributors whereas obama gathered $6 bucks from everyone from net.
Read radical news here
"I no longer give to charity for an extension of those same reasons. Charities are now run like businesses, with salaried fund raisers, and wage slaver collectors on the streets. They pay to make money, and they make more money this way. Since making money is their primary cause, they see it as a good thing."
I understand where you're coming from, since I give a good bit to charities myself... however, don't write all charities off because of the smarmy, professional fund raisers that some employ. A good way to gauge good charities is with Charity Navigator, which rates charities on a variety of topics, including fundraising and expenses. If a charity is spending too much on fundraising and administration, it's all laid out for you to see. Most also have their mailing list and privacy policies available there. Before I give to any cause now, I check Charity Navigator first.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"Paid for by the people who really, really want to make the Reps look like freedom hating scumbags"?
Why now? Why not before that whole shit hit the fan? Now it doesn't change anything, except maybe the voting behaviour of some people.
Now, I don't like the Telco get-out-of-jail-card act any more than anyone who can rub two brain cells together, but this really reeks like cheap political propaganda. The ad tells you your constitution is at stake and sends you to a page, where the first thing you see is a quote from Obama.
Is it me or does this ad lack the political ad disclaimer?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
List their damn names. I will be sending in my money on this.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
...and not the fsckers who ordered the damned thing without a warrant?
Yes, they were wrong, but look at the position they were in. Damned no matter what they did.
Who really needs to answer for this is Bush and company. Especially when it was so #!@$!@ easy to comply with the damned law, and they still refused.
This election won't fix anything, no matter who is in office it will be more of the same. Many things will be even worse under the democrats. Special interest groups?
of irony. http://getfisaright.net/ was started "as a group on My.BarackObama.com" and even quotes Obama at the top of its pages:
"We have to make clear the lines that cannot be crossed."
However, Barack Obama voted in favor of the crappy bill that http://getfisaright.net/ is decrying.
Even if you loose every battle, a worth while cause is worth doing. Telecom immunity is a slap in the face to the United States. If you gave money to Obama, let me know how you feel about him voting for FISA by hitting him in the pocketbook. Ask for your campaign contribution back from Obama and give it to these guys or the ACLU, someone that is actually trying to represent you.
Most comments on this bill on slashdot speak of how wrong it is to give the "Telcos" immunity. Nobody makes any statements at all about what removing immunity would really do! It will do nothing for the people spied on. It will make a bunch of Shysters rich when they get to sue the Telcos. Of course they are the only group that ever wins a lawsuit. Why do you think the lawyers are the ones pushing the hardest to remove immunity?
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
...In that the five cities in the nation that are available include one on the west coast and one on the east coast. So much for "my" cable zone. I'm all for fighting the recent FISA law but not for using fly-by-night hype-feeding dotcoms to fight it.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Not only that, I see no controls in place to try and prevent non-US citizens or permanent residents from contributing.
It is HIGHLY illegal for foreigners to contribute financially to an american political campaign.
But, these kinds of tricks are old hat.
This is what they mean when they call Obama et al a "new breed of politician". He's overseas right now pandering to the Europeans during an American election run (yeah, yeah, lunch with the troops - not the point of the trip). That should tell you where the US political climate is at now.
Americans will simply vote for the guy with the most cash on hand, it's that simple, and it's why Obama balked on his promise for a publically funded campaign. Who wouldn't, when you got hippy dippy love-in dudes all around the world willing to "wink wink nudge nudge" paypal a few bucks for this or that "issue".
I sure do want the french, chinese and members of the Tiny Republic of Togoland to influence our election. Sounds great! Sign me up!
The more uninformed bullshit thrown around the better! DONT TO FORGET TO ROCK THE VOTE WOOOOOP WOOOOOOOOOP remember if you vote republican it means you're a bad, bad, bad guy!
While I was upset that telecoms were granted immunity, I think a lot of people are redirecting their anger. It wasn't as if the telecoms initiated illegal wiretaps - they did so at the request of the the administration. Now, perhaps I am being naive, but I love my country and while I know my government is far from perfect, it's probably the best way to manage a country as large and diverse as ours. There is a great set of checks and balances in the government itself to prevent abuses of power. So when the administration asks you to do something, I don't think its an bad assumption to generally believe them and go along, especially when lives are at stake.
Of course at the end of the day you must ultimately answer to yourself and your conscious, and sometimes government creates laws in which the best reaction is to disobey them. But we created the government, we are part of the system, and I want to live in a country where I don't constantly mistrust and question those I've elected. To go after the telcos suggests that all individuals and corporations need to understand the legal framework and judge the legality of the administration's requests before obeying them. And I'm not sure that's reasonable. Obviously we must be critical of those in power - but is it illegal if you are not?
