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Discussing the Diaspora as seen through an internal Black lens
Congress Once Again Playing Their Warrentless Spying and Corporate Capitulation Game
June 27th, 2008
Glenn Greenwald, who has done excellent in depth and salient reporting, brings us the latest on the Democrats selling us out to the Corporations in lock step with George W. Bush.
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George Bush’s latest powers, courtesy of the Democratic Congress
CQ reports (sub. req.) that “a final deal has been reached” on FISA and telecom amnesty and “the House is likely to take up the legislation Friday.” I’ve now just read a copy of the final “compromise” bill. It’s even worse than expected. When you read it, it’s actually hard to believe that the Congress is about to make this into our law. Then again, this is the same Congress that abolished habeas corpus with the Military Commissions Act, and legalized George Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program with the “Protect America Act,” so it shouldn’t be hard to believe at all. Seeing the words in print, though, adds a new dimension to appreciating just how corrupt and repugnant this is:
The provision granting amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms, Title VIII, has the exact Orwellian title it should have: “Protection of Persons Assisting the Government.” Section 802(a) provides:
[A] civil action may not lie or be maintained in a Federal or State court against any person for providing assistance to an element of the intelligence community, and shall be properly dismissed, if the Attorney General certifies to the district court of the United States in which such action is pending that . . . (4) the assistance alleged to have been provided . . . was –
(A) in connection with intelligence activity involving communications that was (i) authorized by the President during the period beginning on September 11, 2001, and ending on January 17, 2007 and (ii) designed to prevent or detect a terrorist attack, or activities in preparation of a terrorist attack, against the United States” and
(B) the subject of a written request or directive . . . indicating that the activity was (i) authorized by the President; and (ii) determined to be lawful.
So all the Attorney General has to do is recite those magic words — the President requested this eavesdropping and did it in order to save us from the Terrorists — and the minute he utters those words, the courts are required to dismiss the lawsuits against the telecoms, no matter how illegal their behavior was.
That’s the “compromise” Steny Hoyer negotiated and which he is now — according to very credible reports — pressuring every member of the Democratic caucus to support. It’s full-scale, unconditional amnesty with no inquiry into whether anyone broke the law. 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.
After all there pretense back in March, Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats aready caved.
This Congressional-Corporate Thug Consortium can still be stopped, though. Chris Dodd and others are leading the fight to maintain liberty in the Senate. The least we can do is make some phone calls.
Call the Senate leadership, and your own Senator today. Then again on Monday; every day.
Reid, Harry- (D - NV) Majority Leader(202) 224-3542
Durbin, Richard- (D - IL) Assistant Majority Leader (202) 224-2152
Byrd, Robert C.- (D - WV) President Pro Tempore (202) 224-3954
Go here to get any Senator you want.
Kathy Gill reports that today’s vote was delayed until after July 4th, and why it is so important to oppose it.
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Democratic Leadership Postpones FISA Vote; Immunity Already Codified
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) succeeded in postponing today’s anticipated vote on FISA reauthorization. Instead, the bill will come up after the 4th of July recess, and the two are introducing an amendment which will strike the telecom immunity clause.
Here’s why this is truly important, more important than I realized.
Telecoms are already exempt from having to second-guess the legality of a government request. From Feingold’s Wednesday floor speech: “If the proper documentation is submitted, the company must cooperate with the request and will be immune from liability.”
Let’s say this again, because this assertion by Feingold isn’t a meme on this story.
If the federal government follows the law, and provides telecoms with “a court order or a certification stating that certain basic requirements have been met,” then the telecoms cannot be sued for doing as requested. This has been the law for 30 years!
No wonder Verizon’s lawyers advised the company not to participate! From Feingold’s floor speech:
The telephone companies and the government have been operating under this simple framework for 30 years. The companies have experienced, highly trained, and highly compensated lawyers who know this law inside and out.
In view of this history, it is inconceivable that any telephone companies that allegedly cooperated with the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program did not know what their obligations were. And it is just as implausible that those companies believed they were entitled to simply assume the lawfulness of a government request for assistance. This whole effort to obtain retroactive immunity is based on an assumption that doesn’t hold water…
Granting companies that allegedly cooperated with an illegal program this new form of automatic, retroactive immunity undermines the law that has been on the books for decades – a law that was designed to prevent exactly the type of actions that allegedly occurred here…
So the only thing we’d be encouraging by granting immunity here is cooperation with requests that violate the law. Mr. President, that’s exactly the kind of cooperation that FISA was supposed to prevent. (emphasis added) To his credit, Feingold is concerned with more than the retroactive immunity, noting in his Wednesday floor speech that the new bill lets the government “legally collect all communications – every last one – between Americans here at home and the rest of the world.” Moreover, the bill does not “effectively prohibit the practice of reverse targeting – namely, wiretapping a person overseas when what the government is really interested in is listening to an American here at home with whom the foreigner is communicating.”
And there are no real “checks” on the executive branch. Feingold says that there are “no meaningful consequences if the government initiates surveillance using procedures that have not been approved by the FISA Court, and the FISA Court later finds that those procedures were unlawful.”
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Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.
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Please make some phone calls Monday. We can’t just keep sitting by watching the constitution get shred.