Outrage. Fury. Disgust. Where is their respect for law?

(And hooray for Christopher Dodd, who's put a "hold" on the bill giving immunity to telecoms!)

"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." - Sen. Christopher Dodd

The Bush administration has acknowledged repeatedly breaking numerous laws by illegally spying on Americans. To add insult to injury, Congress now wants to let the telecoms companies that cooperated in this ongoing scandal off the hook! Where has happened to our elected representatives? Where is their backbone, their respect for judicial authority and for civil liberties??!!

A federal court has ruled that the telecoms companies knew it was illegal to spy on Americans' comunications and are therefore responsible for their actions. Yet these senators think they simply can rewrite the law? Outrageous!

Some excerpts from Glenn Greenwald's excellent piece in Salon:

"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. . ."

"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.

"Such a demonstration, which the bill says could be made in secret, would wipe out a series of pending lawsuits alleging violations of privacy rights by telecommunications companies that provided telephone records, summaries of e-mail traffic and other information to the government after Sept. 11, 2001, without receiving court warrants. Bush had repeatedly threatened to veto any legislation that lacked this provision.

Congress tries to intervene in judicial system

"Let's just describe very factually and dispassionately what has happened here. Congress -- led by Senators, such as Jay Rockefeller, who have received huge payments from the telecom industry, and by privatized intelligence pioneer Mike McConnell, former Chairman of the secretive intelligence industry association that has been demanding telecom amnesty -- is going to intervene directly in the pending lawsuits against AT&T and other telecoms and declare them the winners on the ground that they did nothing wrong. Because of their vast ties to the telecoms, neither Rockefeller nor McConnell could ever appropriately serve as an actual judge in those lawsuits."

"...The question of whether the telecoms acted in "good faith" in allowing warrantless government spying on their customers is already pending before a court of law. In fact, that is one of the central issues in the current lawsuits -- one that AT&T has already lost in a federal court.

"Yet that is the issue that Jay Rockefeller and Mike McConnell -- operating in secret -- are taking away from the courts by passing a law declaring the telecoms to have won ("Senators this week began reviewing classified documents . . . and came away from that early review convinced that the companies had 'acted in good faith' in cooperating with what they believed was a legal and presidentially authorized program"). They are directly interfering in these lawsuits and issuing a "ruling" in favor of AT&T and other telecoms that is exactly the opposite of the one an actual court of law has already issued."

Judge previously ruled against AT&T

"Just think about what is really happening here. AT&T's customers sued them for violating their privacy in violation of long-standing federal laws and for violating their Fourth Amendment rights. Even with the most expensive armies of lawyers possible, AT&T and other telecoms are losing in a court of law. The federal judge presiding over the case ruled against them -- ruled that the law is so clear they could not possibly have believed that what they did was legal -- and most observers, having heard the Oral Argument on appeal, predicted that they will lose in the Court of Appeals, too.

"So AT&T and other telecoms went to Washington and -- led by Bush 41 Attorney General (and now Verizon General Counsel) William Barr and in cooperation with their former colleague, Mike McConnell -- began paying former government officials such as Dan Coats and Jamie Gorelick to convince political officials to whom they give money, such as Jay Rockefeller, to pass a law declaring them the victors in these lawsuits and be relieved of all liability -- all based on assertions that a court of law has already rejected. They are literally buying a judicial victory in Congress -- just like Carothers warned that third-world countries must avoid if they want to become functioning democracies under the "rule of law" ("Above all, government officials must refrain from interfering with judicial decision-making").

"And in the process -- for good measure -- they have ensured that there will never be any judicial ruling as to whether our government and the telecom industry broke the law in how they spied on us for years without warrants. They have placed what they did literally beyond the reach of any law or judicial determination. And they accomplished all of that by paying enough officials in Washington to obtain those incomparably corrupt gifts. That's just factually, objectively, what has happened here.

"To describe this is to illustrate how low we have fallen over the last six years, how illusory the concept of "the rule of law" now is in Washington..."

"As Carothers put it in his solemn lecture to the Third World:

"The primary obstacles to such reform are not technical or financial, but political and human. Rule-of-law reform will succeed only if it gets at the fundamental problem of leaders who refuse to be ruled by the law. Respect for the law will not easily take root in systems rife with corruption and cynicism, since entrenched elites cede their traditional impunity and vested interests only under great pressure.

