Here's a quick list of what's wrong with it:
1. The title of the bill ("Improving Foreign Intelligence Surveillance to Defend the Nation and the Constitution" sets a new low for doublespeak). See p 1, lines 4-6. It neither gives added protection, nor protects the Constitution.
2. It legalizes illegalities of the Bush administration wiretapping activities.
3. It was unnecessary. The FISA Court was presided over by Bush enabler Laurence H. Silberman, who virtually never declined a court order.
4. The law guts FISA Court, the little protection Americans had.
5. Court orders will no longer be required (p. 2, line 19). Gonzo "may," but is not required to obtain a court order (p.3, line 5).
6. The new bill provides no oversight. Gonzo "certifies under oath" (for whatever good that has done heretofor, eg., his testimony needing correction previously). Congressional, or judicial, over sight is eliminated. Congress is reduced to paper pushers who receive reports from Gonzales. It just wrote off its own oversight responsibilities and power.
7. There's too much power vested in Bush, Gonzales and a new spy czar Bush will appoint. Bush has already stated (paraphrase) that if the guy asks for it, Bush will give him whatever he wants.
8. Don't get me started on Gonzalez, who has politicized Justice and has used it to depress the Democratic vote through malicious prosecution, caging and other tactics.
9. The bill doesn't require a subject be suspected of anything (no cause need be identified as reason for the search).
10. The bill is not limited to spying on suspected terrorists or those guilty of other crimes. It represents wide-spread un-targeted spying.
11. It doesn't require specifying a specific person or place (p. 3, lines 12, 13), so spying can be on a whole class or category of people.
12. The bill isn't limited to "foreigners," though Repugs have claimed it is. See p. 7, lines 13-23; p. 8, line 19-24.
13. The bill grants further power to the already bloated and overly-empowered executive branch.
14. Every time he wants more power, or is in trouble via polls or via news of administration misdeeds, Bush cries wolf. Keith Olbermann has documented the amazing coincidence that every time Bush rails about danger, either his popularity has dropped or there is news of administration misdeeds.
15. The legislation is at least partly to soothe and compensate communications companies for the use of their services and facilities and indemnify them against litigation.
16. Everyone knows there is a greater than zero chance of a terrorist strike. And we know the threat has increased due to Bush's waging a war of preference rather than need. He didn't prevent 9-11. He was asleep on the job even after it happened. He didn't take warnings seriously, even bumping the job of anti-Terrorism Czar off the cabinet. He waged a war against a country having nothing to do with 9-11.
17. The question is what kind of a nation we are and will be. How do we best balance security needs while retaining our character and courage? Do we do what needs to be done without giving away the store? Do we act like cowards, or do we stand tough, but courageously, against those who'd try to make us cower and change what America is/was.
18. The bill eliminates one of the main counts in the impeachment resolution by legitimizing Bush's illegal behavior.
19. This isn't about keeping us safe. As others have noted here at RK, it's about amassing a massive data base so it can be used/merged with the clandestine TIA to track non-Bush-true-believers block, by block and house-by-house. TIA (Total Information awareness was supposed to be dropped. It wasn't. It was renamed and morphed.
20. Responding to and reinforcing a bully-leader is the wrong way to deal with a president who now has zero accountability.
21. Finally, True or False, Bush gave OBL what he wanted on 9-11? ANSWER: True: Bush pulled our forces out of Saudi Arabia. So, Bush caved to terrorists and Dems, Libertarians, and Greens who want to defend the Constitution are called cowards by apologists of George. Guess what? The relabeling game ends -- if we stop folding when the name-calling happens.
I don't care what they know (or think they know), or whom they defer to. Our leaders should not use fear-fanning to change the character of this country, undermine its Constitution, and demean our country and its citizens.
There has been much talk of who is "logical" or "rational" and who is not. This is irrelevant. How is one not to feel impassioned about losing another bit of our country.
Our president can go ape in his language, rhetoric, behavior, and demands and we are all supposed to just sit here hero-worshiping those we admire, but who have so gravely disappointed us. Oh, yes, and carry on electing more of said people we admire now and who will disappoint once they are sworn in.
Our elected representatives are not perfect. And the extent to which they approach it (perfection) is not measured by how often they agree with me. However, if all Americans read the bill, they would know they were had with this legislation. So it is bogus to suggest I am just asking to have things "my way." Additionally, we must believe our representatives have really done their jobs in this instance via evidence. Blind fealty on our parts won't do. We must stay actively engaged, including with them, issue by issue and day by day.
