As recently as this morning, McCain again told reporters that he planned on returning to the Senate for this evening’s vote on the economic stimulus, stating that Congress needed to quickly pass legislation.
The measure, blocked by conservatives, fell just one vote short of the 60 needed to end debate. At the “last minute,” McCain decided to skip the vote, even though his plane landed in DC in time. McCain claimed that he was “too busy“:
“I haven’t had a chance to talk about it at all, have not had the opportunity to, even,” McCain said. “We’ve just been too busy, focused on other stuff. I don’t know if I’m doing that. We’ve got a couple of meetings scheduled.”
Both Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) were able to return to the Senate and vote on the bill.
Voting “no” with Republican leaders would have offended millions of Social Security recipients and the disabled veterans not scheduled to receive rebates. Voting “yes,” on the other hand, risked alienating Bush, GOP leaders and conservatives already suspicious of McCain’s political leanings. McCain was speaking Thursday before a meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, a group that booed him last year in absentia.
If he can't stand up to the Republican terrorists in his own GOP's base, you can be certain that even the mention of the words "al Qaeda" will make him wet his pants. Those words seem to have that effect on a lot of conservatives these days, so no surprise about that one... Never mind that he turned his back on the elderly and disabled veterans because he is a scared little old man.
The rest of Congress could learn a thing or two about leadership from Senator Dodd, and we thank him for his efforts in protecting our freedoms. Keep up the good work!
In December 2005, the New York Times reported that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Americans have had their phones wiretapped by the National Security Agency (NSA) without any judicial review. But the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed by Congress in 1978, prohibits domestic spying unless a warrant is first issued by the FISA Court. By authorizing government spies to bypass the process mandated by FISA, President Bush authorized them to break the law.
The so-called “Protect America Act,” which passed in August, made the situation worse by sanctioning a legal infrastructure under which American citizens might unwittingly be subject to daily, repeated invasions of privacy or violations of other constitutional rights. These liberties are not abstract or optional. Freedom from government spying on our private lives is at the core of what it means to be an American – the kind of personal liberty that hundreds of thousands of Americans have died to protect.
All parties involved must be held accountable for any illegal activity, including telecommunications companies (telecoms) that satisfied government requests for information about private communications. FISA currently provides sufficient mechanisms to allow telecoms to proceed lawfully with such requests. Every American should have the confidence that our judicial system will ensure that telecoms will not be permitted to circumvent this established process and undermine our fundamental right to privacy.
It is unacceptable that the FISA reform being debated now seeks blanket immunity for the telecoms’ alleged complicity in the Administration’s actions. If the telecoms never have to testify, Americans may never know the true extent to which they have been targeted for surveillance. We have a right to know what’s been done and how far the overreaching went.
In protecting the telecoms, the Administration is protecting itself. At a minimum, the Administration should not be given the power to bury the secrets of its domestic spying program by keeping the telecoms out of court. Telecom immunity not only has the potential to excuse illegal activity, it also precludes the public from getting access to information and prevents Congress from conducting effective oversight.
Immunity compromises will not serve the interests of the American people. Substituting the government as the defendant in telecom lawsuits will only further rob Americans of their day in court by forcing them to sue a government that may use the power of the executive, state secrets, and other “privileges” to withhold information. Reimbursing the telecoms for their legal costs through indemnification rests financial burden on the taxpayers – essentially Americans paying for spying to which they object.
Congress should err on the side of our Constitution and not bow to political pressure by signing off on telecom immunity. Americans deserve nothing less.
There is no reason to immunize the telecom corporations because they are already immunized if they had a good faith reason to believe they were following the law. The only reason to immunize them is to prevent the truth about the extent of the lawbreaking from coming to light.
The Bush team argue impending financial doom for the telecom industry should lawsuits be permitted to continue. However, at this time, the financial impact is speculative (pdf file) with a market that “seems unconcerned” about the lawsuits filed against telecoms:
For example, when the complaint in Hepting v. AT&T Corp. was filed and when AT&T’s motion to dismiss the suit was denied, AT&T’s stock price remained essentially unaffected. The entirety of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s regulatory system requiring public filings and disclosures is premised on the idea that, when the relevant information is available publicly, the market is the most effective indicator of the value of a corporation. That the stock price of AT&T was unaffected by the suit indicates the market’s determination that the company’s financial footing remains sound, despite the potential liability.
