Update [2008-2-12 13:23:36 by dada]: the FISA Betrayal in the senate is complete and now it’s up to the people’s house to uphold the rule of law.
contact your representative, speaker pelosi, and sign the FDL Petition to Tell House Members to Stand Firm Behind the RESTORE Act!
yeah, yeah…l know…l’ve become a one trick pony…but it’ll be a great trick if we can pull it off, and it wouldn’t have even come to this juncture without a loud and consistent outcry
the senate will vote on the amendments to the fisa bill tomorrow, tuesday, and it doesn’t look promising at the moment.
as Glenn Greenwald put it today:
The telecom amnesty debate is controversial but it is not complicated. The Government asked telecoms to break numerous federal laws in exchange for profit. Some telecoms refused to do so and others — such as AT&T and Verizon — agreed to break the law for years. Which behavior do we want to encourage and reward — (a) telecoms which turned down the substantial government contracts to enable warrantless spying on Americans because doing so was illegal, or (b) the telecoms which purposely broke our laws by allowing illegal government spying on Americans? How can that even be a debatable question?
As the Senate votes on amnesty tomorrow, the only real question is whether telecoms which broke our laws should be accountable in a court of law for their illegal behavior (the way things are supposed to work in a country that lives under the rule of law) or whether Congress, lavishly funded by this industry, will pass a law that has no purpose other than to give them the retroactive license to break our country’s laws with impunity.
more below…
patrick leahy has issued a call to everyone concerned to contact your senators and representative and encourage them to support the amendments, essentially the judiciary committee version of the bill. he has pledged to
…do everything in my power — including joining my colleague Chris Dodd in a filibuster against this legislation — to fix it.
Now I need your help to encourage more of our House and Senate colleagues to stand with us.
I strongly support surveillance targeting foreign threats and terrorists who wish to do us harm — but we must take care to protect Americans’ liberties in the process. That’s what the FISA amendments we passed through the Judiciary Committee would have done.
Our Judiciary Committee amendments also would have given the existing FISA Court a more meaningful role in overseeing law enforcement’s expanded surveillance activities, providing a crucial independent check on potential government excess. We must not forget that earlier abuses of power are the reason FISA was enacted in the first place.
Unfortunately, the Bush-Cheney Administration and its allies oppose these safeguards. They are voting in lockstep to kill all of our efforts to improve the new FISA bill, basically telling Senate Democrats to “take it or leave it.”
Here’s what they need to know: Passing legislation through the U.S. Senate isn’t a “take it or leave it” enterprise. Not when they want to park Americans’ civil liberties in a blind trust. They lost their credibility on “just trust us” long ago. Will you help convince Senators and Members of Congress to agree to our common-sense changes to improve this bill and protect the rights of all Americans?
here’s a handy link to the leahy page to forward a message to both:
additional contact information, including phone, fax, and web information is available at the following links:
lTMF’sA