Finally, those who have heretofore displayed great courage (and rightly earned our grateful praise) are not exempt now. Just as John Kerry shouldn't have tried to rest on leadership of previous decades, neither should any others of our once fearless leaders, however we respect and admire them. The Constitution must be protected each and every day they are in office. The doublespeak title of this sham bill does not absolve them of that charge. They owe us that much.
Secret call log at heart of challenge to domestic wiretap program
here: [http://news.lp.findl...]
What would happen, if, for a moment, this headline from the NY Times:
August 6, 2007
"Bush Signs Law to Widen Reach for Wiretapping"
story here: [http://www.nytimes.c...]
was changed to
"Clinton Signs Law to Widen Reach for Wiretapping" or
"Obama Signs Law to Widen Reach for Wiretapping"
Regardless of who "widens the reach"- it runs counter to our Constitution.
Pompous assertions of commitment to basic civil and constitutional rights are meaningless with an affirmative vote to entrust our constitutional protections to a known liar and political hack.
The Democrats really have lead the way on this one .... right out of town to August recess. If this is all they can muster, perhaps they should stay out of town.
It is laughable that anyone would believe that the Democrats don't care about our safety. It's long past time, our representatives either angrily denounce such outrageous talk, or laugh in Bush's face. And they really need to start practicing at times other than when they are in supportive and familiar settings. We've let them frame the issues far too long.
SO, why do the Democrats keep doing this? Must be a reason they'd risk such scrutiny. This isn't like the "I didn't read the bill before I voted for it" immigration bill. Also, not a peep from Pelosi and Reid. Nothing.
Anyway, I'm sure we'll forget about it by November.
If only Senator Webb could provide a coherent explanation for caving on this vote.
If only Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi had used their parliamentary powers to ensure at least a thorough debate on the merits of this bill this time around, rather than early next year, when the political incentives to cave timidly yet again will likely be even greater.
The Democratic majority has made strides on other issues like children's health insurance against White House opposition. As important as these measures are, they do not excuse the Democrats from remedying the damage Mr. Bush has done to civil liberties and the Bill of Rights. That is their most important duty.
I'd still like to hear a lot more from the Democratic leadership - Harry Reid, in particular - as to why it was so important to pass the White House version of the FISA bill right before Congress adjourned, and without ample consideration, debate, and scrutiny. Is there something we're all missing here?
This is, both in policy and political terms, a huge setback for Democrats.
Just at the moment when we most need to be united and on the offensive, the party's active base is feeling puzzled and disappointed. (At best; at worst we're seething with a combination of fury, outrage, disbelief, and contempt.)
But more gravely, it's a chilling setback for the country.
Much of the worst of what we know about the actions of the Bush-Cheney regime has come almost entirely from whistleblowers horrified by the abuses of power they see:
- CIA insiders alerting the press to our global network of secret prisons,
- diplomatic and intelligence professionals exposing the fabrication of intelligence in order to frighten the country into a ruinous war,
- military lawyers who fought the policy of torture in Guantanamo and Afghanistan and lost,
- a UCMJ-respecting soldier turning over photos of Abu Ghraib that not only forced us to face the reality of U.S. torture but also led government lawyers to leak the memos showing that the 'few bad apples' were in the White House, establishing a policy of torture,
- an Army auditor calling attention to the corruption of padded, no-bid contracts for logistics and "reconstruction" in Iraq going to companies intimately connected to the President and Vice President,
- and the person or persons who exposed to NYTimes reporter James Risen the large-scale warrantless spying on U.S. citizens that flouted the law, bypassing the FISA courts set up thirty years to prevent a repeat of government spying on political opponents.
Only hours after passage of its new FISA bill, the administration raided the house of a man it suspects of being a source for Risen's report. Could the message be any clearer? They'll intercept the communications of anyone they have reason to think stands in their way or might expose further horrors of the last six years.
The Democratic leadership, failing to develop a coherent strategy to deal with an administration approach that's been used again and again and again, left the members of their caucus hanging out on their own.
DNI head McConnell was allowed to buttonhole Senators about "heightened threat", during a week in which there was also just coincidentally a beefed-up security presence on the Hill and briefings to all Congressional offices about an "al Qaeda threat" supposedly timed for "sometime between now and September 11" -- a threat which magically evaporated once the administration's FISA bill passed.
The consequence is that the regime's power to threaten and punish truth-tellers and those who try to hold it accountable is far greater than it was a week ago, because the tools with which to do so have been made legal -- with the blessing of both parties.