Senator Dodd: Lead The Resistance To The Dem Senate Cave-In On FISA

By Big Tent Democrat, Section Legislation
Posted on Thu Oct 18, 2007 at 11:59:39 AM EST
Tags: FISA, NSA wiretapping, Chris Dodd (all tags)

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Yesterday Senator Chris Dodd said:

While the President may think that it's right to offer immunity to those who break the law and violate the right to privacy of thousands of law-abiding Americans, I want to assure him it is not a value we have in common and I hope the same can be said of my fellow Democrats in the Senate.

"For too long we have failed to respect the rule of law and failed to protect our fundamental civil liberties. I will do what I can to see to it that no telecommunications giant that was complicit in this Administration's assault on the Constitution is given a get-out-of-jail-free card."

Senator Dodd, what you must do is lead the fight against the capitulation by your fellow Dem Senators on this issue:

Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources.

. . . It was a victory for President Bush, whose aides lobbied heavily against the Democrats' [House] bill, and an embarrassment for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who had pushed for the measure's passage. The draft Senate bill has the support of the intelligence committee's chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), and Bush's director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. It will include full immunity for those companies that can demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States.

More...

Here is another instance of the Congress abdicating its Constitutional duties. Senator Rockefeller and any Democrat (or Republican for that matter) that agrees to this is saying the Congress is irrelevant. The Executive Branch does not need to "demonstrate" anything to the Congress in order to get a blank check from these quislings.

Senator Dodd, do what you must, including a filibuster, to stop this evisceration of the separation of powers, of civil liberties, of honesty, fairness and justice. Implore your Dem colleagues, especially your fellow Presidential candidates in the Senate, to join you in this fight for the very principles that are the foundation of the Constitution and our Nation.

< Dems Drop No Telecom Immunity Demand From FISA Bill | S-Chip Veto Overide Fails in the House >

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Senator Dodd: Lead The Resistance To The Dem Senate Cave-In On FISA | 5 comments (5 topical)

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David Sirota claims that's a (none / 0) (#1)
by Geekesque on Thu Oct 18, 2007 at 12:28:56 PM EST

bourgeois issue:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/18/123738/56

I think the Constitution is the ultimate populist issue, but what do I know?

Where's Hillary? (none / 0) (#2)
by HeadScratcher on Thu Oct 18, 2007 at 12:31:33 PM EST

Where is the front runner, Hillary, on all of this? How about her husband, the ambassador to the world who will usher in a tide of good feelings to the U.S.A.?

Can you imagine if she used her/his clout as a former president and current front-runner to take this issue over?

It won't happen because the Clinton's are for the Clinton's and no one else. Keep supporting them, Jeralyn, and this is what you get.

: Hillary only cares about leading (none / 0) (#3)
by Geekesque on Thu Oct 18, 2007 at 12:56:34 PM EST

in polls and fundraising numbers.

Battle Stations!!! (none / 0) (#4)
by Sumner on Thu Oct 18, 2007 at 01:16:37 PM EST

Beacause even Chris Dodd doesn't seem to get it. The total surveillance is not limited to "thousands". That was the cover story. They have continually fed us larger and larger numbers, hoping each limited number would seem plausible, and that the growing concern would simply go away. These numbers are not all being divulged under oath.

We know the germ of the original idea - Total Information Awareness. It was conceived by Brian Hicks at SAIC and sold by Admiral John Poindexter. Just one problem - the Constitution got in the way. So it has been secretly repackaged. The idea will not die - it will not go away. The scope and breadth of what is going on was revealed when the idea was originally sold - before the objections drove the project into the shadows.

The masters it serves are not "National Security". After this Telcom Immunity debacle, that term has become a misnomer. The apparatus formerly conceived as "National Security" has since transmogrified into an apparatus of totalitarianism along the same lines as the Stasi, the former East German secret police.

The masters are the "5th Estate" - the Intelligence Communities combined with corporations, (or more generally, government wedded to corporations).

That is why AT&T serves RIAA with the same zeal that they spy for government. That is why mere pictures and videos are touted as egregious crimes warranting a lifetime imprisonment. They need the ideas of pornography and file-sharing, (or drugs) as bugaboos to be packaged as also constituting as great a threat as "terrorism", (that scary scary beast which facilitated their mad power grab in the first place).

Yet total surveillance is for the purpose of total control, it simply has no other. But on the continuum, the closer to utter totalitarianism society finds itself, the more ruthless and draconian the measures need be taken to both keep and resist control, because the natural instinct of man is to throw off the yolk of another's dominion over him. That is, it is in man's very genes to resist.

: I think Dodd gets it. (5.00 / 2) (#5)
by scribe on Thu Oct 18, 2007 at 01:49:33 PM EST

He's put a hold on the bill.
Here's the message from his campaign website:

The Military Commissions Act. Warrantless wiretapping. Shredding of Habeas Corpus. Torture. Extraordinary Rendition. Secret Prisons.
No more.
I have decided to place a "hold" on the latest FISA bill that would have included amnesty for telecommunications companies that enabled the President's assault on the Constitution by illegaly providing personal information on their customers without judicial authorization.
I said that I would do everything I could to stop this bill from passing, and I have.
It's about delivering results -- and as I've said before, the FIRST thing I will do after being sworn into office is restore the Constitution. But we shouldn't have to wait until then to prevent the further erosion of our country's most treasured document. That's why I am stopping this bill today.
Thank God for Men like Dodd.