Huge Participation Brings Big Results

This is remarkable: CREDO Action members have sent so many emails to the presidential candidates in such a short period of time that we’ve shut down the Obama campaign’s email servers!

At last count, over 56,325 68,421 emails have been sent through yesterday’s action alert, which called upon presidential candidates and sitting Senators Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama to leave the campaign trail and help stop retroactive immunity and bad FISA legislation from becoming law.

Don’t let up now! We’re making the people who want to be President know that we expect them to lead right now.

Keep the pressure on by emailing Senators Clinton, McCain, and Obama now, and telling your family and friends to do the same.

Click here to take action!

Cross posted at the CREDO Blog.

Disclosure: I have joined the CREDO Mobile team to stop the Bush administration’s illegal wiretapping program and hold the telecom companies accountable for their lawbreaking.

FISA Promises & Big Telecom Money

Last December Chris Dodd, alone among presidential contenders, led a fight to stop retroactive immunity for big telecom companies like AT&T and Verizon from becoming law. Dodd came off the campaign trail to stand in the well of the Senate for almost eleven hours, arguing against retroactive immunity and for accountability for the violations of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties. Dodd was prepared to filibuster, but his tactics succeeded in stopping the FISA legislation from proceeding without going that step. However, he was alone when he should not have been.

Other Democratic senators made pledges to be there beside Dodd in the event he had to filibuster bad FISA legislation. Here’s what Barack Obama’s campaign had said about his willingness to support a filibuster:

To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. [TPM: Election Central, 10/24/07]

And here is what Hillary Clinton said herself:

As matters stand now, I could not support it and I would support a filibuster absent additional information coming forward that would convince me differently. [TPM: Election Central, 10/23/07]

Senator John McCain has not said that he will support a filibuster to stop retroactive immunity.

Keep in mind that when Chris Dodd took to the Senate floor in December, the assumption was that a filibuster was about to take place and it did not only because other procedural measures were deployed that forced Harry Reid to pull the bill.

So, if Clinton and Obama would not hold themselves by their word, how are they reaching this decision? According to Center for Responsive Politics, Senators McCain, Clinton and Obama are by far the top three recipients of telecom industry cash in the 2008 cycle, including tens of thousands of dollars each from AT&T and Verizon. Here’s the breakdown:

Telephone Utilities: Top 20 Recipients 2008 Cycle:

1. John McCain $176,800

2. Hillary Clinton $106,300

3. Barack Obama $87,236

AT&T:
2. Obama, Barack (D-IL) $43,483

3. Clinton, Hillary (D-NY) $43,400

5. McCain, John (R-AZ) $23,700

Verizon:
1. Clinton, Hillary (D-NY) $24,850

2. Obama, Barack (D-IL) $22,753

5. McCain, John (R-AZ) $19,350

Senators Clinton, McCain, and Obama are all seeking the presidency and have spoke about their desire to change how Washington works. The opportunity to do that now, in 2008, is right in front of them — leave the campaign trail and do what the big telecom companies are hoping they won’t: stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law.

Contact Clinton, McCain and Obama through this Credo action alert: Call on them to get back to DC and protect our civil liberties.

Cross posted at CREDO Blog

Disclosure: I have joined the CREDO Mobile team to stop the Bush administration’s illegal wiretapping program and hold the telecom companies accountable for their lawbreaking.

Bad Fish

As a New Yorker who loves sushi and eats quite a lot of tuna, this article in the Times on the high levels of mercury in tuna found in NYC sushi restaurants is pretty troubling. I don’t think I currently approach the danger levels cited for tuna consumption, but if I ate as much sushi as I want to, I certainly would have to worry.

Silly Season

Today’s attack video by Clinton on Obama’s movement from supporting a single payer health care system to not supporting a single payer system (which is the position Clinton also holds) makes me wonder if we’re approaching a point where ads like the one above might be made in earnest.

