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Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Fight Against FISA Telecom Immunity: What Next?
Dodd's message to netroots on (temporary) victory
Must Read: Glenn Greenwald's post on the Anatomy and significance of Monday's FISA victory. Excerpt:
By itself, derailing a bill that Harry Reid and Jay Rockefeller, hand-in-hand with GOP followers of the White House, were working so hard to ensure would pass smoothly is a major victory. That is particularly true given that the entire cast of standard establishment defenders and propagandists -- all fed by the Jamie Gorelicks and the rest of the bipartisan slew of slimy telecom lobbyists working in the dark and suddenly feeding the coffers of key pro-immunity lawmakers with new infusions of cash -- all lined up behind giving the extraordinary gift of immunity to telecoms.
Even now, in the wake of his defeat yesterday, Harry Reid is doing everything possible to undermine efforts to defeat the telecom immunity bill that he claims he opposes. This is from today's Washington Post article detailing the defeat of telecom immunity ("in the face of more than a dozen amendments to the bill and guerrilla tactics from its opponents, Reid surprised his colleagues when he announced there would not be enough time to finish the job")
Reid spokesman Jim Manley said the decision had nothing to do with the efforts of Dodd and his allies.
There are Harry Reid's true colors: going out of his way to deny that the pernicious group known as "Dodd and his allies" had any effect whatsoever on the Senate's efforts to bow to every one of Bush's demands. We can't have any notion that the Establishment's will was disrupted in any way by dirty outside forces.
... The most important value of victories of this sort is that they ought to serve as a potent tonic against defeatism, regardless of the ultimate outcome. And successes like this can and should provide a template for how to continue to strengthen these efforts. Yesterday's victory, temporary as it is, shouldn't be over-stated, but it also shouldn't be minimized. All of it stemmed from the spontaneous passion and anger of hundreds of thousands of individuals demanding that telecoms be subject to the rule of law like everyone else. And this effort could have been -- and, with this additional time, still can be -- much bigger and stronger still.
Call to say thanks:
Chris Dodd for President
Keep contacting Sen. Jeff Bingaman from now until the Senate reconvenes in January after the holiday break: https://bingaman.senate.gov/contact/. Tell him any FISA bill that contains retroactive immunity for the telecoms is unacceptable.
See my previous posts on yesterday's actions in the Senate re FISA legislation here and here.
December 18, 2007 at 11:53 AM in Civil Liberties, Corporatism, Crime, Democratic Party | Permalink
Comments
Hmmm...
Large campaign contributions have a tendency to skew politicians' perspectives.
Whaddya know?
Posted by: | Dec 18, 2007 12:17:41 PM
I just called Sen. Bingaman's office to express that the telecommunication companies should be held accountable for data mining and that I support Sen. Dodd.
I also requested that a specific e-mail address be posted on the Senator's web-site as a contact link just goes to Outlook on my computer. I use yahoo. This is a common problem and may be the reason I am never able to make direct contact with bloggers like Barb.
Posted by: qofdisks | Dec 18, 2007 2:08:27 PM
If you right click on the Email Me link on the upper left-hand corner of the page (or a similar link elsewhere) and then move your mouse down to Properties and click it will show you my email address. It will say mail to: and the email address will follow. You can then copy it if you want.
Here's Bingaman's:
senator_bingaman@bingaman.senate.gov
A good place to get contact info on any member of Congress is at https://www.Congress.org
If you type in your zip code in the box on the left-hand side of the page there, it will bring up the info for many of your elected officials.
Posted by: | Dec 18, 2007 3:56:47 PM
Thanx!
Posted by: qofdisks | Dec 19, 2007 6:38:11 AM
Senator Bingaman voted against the Protect America Act and does not support blanket retroactive immunity. Here's the link to his interview with reporters on the subject (at approx 5:25):
Posted by: Terry Brunner | Dec 19, 2007 10:29:51 AM
Hi Terry:
Thanks for the link, but what I want to know is why Sen. Bingaman voted this week for cloture on the Senate Intelligence Committee's version of the bill, which was drafted by Cheney and Rockefeller. I'm not understanding why he would do that.
I'd also like to know if he supports Dodd's request for a "hold" on the bill and/or his plans to filibuster to stop it from being passed with any kind of retroactive immunity for telecoms.
Posted by: | Dec 19, 2007 10:52:35 AM
So Sen. Bingaman says he is against "blanket retroactive immunity" for the phone companies but that leaves a big hole for granting individual companies immunity, doesn't it?
Posted by: Old Dem | Dec 19, 2007 11:04:50 AM
Barb--Jeff voted for cloture on the motion to proceed to debate the bill, which allows the Senate to bring it up, debate it and augment it. If it is not improved on the floor he would likely vote against cloture and continue debate prior to a vote on final passage.
Old dem: if you listen to the audio, I think the Senator states that he doesn't see how retroactive immunity is required for anyone involved--he didn't differentiate between phone companies and individual companies.
Posted by: Terry | Dec 19, 2007 5:02:00 PM
Re the Senator's vote: I know, but the point is that Dodd and others were trying to keep the Intelligence Committee bill from going to the floor for a vote, hence those Senators voted against cloture. As I'm sure you know, the much better bill, without immunity for telecoms, was the version that came out of the Judiciary Committee. Reid instead brought out the version written by Dick Cheney and Jay Rockefeller in Intelligence. What a leader.
Then we had Reid introducing that consent measure to stop there from being any amendments to the horrible Intelligence Committee bill.
We are very tired of Senators voting in ways where they can claim to be against something but the actual effect is to let something through to passage. Know what I mean?
Posted by: | Dec 20, 2007 5:34:43 PM
