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Tuesday, August 07, 2007
“Warrantless Surrender”: Corporate Dems roll over and give Bush more power
Posted by Justin Jeffre
In the latest bipartisan effort to destroy our civil liberties and constitution, they’ve even thrown out the mere appearance of checks and balances. I guess throwing away that pesky rubber stamp (FISA) will save time. Here’s the most recent example of the corporate Democrats’ complete failure to act as an opposition party.
The Democrat-led Congress voted to broadly expand the government’s authority to eavesdrop without warrants on the international telephone calls and email messages of American citizens. Both the House and Senate approved rewriting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It’s a big legislative victory for President Bush and a huge loss of freedom and liberty for the American people.
Even the most loyal Democrats at http://www.moveon.org have been outraged.
They even asked the $64 million dollar question!
Why’d they do it?
Their answer: “Because the president used fear to intimidate them and it worked.”
The American Civil Liberties Union also condemned the votes. Anthony Romero of the ACLU said “This congress may prove to be as spineless in standing up to the Bush Administration as the one that enacted the PATRIOT Act or the Military Commissions Act.”
With 65% of Americans disapproving of what he’s doing in office, President Bush has the lowest poll numbers in modern polling history. Only Nixon had more with 66% disapproving, and he redesigned four days later. Despite this extraordinarily low approval rating, the Democratic-led Congress felt pressured to comply with his demands. Why were they so intimidated?
And with those “haunting” words the Democrats responded quickly. Just hours after Bush spoke the Senate passed the so-called Protect America Act of 2007. Shortly after that the Democrats joined Republicans to pass the bill in the House.
Glen Greenwald is a constitutional attorney and author of the new book “A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency.” He’s also a political and legal blogger for Salon.com.
GLENN GREENWALD: Well, it’s inconceivable on every level that the Democrats would capitulate in this way, and it’s disgraceful beyond what I think can be adequately described.
The Democrats have been offering to revise FISA in whatever ways the administration wanted for several years now. And the administration has repeatedly said, “We don’t need revisions to FISA. We don’t want you to revise FISA,” in essence because they were violating FISA and eavesdropping however they wanted. Suddenly, about several weeks ago, the President insisted that FISA had to be revised almost immediately and essentially said that if it wasn’t revised in exactly the way he wanted that the nation would be at risk to terrorism.
What really precipitated this was that the FISA court issued a ruling several months ago that in a very narrow way said that for certain types of calls, namely where there’s one person calling another person and both are outside of the country, and yet the call, because of technological reasons, is routed through the United States, that the Bush administration would need a FISA warrant in order to eavesdrop on that category of phone calls. And that was never the intent of FISA. It was a ruling that really for the first time said warrants were required, and everybody agreed that FISA should be revised in order to fix that one deficiency. And yet, the Democrats offered a bill that would have fixed that deficiency. The White House said, “No, we want much greater eavesdropping powers far beyond even this one fix,” and the Democrats ended up capitulating and giving the President vast new powers to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants.
Keep in mind that it’s not only President Bush that has low poll numbers. The Congress also has very low poll numbers and that’s because they have failed to end the war, torture, and spying on American citizens. The messianic militarist in the White House has made a mockery of the rule of law and he has done so virtually without opposition.
So why did we ever need FISA anyway?
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of the new book “Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law.”
MARJORIE COHN: The reason that FISA was enacted in the first place in 1978 was in response to incredible overreaching and illegality by the FBI with its COINTELPRO, Counter-Intelligence Program, targeting Martin Luther King, Jr. and other organizations and Richard Nixon’s illegal surveillance of people who dissented against his policies. FISA set up a very conservative system with judges, who meet in secret, appointed by the chief justice, and in almost every case have issued warrants for wiretapping based on probable cause.
AMY GOODMAN: So, in a sense, it was a rubber stamp.
MARJORIE COHN: It was basically a rubber stamp. But that wasn’t good enough for the Bush administration. Bush, in 2001, secretly set up his so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program to illegally spy on Americans and—Americans and other people, as well, but it included Americans. And, in fact, the violation of FISA is a felony. And each violation can result in five years in prison. So the Bush administration has been breaking the law, has been committing crimes.
And what’s happened now with the Congress capitulating to really a much broader program than even the Terrorist Surveillance Program, they have not only legalized what Bush was doing before, but I think it’s highly unlikely that the Bush administration officials will be brought to justice for the felonies that they have been committing since 2001.