Digby captured the zeitgeist well:

[The Democratic candidates] are nearly identical in terms of policy, all have political gifts and bring something to the table and I find none of the various electability arguments particularly persuasive. Indeed, I believe that the fact they are so similar in all the important ways is one of the reasons everyone is at each other’s throats on this — since there’s no daylight on policy everyone is having to argue their case based on their own emotional connection to the candidate or what the candidate symbolizes, which often devolves into ugly invective. It really does become personal under those circumstances. You can see the result of this in the candidates’ own debate last night. They weren’t really fighting over anything important because they don’t actually disagree about anything important. But they had to fight. It’s an election. Somebody’s got to win.

The attacks will become more petty, vicious, and stupid. How low can they go before this hits rock bottom?

A Short Timeline for the FISA Fight?

Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker has an interesting update on the pending FISA fight.

When [Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid] tried to get a thirty-day extension to that date last month, Republicans blocked it. So this morning he said on the Senate floor that he’d try again. The time pressures are real, he said, and suggested that even if the Senate were to somehow pass a bill, it would be mighty difficult to get it through the House and to the president’s desk before February 1st. The Senate itself will be a high hurdle, with Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) filibustering over a retroactive immunity provision on the one hand and Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) saying that the authority for warrantless wiretapping stems from the Constitution on the other.

Reid is apparently looking for a brief extension of the poorly-named Protect America Act, solely for the purpose of having an easier legislative calendar to work with. The Republicans don’t seem anxious to work with Reid on this, as they are content to try to ram a bad bill through while holding Democrats over the barrel with accusations of being soft on terrorism. Nowhere to be seen in the back and forth of media statements is upholding the rule of law and protecting Americans’ civil liberties.

It looks like the FISA fight will begin later this week or next week, though today’s news makes it look like the debate will be limited by the February 1st expiration of PAA. This is only bad if the Senate continues on its course of trying to pass the bad legislation that came out of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Big telecom companies partnered with the Bush administration to violate untold numbers of Americans’ privacy. Information and wiretaps were handed over without warrant. It strikes me that the best solution would be one that hastily rights the wrongs done by these companies and their allies in the White House, rather than a course of action that rushes through another bad bill with minimal debate in the Senate.

Update:

Here’s a statement from Reid’s office on the GOP rejecting an effort to extend the PAA on month to allow for further negotiations.

“Democrats today offered a one-month extension of the FISA bill so that Congress has the time it needs to debate legislation that improves our nation’s ability to fight terrorism while protecting Americans’ civil liberties.  I am disappointed that Republicans have objected to that extension.

“We are committed to giving our intelligence professionals the tools they need to make America more secure.  The minority’s obstruction is an irresponsible way to approach national security legislation.”

Cross posted at CREDO Blog.

Disclosure: I have joined the CREDO Mobile team to stop the Bush administration’s illegal wiretapping program and hold the telecom companies accountable for their lawbreaking.

Taking Action on FISA

Credo Action has launched an action alert to their members, asking them to contact Senators Clinton, Obama, and McCain to request that they come off of the campaign trail to stop bad FISA legislation that includes retroactive immunity. (Full disclosure: I am consulting for Credo Action / Working Assets on their FISA campaign.) It’s time to call on these candidates to make defending the Constitution a greater priority than presidential politics.

Take action through Credo’s action page.

The request on Clinton, Obama, and McCain is not an unreasonable one. They claim to be leaders and they seek to hold our highest office. They should be willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that before they take the oath of the presidency, they honor their oaths as senators to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

Given that we are in a political season and the request we make is for these presidential candidates to leave the campaign trail has political implications, it is worth noting that Americans are strongly opposed to warrantless surveillance and retroactive immunity. New polling out from the Mellman Group shows that at a rate of two to one Americans want the government to get a warrant before tapping Americans’ international calls. At almost the same rates and with a majority across the political spectrum, Americans are opposed to blanket warrants. And 57% of Americans oppose giving the telecom companies immunity.

Returning to Washington to stop retroactive immunity isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s a politically popular position.

Single Payer Health Care

This video put out by the Clinton campaign hits Barack Obama for moving to the right on health care and not supporting a single payer system now, despite supporting one in 2003.

A logical question that this attack by Clinton on Obama for not supporting a single payer system would be: Is Hillary Clinton’s health care proposal a single payer system?

The answer: No, of course it’s not.

