Cool Time-Lapse Video
Posted by tgirsch

Can be found here.

November 16th, 2007 | Sports, I do too have a life, NFL | 2 comments

FISA: A Good First Step
Posted by Kevin

It appears that the Democratic leadership twisted some arms and telecom immunity is now out of the FISA replacement bill:

Reflecting the deep divisions within Congress over granting legal immunity to telephone companies for cooperating with the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a new domestic surveillance law on Thursday that sidestepped the issue.

By a 10 to 9 vote, the committee approved an overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that dropped a key provision for immunity for telecommunications companies that another committee had already approved. The Senate leadership will have to decide how to deal with the immunity question on the Senate floor.

On Thursday night, the House voted 227 to 189, generally along party lines, to approve its own version of the FISA bill, which also does not include immunity.

The story is a bit more complicated than the Times is letting on. Before the 10-9 vote, Feinstein and Whitehorse, both Dems, voted with the GOP to kill Feingold’s amendment to ban immunity for the telecom companies. Bit a couple of minutes later, Leahy got them to agree to pass this bill which does not grant immunity to the telecom companies. And, best of all, Reid’s staff is telling people that Leahy’s billis the one that will be advanced to the full Senate. So the leadership has taken sides here, and they have come down pretty squarely against telecom immunity.

This is a first good step. Allowing the government to “outsource” its violations of the Constitution to private concerns and then immunizing those concerns from punishment for their roles in such violations is a recipe for tyranny. I’ve said this before, but an emploiyee of ATT can take away your freedom just as throughly as an employee of the government. The only way to prevent that is either criminal penalties — which are extremely unlikely when the government itself solicited the crime — or civil penalties.

It is also encouraging that the leadership drove this change in the bills. it gives me some hope that when the inevitable veto showdown occurs, the Dems wont just wilt on these issues. It would be nice to have a political party in this country that actrually stands up for the Constitution. I realize that the Dems, as a rule, don’t engage in these unitary executive games when they have power, but thats not enough. They need to stand up in defense of the Constitution and that means trying to roll back the damage the Bush Administration has done. This si a good and encouraging first step, but the fight has barely been joined.

November 16th, 2007 | Politics, Legal Issues, Terrorism, NSA | 2 comments