Month: January 2008

Obstructionism Could Cost the Republicans A Win

I’ve never been one to see a lot of virtue in the Senate’s traditions of collegiality across party lines. But now that the Republicans have so strongly cast their lot with obstructionist tactics for explicit partisan gain on the eve of the State of the Union, there may be a real value in the fact that this body doesn’t like it when one side of the aisle proverbially flips the Risk board off the table and prevents the game from continuing.

When the GOP moved to block every single amendment to the Intel bill yesterday, they likely set a lot of moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats against their tactics, at least in large enough numbers to ensure that Monday’s cloture vote on the Intel bill will be won by the Democrats.

Senators Specter, Whitehouse, Feinstein, and Bill Nelson all had their compromise amendments shut out. Those are amendments that, though bad, are borne out of a desire not to have the pure Intel bill be made into law. Now they may well be amenable to voting against cloture on the Intel bill so their amendments can be given a chance to be considered by the full Senate.

Even Jay Rockefeller, Dick Cheney’s partner in writing the bad Intel bill, isn’t going to go along with it. D-Day says, “Jay Rockefeller today announced on the Senate floor that he would not support cloture on the FISA bill without more amendments voted on.”

We all know the Republicans in the Senate have brought a vicious strategy of obstructionism to the FISA fight. We will soon find out if they’ve gone too far and assured their own defeat.

Cross posted at the CREDO Blog.

Meaningful Liability Protection

Kia Franklin at Tort Deform identifies the real effect of the Republicans demanding retroactive immunity for the big telecoms – making America less safe.

Bush, Cheney, and executive administration officials have been saying in the past two days that if we don’t scurry and pass this bill, and in the form and fashion that Bush wants it, it’ll be at our peril. They discuss this in a do-or-die fashion that creates a sense of urgency and drama, and also depicts opponents to retroactive immunity as the bad guys who don’t want to protect America. Yet their framing it this way doesn’t make it so, and this time I think the American public is wise enough to recognize that. The Administration has yet to explain how retroactive immunity will really help protect Americans, yet it threatens to veto any version of the FISA bill that doesn’t provide it.

Which leads the reasonable person to conclude that supporters of retroactive immunity are NOT trying to protect America. They’re trying to protect America’s favorite corporate big dogs, and they’re trying to protect the executive branch’s unfettered power to wave the wand and say magic words like “executive privilege” and “classified information,” etc., in order to get out of any mess they make, regardless of the repercussions for real people. That’s what I call off the hook protection….

The best protection against liability is to not do things that make you liable for violating people’s constitutional rights. Now that’s real meaningful liability protection.

Right on! The big telecom companies knew what the law was. AT&T helped write FISA back in the late 70s. This was not a case of AT&T and Verizon receiving shoddy legal advice or making decisions blindly in an area of law that was unfamiliar to their business practices.

The reality is that giving the telecoms retroactive immunity would be creating a different set of rules for them than everyone else. If you or I were to break the law, we wouldn’t ever be able to expect that the US Congress would then rewrite laws to excuse us for our law breaking before we were ever even found guilty or liable for our actions. Why wouldn’t that happen? Well, because we are a nation of laws and the expectation is that everyone is equal under the law. And why do we see something different now? Because the Bush/Cheney administration and their cohorts in the Senate want to ensure that no one ever finds out the true extent of their abuse of power from the very first days in the White House in January 2001, right up to today.

The discovery phase of court cases against the big telecoms that helped the Bush administration spy on the American public may well be the last, best chance for us to know what has gone on under President Bush. It’s no wonder that the GOP is going to such great lengths to obstruct any decent legislation from being passed governing America’s surveillance laws. This is how they plan to keep everything under wraps for good.

Cross posted at the CREDO Blog.

How to Respond to Republican Obstructionism

Senator Russ Feingold put out this blistering statement in response to yesterday’s Republican obstructionism on FISA legislation:

“The conduct of Senate Republicans yesterday was shameless. After weeks of insisting that it is absolutely critical to finish the FISA legislation by February 1, even going so far as to object to a one-month extension of the Protect America Act, they obstructed all efforts to actually work on the bill. Now they want to simply ram the deeply flawed Intelligence Committee bill through the Senate. They refused to allow amendments to be offered or voted on, including my straight-forward amendment to require that the government provide copies of FISA Court orders and pleadings for review in a classified setting, so that Members of Congress can understand how FISA has been interpreted and is being applied. If the Republicans succeed in cutting off debate on Monday, the Senate won’t even get to vote on the amendment Senator Dodd and I want to offer to deny retroactive immunity to telecom companies that allegedly cooperated with the administration’s illegal wiretapping program.

“Democrats should not allow the Republicans to ram this bill through the Senate without amendments. Monday’s cloture vote will be a test of whether the majority is willing to stand up to the administration and stand up for our rights.”

Marcy Wheeler has a phenomenal set of talking points to help clarify what the Republicans are trying to do and how we should respond by stopping cloture on the bad FISA bill.