In the final analysis, voting for the least worse doesn’t bring justice, it doesn’t restore our constitution, it doesn’t end the war, it doesn’t support human rights, and it doesn’t move our country forward. Americans have a long history of cherishing our constitution and civil liberties, we believe in the rule of law and we believe in checks and balances. We want to live in peace and be a beacon of freedom and human rights that will lead the world forward.
These are the fundamental values that real Americans share and we can no longer afford to be marginalized and misled by two parties that are beholden to the corporations and special interests that own our country. Voting for the lesser evil is still voting for evil. It’s time for a new politics in this country that puts the needs of the many first instead of the greed of the few for a change.
We must demand real election reform where we have more voices, more choices and clean and fair elections for a change. America gets better when ‘We the People’ demand more. Real change has always come from the American people.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand” -Frederick Douglas
Sending messages to your representatives on the issues that matter to you is an important part of being a citizen. You don’t have to wait till November so act now. Democracy isn’t a spectator sport.
:
http://pol.moveon.org/capitulation/o.pl?&id=10913-1893264-w.ujHC&t=3
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08 Aug 2007 at 08:10 pm | #
.
It was a sad day for America !
We’re almost ready to drop out !
09 Aug 2007 at 02:05 am | #
Shame on the traitors to our Constitution who broke ranks and voted with the authoritarian rethuglicans. They are a group of Benedict Arnolds.
No Republicans voted against the bill. The following Democratic senators voted for it: Evan Bayh (Indiana); Tom Carper (Delaware); Bob Casey (Pennsylvania); Kent Conrad (North Dakota); Dianne Feinstein (California); Daniel Inouye (Hawai‘i); Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota); Nancy Mary Landrieu (Louisiana); Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas); Claire McCaskill (Missouri); Barbara Mikulski (Maryland); Bill Nelson (Florida); Ben Nelson (Nebraska); Mark Pryor (Arkansas); Ken Salazar (Colorado); Jim Webb (Virginia).
In the House:
Jason Altmire (4th Pennsylvania);John Barrow (12th Georgia);
Melissa Bean (8th Illinois) ‘Dan Boren (2nd Oklahoma) ;
Leonard Boswell (3rd Iowa); Allen Boyd (2nd Florida); Christopher Carney (10th Pennsylvania) Blue; Dog
Ben Chandler (6th Kentucky) ; Jim Cooper (5th Tennessee)
Jim Costa (20th California) ; Bud Cramer (5th Alabama) ;
Henry Cuellar (28th Texas); Artur Davis (7th Alabama)
Lincoln Davis (4th Tennessee) ; Joe Donnelly (2nd Indiana) ; Chet Edwards (17th Texas); Brad Ellsworth (8th Indiana) ; Bob Etheridge (North Carolina); Bart Gordon (6th Tennessee); Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (South Dakota); Brian Higgins (27th New York); Baron Hill (9th Indiana); Nick Lampson (23rd Texas); Daniel Lipinski (3rd Illinois); Jim Marshall (8th Georgia); Jim Matheson (2nd Utah); Mike McIntyre (7th North Carolina); Charlie Melancon (3rd Louisiana); Harry Mitchell (5th Arizona); Colin Peterson (7th Minnesota); Earl Pomeroy (North Dakota); Ciro Rodriguez (23rd Texas); Mike Ross (4th Arkansas) Blue Dog
John Salazar (3rd Colorado); Heath Shuler (11th North Carolina); Vic Snyder (2nd Arkansas); Zachary Space (18th Ohio); John Tanner (8th Tennessee); Gene Taylor (4th Mississippi); Timothy Walz (1st Minnesota); Charles A. Wilson (6th Ohio)
09 Aug 2007 at 04:22 pm | #
The government is not the source of our Rights and can deny them only if we the people let them. If you do not know your rights, consider them waived. Study the Bill of Rights. It is not complicated but to understand what it says you first must read it.
11 Aug 2007 at 03:12 pm | #
Freedom Fries and CincyBertie, I’m glad to see you all speak out about this even though you’ll continue to vote for a party that voted for the war, Patriot Act, the Military Commisions Act, NAFTA and every other bad policy the Republicans push.
I’ve been waiting to see who would show up and rebuke this.
cincysue, you’re silence speaks volumes! Who are the Republican tools again? Take your time Republicrat!
11 Aug 2007 at 07:13 pm | #
Every candidate who is elected to any office in the United States must stand and take an oath to defend and protect the United States Constitution; including the Bill of Rights, which means that every Congress person who voted to deny us, our constitutional protections has joined President Bush in the “Big Lie”. Little by little they are taking away the rights given to us by our Forefathers. Why did we elect all those Dems again? Where is the Supreme Court in all of this?
Vera Z