John Cornyn explains complex issues in simple terms. Here is Cornyn’s analogy. Suppose you’re sitting at home on your couch and a police officer knocks on your window and says that he needs to borrow your car so he can apprehend a dangerous criminal. Would you be willing to lend him the car if you thought you were going to get sued for it later?
Yeah…probably not.
So, obviously it would be wrong to allow people to sue the telecommunications corporations for giving their information to the government.
That is seriously the argument that John Cornyn just made on the Senate floor.
I just wonder when Congress passed and when a president signed a law that made it explicitly illegal to loan your car to a police officer.
The Republicans are so bad at lying. The Democrats are much craftier. I mean, Senator Reid says he opposes immunity for telecommunications corporations. Cornyn never claimed that.
If Senator Reid opposed immunity, he never would have brought this to the floor…the fact that this is the second time he’s pulled this crap right before the holiday/vacation break to ramp up the pressure to just vote yes and go home is a dead giveaway. We’re not fooled.
I am so sick of this crap. If I had a voter registration card in my possession, I’d burn it.
May the gods allow me to finally remember next time: Nader was right and I was wrong.
Surely the telcos’ legal counsel would have concerns about liability. Obviously these concerns were addressed somehow. What these (Cornyn’s) statements say to me is that the telcos were promised that there would be no liability for giving up the goods. In fact, I would take these statements as tacit admission of that scenario.
I totally agree boran2.
Let’s see, so basically the administration breaks the law, and promises there will be no consequences for those who assist them in doing so.
Hmm, that sounds familiar…
Oh yeah.
Yep, that’s my thought too — I know how much legal counsel ANY big corporation has, and corporate lawyers are an extremely risk-adverse bunch. There had to have been some kind of deal under the table.
It was the job of those lawyers to tell their CEOs and directors that what the government was asking for was blatantly illegal. For all we know, they probably said exactly that — but the only way we will ever learn the full story is to deny the telcos immunity and hold real hearings into the issue.
Kudos to Dodd — he’s showing real leadership today.
Feingold writes a play by play over at TPM. He and Dodd are offering (have offered?) an amendment to remove the immunity provision from the current bill. He holds out some hope that even a large but losing vote will give some leverage when the Senate has to negotiate with the House on its version, which he calls “a much better bill”.
Feingold doesn’t mince words or excuse Reid, either:
Reid really has to go. Maybe that’s the next big netroots priority.
That’s quite a demonstration of the logic of fuckwittery. What a doofus.
I just witnessed Barbara Mikulski’s plea for us to not punish those poor companies that were just trying to help.
I may need to go home and watch “Mars Attacks” with the kids – just to see the scene where the grandma is cracking up (“They just blew up congress!!!”).
Wonder how much $$$ Verizon and other telcos sent her this last time… Ashamed of my Senator, that’s sad….
Orrin Hatch just said that the debate over FISA has seen what he considers an ‘irrational amount of fearmongering’. And then he started ticking off every terrorist attack that has occurred in the last seven years.
I want to know who makes his props, and what they use. My guess is a 5 year old using Microsoft Paint.
Is OrrinHatch.com getting ready to shut up?
I had to turn him off, I can’t stand the man.
What’s up with the quorum call? I turned back just as Dodd was noting the absence of a quorum. I assume that means he doesn’t have to keep the floor, since there aren’t enough Senators present to vote anyway?
The irony is that no, I wouldn’t loan a cop my car, and the main reason is that cops are protected from any liability for damages — including killing bystanders — incurred in the course of high speed chases. So the reason I’d get sued for it later is precisely because immunity has been granted to the actual responsible parties.