  • The Republicans’ obstruction is preventing their colleagues’ amendments from getting a fair hearing.
  • The SSCI bill gives Bush and Cheney immunity for breaking the law.
  • The amendments will improve on the SSCI bill, produce a bill that the House will pass, and still ensure the Administration gets what it says it needs: no limitations on wiretapping of foreigners in other countries.
  • Jay Rockefeller is putting his donors’ interests over the Constitution and the privacy of American citizens.
  • The Republicans are trying to prevent any real oversight over minimization–the process by which the the Administration ensures that it does not collect or keep information on Americans incidentally.
  • The Republicans are trying to prevent Congress from specifying that FISA as the exclusive means to conduct electronic surveillance–which is the only way to ensure the President follows this law.
  • The Republicans are trying to make it easy for the government to wiretap you while you’re overseas.
  • The Republicans are trying to make it easy for the government to use data mining and bulk wiretap techniques that don’t require the government to select real suspects for their wiretapping.
  • The Republicans want to give the telecoms immunity for breaking the law in 2004, when they continued to wiretap Americans for a period with only the authorization of the White House Counsel, and not the Attorney General.
  • The Republicans’ obstruction risks leaving us with limited surveillance when the Protect America Act expires in February.

Simply put, the GOP is doing everything they can to make any part of the Intelligence Committee’s bill better. They won’t let retroactive immunity be removed. They don’t want there to be the slightest hint of compromise. They just want to protect the Bush administration and their buddies in Big Telecom from any hint of oversight or investigation for warrantless wiretapping and illegal domestic surveillance.

Cross posted at the CREDO Blog.

Born Yesterday

Abijah Adams at Lead or Get Out of the Way absolutely destroys Dianne Feinstein and her “good faith” FISA amendment:

All it takes is “good faith” and Bush can granted sweeping spy powers. The FISA court merely needs to grant that the Bush Administration acted in “good faith,” for them and their telecom companies to be granted retroactive immunity.

What? Why?
What. In. The. World… What the fuck makes Dianne think that she can trust the Bush Administration AT ALL?

Good faith? Jesus God, are you serious, lady? Oh, I didn’t notice that you were born just minutes ago and have yet to open your eyes, let alone meet the Bush Administration. So you have no idea what’s been happening the last 8 years, obviously, yes?

Read the whole thing, it’s devastating.

Dodd’s Brief Explanation of Why We Oppose the Intel Committee Bill

Via Athenae at First Draft, here’s an excerpt from Chris Dodd’s floor speech today in opposition to the Intelligence Committee bill that explains clearly why he – and everyone who cares about the rule of law – should oppose the legislation.

Mr. President, I oppose the Intelligence bill on these five counts for the same reason I oppose retroactive immunity: because where the president’s power is strongest, the rule of law should be strongest, as well. The Intelligence Committee’s bill means more power—and less law.

It reduces court oversight nearly to the point of symbolism; it could allow the targeting of Americans on false pretences; it opens us up to new, twisted rationales for warrantless wiretapping, the very thing it ought to prevent; it could allow bulk collection, as soon as an administration has the wherewithal to build such an enormous dragnet; and it sets all of these deeply flawed provisions in stone for six years.

In sum, Mr. President, the Intelligence version is entirely too trusting a bill. With its immunity, and with its wiretapping provisions, it has a simple answer to George Bush’s “trust me”: an all-too-eager “yes!”

I leave my colleagues with a simple question: Has that trust been earned?

Keep this in mind as we fight against Republican obstructionism. The GOP has blocked efforts to make the Intel bill better. They want to keep it just as it is, expanding power for President Bush and gifting retroactive immunity to big telecom companies, in order to protect the Administration from the discovery phases of the dozens of cases against companies like AT&T and Verizon. They’d rather let the current law lapse through their obstruction than force the President to veto a bill that isn’t just so with his wishes for power and protection.

Join tens of thousands of CREDO activists and tell your senators to oppose retroactive immunity and warrantless wiretapping. Your help today can ensure that we keep moving towards good legislation on Monday.

Cross posted at the CREDO Blog.

Republican Obstructionism Slows FISA Debate

OK, so here’s my understanding of where we stand in the Senate.

The GOP has been delaying and trying to stop debate on amendments to the underlying bill, the Intelligence Committee bill, since they successfully tabled the SJC amendment.

Republican Minority leader Mitch McConnell filed for cloture on the Intel bill and has objected to having any amendments that would make the bill better. He wants to keep it in a state that he knows will please George Bush and Dick Cheney.

The cloture vote will be on Monday at 4:30PM Eastern.

Democrats will need to muster 41 votes to block cloture. We got 36 votes today on the Judiciary amendment.

We have three and a half days to generate the most pressure possible to make sure the Democrats vote as a block to oppose cloture.

One way forward would be if Senators Clinton and Obama each showed up and voted against cloture, while getting three of the senators who have endorsed them for President but voted to table the Judiciary amendment, we would win. Evan Bayh has endorsed Hillary Clinton while Ben Nelson and Claire McCaskill have endorsed Barack Obama.

Marcy Wheeler makes a convincing case for how the Democrats can win this fight.

We’re getting a bit more time to organize, but we have to use it.

Take action now and ask your senators to vote to against retroactive immunity.

Update: Tim Tagaris has more scheduling notes and what it means at Open Left.

 

Cross posted at the CREDO Blog.