Moreover, telecommunications carriers have survived enormous payouts in class action suits in the past. For example, in September of this year, Sprint received preliminary approval from the court for a $30 million class-action settlement. And in 1994, AT&T agreed to pay a $100 million settlement. Just as they have for the other risks incumbent in their business, telecommunications carriers have liability insurance to protect them in the event of an adverse civil judgment. And if, at some point in the future, a series of judgments comes to present a threat of widespread bankruptcy in the telecommunications industry, the government may take action at that time. But any preemptive liability shield is premature and unneeded.
Thus, should the telecom lawsuits proceed and if damages are awarded by the courts and if the damages are not covered by telecom liability insurance, and if Congress then determines that a bailout is needed for the industry, then Congress has the authority to legislate funding to the industry, thus preserving the plaintiffs’ right to a judicial remedy and the public’s right to a transparent government. As Sen. Feingold notes:
If the companies engaged in such widespread illegal conduct that the damages would be enormous, Congress can intervene to limit the damages. That’s a far more appropriate response than simply giving the companies a free pass for any illegal conduct.
Moreover, if the concern is financial liability, why is the immunity so broad that “cases will be dismissed even if they do not seek money damages but only declaratory and injunctive relief.”
The lawsuit distraction is just that... A distraction from the real issue of the bush illegally spying on Americans.
A former telecom executive told us that efforts to obtain call details go back to early 2001, predating the 9/11 attacks and the president's now celebrated secret executive order. The source, who asked not to be identified so as not to out his former company, reports that the NSA approached U.S. carriers and asked for their cooperation in a "data-mining" operation, which might eventually cull "millions" of individual calls and e-mails.
Like the pressure applied to ITT a half-century ago, our source says the government was insistent, arguing that his competitors had already shown their patriotism by signing on. The NSA would not comment on the issue, saying that, "We do not discuss details of actual or alleged operational issues."
Although the president told the nation that his NSA eavesdropping program was limited to known Al Qaeda agents or supporters abroad making calls into the U.S., comments of other administration officials and intelligence veterans indicate that the NSA cast its net far more widely. AT&T technician Mark Klein inadvertently discovered that the whole flow of Internet traffic in several AT&T operations centers was being regularly diverted to the NSA, a charge indirectly substantiated by John Yoo, the Justice Department lawyer who wrote the official legal memos legitimizing the president's warrantless wiretapping program. Yoo told FRONTLINE: "The government needs to have access to international communications so that it can try to find communications that are coming into the country where Al Qaeda's trying to send messages to cell members in the country. In order to do that, it does have to have access to communication networks."
Conventional wisdom has long been that the bulk of the surveillance operations -- groundbreaking because they lacked judicial oversight -- involved primarily telephone calls. However, officials say the Bush administration's program frequently went after e-mail and other Internet traffic.
These actions by the bush administration go far beyond being simply criminal. They are an attack on the The Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
What part of these oaths do the politicians that swear to them fail to understand here?
Presidential Oath:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
For Congress Members:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter."
Many of these politicians' actions are not simply impeachable offenses for a failure to uphold their oaths of office, but exhibit a heretical acceptance of criminal actions and contempt for the founding documents that could only be described as treason.
The handwriting has been on the wall for some time, but it now seems certain that Senate Democrats will pass a new FISA bill that contains retroactive immunity for telecoms, shielding them from lawsuits over their cooperation with the Bush Administration in its far-reaching warrantless wiretapping program.
Harry Reid -- who has (a) done more than any other individual to ensure that Bush's demands for telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping powers will be met in full and (b) allowed the Republicans all year to block virtually every bill without having to bother to actually filibuster -- went to the Senate floor yesterday and, with the scripted assistance of Mitch McConnell and Pat Leahy, warned Chris Dodd, Russ Feingold and others that they would be selfishly wreaking havoc on the schedules of their fellow Senators (making them work over the weekend, ruining their planned "retreat," and even preventing them from going to Davos!) if they bothered everyone with their annoying, pointless little filibuster.
