Call Your Congressman

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
-Abraham Lincoln

I am dipping a toe back into politics and constitutional law for a moment because tomorrow the Democratic House is going to vote on what they claim is a "compromise" on FISA and telecom amnesty. The bill as written would cede vast powers to the president to spy on American citizens without warrants and grant the telecoms broad immunity for cooperating with the government in spying that has gone on since 2001. As my frieng Glen Greenwald notes in his Salon article, "In the U.S. now, thanks to the Democratic Congress, we'll have a new law based on the premise that the President has the power to order private actors to break the law, and when he issues such an order, the private actors will be protected from liability of any kind on the ground that the Leader told them to do it -- the very theory that the Nuremberg Trial rejected. "

The ACLU is working hard to stop the bill in its tracks but without any support from Democrats it may be impossible. Carolyn Frederickson of the ACLU has this to say about the wairetapping provisions of the bill:

"This bill allows for mass and untargeted surveillance of Americans' communications. The court review is mere window-dressing –- all the court would look at is the procedures for the year-long dragnet and not at the who, what and why of the spying. Even this superficial court review has a gaping loophole –- "exigent" circumstances can short cut even this perfunctory oversight since any delay in the onset of spying meets the test and by definition going to the court would cause at least a minimal pause. Worse yet, if the court denies an order for any reason, the government is allowed to continue surveillance throughout the appeals process, thereby rendering the role of the judiciary meaningless."

It is also worth noting that in 2006, when the Congress was controlled by the Republicans the administration tried to get a bill passed legalizing warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty, but was unable. They had to wait until the Congress was controlled by Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to accomplish that. A sad day in American history and not the kind of country I want my son growing up in. The Democrats are feckless sell-outs and every last one of them who vote for this bill should be charged with treason.