You know things are getting bad for the Republicans when their main line of attack on retroactive immunity becomes completely reliant on falsehood. Conservative columnist Robert Novak pens a column in today’s Washington Post that peddles the lie that Democrats are only opposed to retroactive immunity to protect the interests of the trial lawyer lobby. Novak writes:

The true reason for blocking the bill was Senate-passed retroactive immunity to protect from lawsuits private telecommunications firms asked to eavesdrop by the government. The nation’s torts bar, vigorously pursuing such suits, has spent months lobbying hard against immunity.

The recess by House Democrats amounts to a judgment that losing the generous support of trial lawyers, the Democratic Party’s most important financial base, would be more dangerous than losing the anti-terrorist issue to Republicans. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed against the phone companies for giving individuals’ personal information to intelligence agencies without a warrant.

That’s a flat-out lie. First, the cases against the telecoms are being handled largely by the not-for-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU. Their lawyers are not making money on the outcome of these cases and are working in the interest of the Constitution and the rule of law. Glenn Greenwald recently interviewed Cindy Cohn of the EFF on this subject and her response serves as a top to bottom pre-buttal of these GOP talking points.

Most of the EFF lawyers worked in those big fancy firms for big fancy salaries, and took big paycuts to join us, because they wanted to do personally fulfilling work and feel like they were making the world a better place.

What I tell young lawyers who come to me and say: “I really want to work for EFF — you have such great lawyers,” I say: “Take your current paycheck, rip it in three pieces, take any third, and that’s about what you’ll get working for EFF.” The lawyers who work for EFF are making some of the biggest contributions to this organization, because they are making far less than they could on the open market in exchange for being able to work on things they believe in every day.

For Novak or any other Republican shill to say that the lawyers representing the plaintiffs against the big telecoms are in it for the money is wrong on its face and profoundly offensive.

Second, Matt Stoller of Open Left spoke with Jon Haber, CEO of the American Association of Justice. Here’s what Haber said:

No matter how much the RNC – at the bidding of telecomm CEOs – tries to deflect the real issue, we have nothing to do with illegal wiretapping since we actually believe in the rule of law.

That is, the trial lawyers aren’t lobbying Congress on retroactive immunity. Even the libertarian/conservative leaning Cato Institute describes the trial lawyers meme as “one of the biggest canards of the FISA debate.” It was hard to imagine a situation where a Republican talking point on FISA was more wrong than the “the world wil end if the Protect America Act expires” meme that was running rampant, but this may be it.