To do so, Reid announced that, unlike for the multiple filibusters from Republican colleagues, he would actually force Dodd and company to engage in a real filibuster. This is what Reid said:
[I]f people think they are going to talk this to death, we are going to be in here all night. This is not something we are going to have a silent filibuster on. If someone wants to filibuster this bill, they are going to do it in the openness of the Senate.
That is what Democrats have been urging Reid to do to the filibustering Republicans all year -- in order to dramatize their obstructionism -- but he has refused to make them actually filibuster anything, generously agreeing instead that every bill requires 60 votes. Instead, he reserves such punishment only for the members of his own caucus trying to take a stand for the rule of law and the Constitution, those who are trying finally to bring some accountability to this administration.
As I noted in my post yesterday, Reid had the audacity to send his spokesman, Jim Manley, to falsely claim to the New York Times that "Senator Reid intends to do everything he can to strip immunity from the bill" -- even though the exact opposite is true. Reid is engaged in at least as much maneuvering to ensure that Bush and Cheney get what they want here as McConnell would be willing to do if he were the Majority Leader.
This is beyond ridiculous, and Harry Reid needs to give up the Senate gavel or be stripped of this position by the rest of the party. This is not simply about retroactive immunity for telcoms that acted illegally... This is about a criminal offense and treasonous act that bush confessed to in front of millions of television viewers.
This assault on The Constitution and the Bill of Rights by politicians across the political spectrum must be stopped if democracy and freedom are to survive in the USA.
Speaking to reporters today, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) said that he would again filibuster any bill that a provision in it granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms -- or as he put it, "use every tool at my disposal as a Senator" to stop it. So if you were wondering whether anything has changed since Dodd dropped out of the presidential race, nothing has.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) sent a letter to President Bush today to ask that he support an extension to the existing surveillance bill -- which seems very unlikely to happen. That letter's below.
Go Dodd! Feingold too! And any of the other Senators that understand what this country is really about...
As angry as I am at this news (and trust me, it’s a good thing John doesn’t like swearing in posts, because I’ve got some words for Harry that would make a sailor blush), and as much as I encourage you to contact Harry Reid, I would also ask that you take a deep breath before doing so
I have one word for Harry Reid:
PRIMARY
If the people don't chase you out of Washington, DC with pitchforks in hand before then?
We won this battle but the GOP war against The Constitution and The Bill of Rights is still on. Meanwhile, Dodd sends a message to the hundreds of thousands of people that supported his efforts:
One of my recently discovered favorite blogs is Lead or Get Out of the Way. It's authors write under pseudonyms pulled from Revolutionary era patriots - their goal is to help promote more and better Democrats. One of the coolest features of their site is that they use two tag clouds to sort out who is leading the most and who most needs to get out of the way.
Russert: As you well know you voted to authorize this war, voted to fund this war at lest ten times. Are you now saying that you will not vote one more penny for the war in Iraq.
All of these words are fine and dandy... You are supporting cutting off funding the Iraq. And you want to be the President of the USA? How about showing some leadership skills first, OK?
Get a filibuster proof group of Senators to refuse to allow voting on any more money going into the Iraq follies and even I, being an ardent anti-Hillary advocating Liberal, will consider supporting your candidacy.
Just a reminder of what a real leader needs to do in order to end the funding of this disaster:
As a form of obstructionism in a legislature or other decision making body, a filibuster is an attempt to extend debate upon a proposal in order to delay or completely prevent a vote on its passage. The term first came into use in the United States Senate, where Senate rules permit a senator, or a series of senators, to speak for as long as they wish and on any topic they choose, unless a supermajority group of 60% of senators brings debate to a close by invoking cloture.
If you don't have the skills to lead a minority of the Senate to do the right thing here, why in the hell would anyone in their right mind give you the keys to the White House?
The same thing goes for all of the other all-talk and walkless candidates in the Senate. If none of you have the leadership skills to walk over Reid and lead a simple minority of 41 Senators to filibuster more Iraq funding for bush's failed policies, than none of you have the leadership skills to be the President.
You want the support of the Dem voters? The overwhelming number of Americans that are against the Iraq follies? The no-party-affiliation indies, like myself, that make up the fastest growing voter block in the nation?
Prove it now.
But... Don't even bother to come back as "THE" Dem candidate asking for my support if this is still an election issue later on. Because most of us know that you can end it NOW with a simple filibuster. That is how to yield the power of the purse.