In fact, the link to her health care plan in her issues drop down is “Providing Affordable & Accessible Health Care.” Which could be described as a 300 million payer system.

I’m happy to acknowledge that Clinton has put forward a health care proposal that is somewhat more comprehensive than Barack Obama’s. But it isn’t a single payer system. And while Obama may have moved to the right since 2003 on health care, both Clinton and Obama are in the wrong place on the single payer issue.

In reality, this video is an attack on Obama not on substance, but on changing his position…to the same position as Clinton. It’s cute and well edited and, in the end, a trivial charge (flip-flopping) that only highlights Clinton’s similar wrongness on single payer health care.

Writers, Who Needs ‘Em?

Via Paddy at Cliff Schecter’s blog.

I was actually just talking with a friend last night about how remarkably funny the videos the WGA has put out during the course of their strike. They’ve almost all been significantly more funny and creative than anything you see on TV, which is a pretty clear statement about how destructive editorial control by TV executives and producers is on the creative process. Frankly, if the writers had final say in what the content of their shows was, I’d probably end up watching a lot more TV.

Also, it’s great to continue to see so many prominent actors stand with the WGA and support their efforts to inform the public about what’s going on in Hollywood.

A Bad Name

Barack Obama, in last night’s debate, speaking about President Bush and VP Cheney:

“The one good thing that they have done for us is that they have given their party a very bad name.”

Yes. Maybe Obama gets it after all.  Then again, his praising Ronald Reagan and calling the GOP the party of ideas tends to give Republicans a good name.

Let’s just hope the Bush/Cheney line is something we see more of and the awful week of Obama’s GOP praise-fest can be left behind, never to be repeated.

MLK Day

I went to high school in New Hampshire, one of the last states to honor MLK Day as a holiday. As a result of the state’s sad history of not honoring the fallen civil rights leader, my private high school had a tradition of not holding classes in honor of Martin Luther King Day and instead using the day to hold workshops on what I’d broadly describe as diversity issues. Subjects ranged from on campus ethnic tensions to gay rights to how Title IX works and so on.

One of the workshops I attended my senior year was facilitated by a representative from Students for a Free Tibet and was about the modern history of Tibet, the invasion by Mao’s Red Army in 1949-1950, and the subsequent fifty years of China’s military occupation of Tibet. The talk was given by Lhadon Tethong, then SFT’s Programs Director, but now SFT’s Executive Director. She’s a Canadian Tibetan, having been born in exile and grown up in and around Tibetan refugee communities, hearing stories from her family about Tibet, the Chinese occupation, and what it means to be a Tibetan patriot. These are the stories she told us on Martin Luther King Day in January, 2000 and something in me clicked.

Maybe it was that I hadn’t had the opportunity to think about Tibet in a full and authentic way before. Maybe I just was ready to give myself to a worthy cause — despite dabbling in work with environmental protection, the homeless, and anti-death penalty campaigning, I’d never found myself fully invested in a movement. Maybe it was hearing an impassioned, educated, clear call for help for the Tibetan people by a Tibetan (and not, say Richard Gere or Steven Seagal). Whatever the case, I was convinced.

I immediately got involved in my high school’s SFT chapter and before I new it I was participating in a relay hunger fast, helping fundraise for SFT’s international headquarters, interning at SFT’s office in New York, and taking part in protests outside the World Bank. I found it easy to devote myself to a cause that I saw as true and just and right. The Tibetan people in exile and inside Tibet needed help amplifying their voice for independence. I would do what I could to make it possible.

I started working for Students for a Free Tibet in a full time capacity in the spring of 2005. I worked for two full years doing operations and communications work before leaving to join the Dodd campaign. I’ve remained in close contact with my friends and coworkers from the Tibet movement and have no doubt that I will continue to work towards Tibetan independence as long as I have to until Tibet is free.

I say all of this and am reminded that my eight years working in support of Tibetan independence started as part of a celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life. I believe people have a right not to be treated as second class citizens, not to be silenced, not to have their religious beliefs banned or limited, and not to be imprisoned for voicing their opposition to a harsh military dictatorship. These are not extreme positions to hold, but ones steeped in democracy and respect for the rule of law. I believe this is work closely in line with the example set by Dr. King.