We must all realize that the one thing the Republicans want more than anything is to peel away Obama's base. They made an effort to use the so-called Telcom Immunity Bill to do that.
The truth is that the bill Obama voted for mandates that the FISA court be used going forward and that there be an Inspector General to determine if any wrongdoing had happened in the past. If you heard Obama's answer to the question about this bill at the recent Fairfax town hall you could easily read between the lines and get the direct meaning of what he told us about this.
He basically told us both directly and indirectly that we need a new administration to make sure the laws are followed. One can easily infer from this that he is also telling us that we aren't going to get anywhere investigating the Bush administration while they are in office. This is such an obvious and easily understood fact that I am amazed that during the fuss over this bill that no one really pointed this out.
The fact is that it is the administration which broke the law. They assured the Telcoms they would have authorization within the prescribed period AFTER the monitoring began. They didn't follow through, but by that time the program had begun and the Telcoms were then in the position of having involuntarily broken the law.
If we follow the logic of those who think the Telcoms should be prosecuted then we should prosecute the soldiers who took orders on good faith to go to Iraq because they were told Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. We also should have prosecuted the contractors who built the Nazi death camps. But the truth is the criminals were those who put out the Requests for Proposals (RFPs) with intent to use the facilities to reduce the population of undesirables.
By focusing on Obama's stance on Telcom Immunity the stealth progressives (Republicans posing as progressive bloggers and commentators) have taken the focus off the administration while at the same time attempting to use this to discredit Obama among his base. It is really ingenious, but we shouldn't fall for it.
As has often been said: "The laws are for law abiding citizens.". That's not what we are dealing with in the current administration. As long as the administration controls the Justice Department and has the right to pardon, nothing can go forward. We already see the list of those in contempt of Congress growing.
Barack Obama's ability to see the situation clearly and state it clearly is admirable. As he said at the end of the answer to his question "We need to elect a new administration so these laws will be followed." (paraphrase)
We must all realize that the one thing the Republicans want more than anything is to peel away Obama's base.
They made an effort to use the so-called Telcom Immunity Bill to do that.
Meanwhile, to follow your logic, when do you plan to prosecute our soldiers in Iraq, or their commanders?
http://www.latimes.com/news/op...
It's a sorry piece of legislation -- worse than sorry -- because it excuses totalitarianism.
Here is part of what Mr. Hedges said:
The new FISA Amendments Act nearly eviscerates oversight of government surveillance. It allows the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to review only general procedures for spying rather than individual warrants. The court will not be told specifics about who will be wiretapped, which means the law provides woefully inadequate safeguards to protect innocent people whose communications are caught up in the government's dragnet surveillance program.The law, passed under the guise of national security, ostensibly targets people outside the country. There is no question, however, that it will ensnare many communications between Americans and those overseas. Those communications can be stored indefinitely and disseminated, not just to the U.S. government but to other governments.
This law will cripple the work of those of us who as reporters communicate regularly with people overseas, especially those in the Middle East. It will intimidate dissidents, human rights activists and courageous officials who seek to expose the lies of our government or governments allied with ours. It will hang like the sword of Damocles over all who dare to defy the official versions of events. It leaves open the possibility of retribution and invites the potential for abuse by those whose concern is not with national security but with the consolidation of their own power.
I have joined an ACLU lawsuit challenging the new law along with other journalists, human rights organizations and defense attorneys who also rely on confidentiality to do their work. I have joined not only because this law takes aim at my work but because I believe it signals a serious erosion of safeguards that make possible our democratic state. Laws and their just application are the only protection we have as citizens. Once the law is changed to permit the impermissible, we have no recourse with which to fight back.
I spent nearly 20 years as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, as well as other news organizations. I covered the conflict in the Middle East for seven years. I have friends and colleagues in Jerusalem, Gaza, Cairo, Damascus, Tehran, Baghdad and Beirut. I could easily be one of those innocent Americans who are spied on under the government's new surveillance authority.
The only solution is to put terrorism back into the category of a criminal act, not an act of war, but that may not even help.
We went through this in the McCarthy era. Maybe we should look back and see how we (the U.S.) escaped from it.
This or nothing? FISA did not and does not expire. FISA is the law of the land. When the so-called Protect America Act expired in February, did the world end? No.
What this fight was about was whether or not the so-called opposition party would bless via legislation the absolute law-breaking of a President. As it turns out, Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Jay Rockefeller decided to do so. They are cowards of the highest order -- they are part of the cover-up of what happened here.
At the end of the day, all that was needed to improve the operation of the FISA regime was a single technical correction to allow tapping of signals that are foreign-to-foreign but which happen to flow through US switches. But does anyone honestly believe that Bush and McConnell et al HAVEN'T been doing whatever the hell they please because an Article III court (the FISC) has told them that a certain regime is illegal and/or unconstitutional?
There is no red herring here at all. We are talking perhaps about the only way we, the people, are ever going to get any clue as to what has been going on in the name of 'protecting us' from terrorism. The point isn't the monetary damages, it's the discovery. Now, if we had enough patriots in the Congress that decided to fight back and not be cowed and to take their constitutional obligations of oversight seriously, perhaps there would be other avenues. But we don't, so here we are.
Look, I'm an Obama partisan. But he f'ed this up royally. He should not be given a free pass here, just as Jim Webb shouldn't. This is the type of insider, establishment thinking that gets us into really bad situations (see, e.g., Iraq).
This or nothing? FISA did not and does not expire. FISA is the law of the land. When the so-called Protect America Act expired in February, did the world end? No.
What this fight was about was whether or not the so-called opposition party would bless via legislation the absolute law-breaking of a President. As it turns out, Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Jay Rockefeller decided to do so. They are cowards of the highest order -- they are part of the cover-up of what happened here.
At the end of the day, all that was needed to improve the operation of the FISA regime was a single technical correction to allow tapping of signals that are foreign-to-foreign but which happen to flow through US switches. But does anyone honestly believe that Bush and McConnell et al HAVEN'T been doing whatever the hell they please because an Article III court (the FISC) has told them that a certain regime is illegal and/or unconstitutional?
There is no red herring here at all. We are talking perhaps about the only way we, the people, are ever going to get any clue as to what has been going on in the name of 'protecting us' from terrorism. The point isn't the monetary damages, it's the discovery. Now, if we had enough patriots in the Congress that decided to fight back and not be cowed and to take their constitutional obligations of oversight seriously, perhaps there would be other avenues. But we don't, so here we are.
Look, I'm an Obama partisan. But he f'ed this up royally. He should not be given a free pass here, just as Jim Webb shouldn't. This is the type of insider, establishment thinking that gets us into really bad situations (see, e.g., Iraq).
This is a good diary, and your point is well taken: throwing the telecom immunity into the bill is indeed a red herring designed to protect not the telecoms but Bush. However much our Fourth Amendment rights have been shredded (and they have been under assault since before 9/11) the truth is the suits against the telecoms are probably going nowhere because the telecoms were not the ones actually violating our Fourth Amendment rights---- they were the instrument in the hands of the Administration.
The government is the one who ought to be sued, but probably cannot be (there may be a loophole somewhere allowing a suit, but I'm no lawyer). So actually, the Administration is the felon here, and, once that comes out in any lawsuit filed against either telecoms or the government, then Congress has no choice but to impeach. We all know how Pelosi feels about that, now, don't we? By insisting on telecom immunity Bush provided a distraction to divert attention of Democrats and civil libertarians away from his felonious conduct. It worked.