"Americans can understand instinctively -- if the argument were really made -- that it is completely corrupt for corporations which break the law and are sued to go to Congress and get a law passed declaring that they did nothing wrong. That is not an option available to most people if they break the law and/or are sued. But our "entrenched elites" defend it by spouting rank, fear-mongering tripe such as this, and thus, the intense erosion of our country's core political principles continues unabated."

Update: "Asserting the type of strong leadership that has been missing almost entirely from the Democratic presidential candidates and the party's leadership, Chris Dodd just announced that he will place a Senate "hold" on any FISA bill that contains telecom amnesty:

"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 illegally 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."

Meanwhile, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has condemned Intelligence Committee Democrats for brokering a deal with the White House providing retroactive immunity for telecoms that assisted the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program.

Poster from Micah Wright's Propaganda Remix Project

Comments

[Colette]

I wonder... has the ghost of McCarthy taken over the Decider's body??

[alex]

Scary Times, Tara! Scary Times!

[AscenderRisesAbove]

Perhaps the next president, although being very busy undoing things, will have an easy time of it - think how things will only improve? Remaining hopeful...

[M erisi's Vienna]

Oh, Rochambeau, the see Bob Edwards' name here, I get terrible homesickness, in spite of everything. I have the Morrow book signed by him, he has for so many years be my morning companion (I am still angry that they cut him off as editor of the Morning Show!). It's people like him that make me still believe in that beloved country.

[M erisi's Vienna]

Remember the Clinton witch hunt?
It's such a travesty that those who were the hunters then are now the ones expecting immunitiy for crimes against the rights of citizens.
(Have you read, btw, that McCain is now pandering to the Religious Right, even ready to give a speech at Jones University?)

[marita]

spreading the gospel of fear for the benefit of a so called safety seems to become a new part of political 'correctness', big brother is watching, listening, dictating...where are the demonstrations of the '60 and '70??? nobody seems to care less!

[Herb]

Just when you think things can't possibly get any worse. What I want to know if why was the administration contacting telecoms about wiretaps prior to the 9/11 attacks? Not to don the tin foil and look for conspiracy theories, but at the very least, it blows the cover off their facade that these illegal acts are being done in the name of national security.

Chris Dodd deserves our support and praise. If only Harry Reid had his back. If the Dems cave once again to the 24% juggernaut, it will only reinforce that fact that we have one party system. Must protect major corporations at all costs. Both the D's and R's know who butters their bread.

[fleur]

I feel numbed by the pile-up of outrages of the last 8 years. (What am awful feeling.)
Telecom corporations would never refuse such a request of their own initiative. Corporations can capitalize on information so spying is altogether too attractive to them to ever refuse to do it plus the Patriot Act was intended to legalize all of this. The biggest problem is that our administration are corporate people -- they are not servants of the public. Big Business is our government now. I just wonder if the stranglehold will end.

[rochambeau]

PS
As the inaugural speech. Hope you can re-listen to the interview!

[rochambeau]

I actually have to agree with all the comments so far. It's going to take a miracle to undo all the havoc!! Recently, Bob Edwards interviewed Jimmy Carter on NPR. Pres. Carter said at this point
the only way the US will be able to get back on the right track with the world, is to make basically make an apology speech for all that this current administration has horribly done, and say THIS IS NOT WHAT AMERICA STANDS FOR, and were going to change that!!

[Gillian @ Indigo Blue]

The mind boggles.
I pity the president who takes over next year. It will be a job just to put right all the mess before they will be able to do their job.
xo
Gillian

[dargie]

Of course the real irony here is that both the telcoms and the Bush administration maintain that nothing illegal was done, but they want retroactive amnesty all the same. The next thing will be shame for having supported SCHIP or rejected torture. Sometimes I think we live in Bizarro World. *shakes head*

[tinker]

The disregard for our civil liberties and rights as citizens, is becoming so alarming. Where is the American government that I was brought up to love? The one where truth, justice and freedom reign...I can only hope this next election will bring about some much-needed change.