I think people want to go after the telecoms because I think we've resigned to the fact that we cannot go after the administration. We are channeling the outrage of continual missteps, lies, deception and overall incompetence in another party that, while certainly not innocent, is not the true problem. I think we want to make ourselves feel better - to at least make *someone* accountable since the true boss is untouchable. And we've failed even at that.
http://www.talknerdy.org
This is the new, updated, Republican - Democrat Congressional Political Hit List:
I parked a full list of these losers for your voting needs.
http://digg.com/political_opinion/Bush_Dog_Opposites_Those_Who_Got_it_Right
~hylas
allowing people to run the anti-FISA ad for $6... can anyone tell me whats wrong with that? Also, I got an email from the getFISAright.net group and they said that anyone can create their own anti-FISA ad and SaysMe.tv (the ad running application they are using) will get it approved for television. Some one above said that they thought the ads wouldn't make it to air because some executives would stop it but this is not the case because the ad has been approved in 3 cities already and 20 are expected by august 15th so clearly that responder didn't do his homework.. the idea behind a netroots movement is that every one plays a role.. regardless of the size of the contribution or the traffic to his/her blog... this is one were an individual has the power to help the cause.. pooling money together, as another responder suggested, as a better means of message communication is taking a step back... (isn't that what political parties do?... see how well that worked with FISA in the first place?) pooling money so that a few people are in control is dumb.. let every individual decide how their money is spent...
The balance of power has already shifted from the availability of free wiretapping. When you have warrantless wiretapping, what is to stop one to wiretap one's political opponents? There is serious temptation to using wiretapping politically, if there was absolutely no oversight? Especially if it is to save America from "traitorous Congressmen would sell us to the terrorists" it's obviously ok to wiretap political opponents "for America's safety"
Nixon was impeached for the same sort of thing, but now it's allowed at a whim without judicial oversight, and it's a balance of powers loophole you could drive a truck through. Of course, the administration says that no one would use these powers for anything but listening to "potential" terrorists, but the loophole is there. This is terrible, and no one in Congress seems to be saying anything.
Forgiving the telecoms unconditionally for illegal wiretapping by the administration is incredibly bad precedent to set. It rewards corporations for doing illegal things for the government. A better idea would be to give telecoms a chance to disclose any illegal wiretaps they've done for the White House in exchange for full immunity for those wiretaps. Then all telecoms have no fear of prosecution or liability, in exchange for full disclosure. But that didn't happen.
If wiretaps were already working on a political scale, not in terms of blackmail, but in influencing Congresspeople by knowing what they want... you'd have Congress rolling over for the White House almost on every issue. But of course, the White House would wiretap Congressmen only to protect America, and they would never use any information gained for political influence. Would they?
In a weird art imitates life senerio, this summer's hollywood movie Batman has him doing cell phone evesdroping on the entire city to catch the Joker.
Telcos break law. Telcos use their money to lobby Congress and buy immunity. Grassroots organizations give money to Telcos & Friends for ads that complain about law. Telcos & Friends have more money. So the Telcos are good at converting money to immunity, and grassroots organizations are good at complaining in the form of giving money to Telcos. Smart.
Just so we all know who we are talking about here. http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00168
So, those same folks you'd like to have doing the wiretapping one day decided they didn't really like the Iraqi government all that much, so they hire a homicidal nut-job to replace it. At the same time, they don't like the Russians attacking Afghanistan, so they pay these other folks to look after that part of the planet.
So far so good, you'd think, but you have to realize that this was a set of dominoes waiting to fall.
The nut-job in Iraq eventually gets a tad too bold, and decides to start attacking US allies in the Middle East (hey, he's a nut-job, what did you expect?). So now the US is forced to garrison Saudi Arabia. This pisses off the dude they set up in Afghanistan though, and he goes and Kills the 3000 americans we discussed earlier.
All this is all due to the guys that now want to tap US telecoms. Happy happy joy joy. So their ops to date already ricocheted and got 3K people TK'ed.... (+ >4000 military and counting, + countless civilians from other nations) now you want to make them responsible for an additional 300Mlives?
Are you sure that's a good idea?
I would have donated if it was non partisan. It's pretty obvious it's partisan as the group was formed to influence Obama.
Thanks for your post. I got it from this web site: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4572001 They in turn copypasted it from this link: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00015 But as you not it was a bad copypaste. Apologies for that. Next time I'll do my own.
BTW note someone "moderated" my post as a troll and it went straight to zero. Presumably not over not copypasting Webb. I though Obama was great until he did the FISA backflip, but say anything back about him and get whacked down. Slashdot needs a way to moderate the "moderators"; moderator points are handed out far to freely.
When we rally the people let's leave off the Kalithresh reference.
"An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
Thomas Paine, First Principles of Government, 1795
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
The FISA court has granted thousands of warrants since 1978, and has denied something like....4. All the government has to do is call up the court before the wiretapping (or 72 hours after) and say "hey, we suspect so-and-so is a terrorist" and the FISA court says "oh, ok." That the Bush Administration didn't even bother with that little fig leaf means they had no reason to tap those phone lines.