A Lonely Filibuster
Jane Hamsher reports:
As you've probably noticed, I haven't written anything recently about the legislative fight over FISA. I've received a number of emails questioning why I've stopped writing about this issue. The short answer is this: it's just too depressing. As Reid's actions make clear, the leadership in the Democratic party has very little stomach for this fight. They'd prefer that it just go away, and they're willing to give the White House just about everything it wants in order to make that happen.
A year ago, when the Democrats managed to take back both the House and Senate, I felt enormously relieved. The Bush administration had fought like hell to gut FISA prior to the November election. They wanted to change the law to make what they were doing legal and they figured that if the Democrats took over, they'd lose their chance. They came very close; their bill made it through the House but was stalled in the Senate (due mainly to opposition from Republicans like Arlen Specter).
So when the Democrats won the election, I took comfort in the belief that, whatever else was to happen, FISA was at least temporarily safe. If Bush couldn't get the unprecedentedly subservient Republican Congress to pass his CYA legislation, surely it was a non-starter in the newly Democratic Congress.
Boy was I wrong. Less than a year later, under pressure from a historically unpopular administration, Congress hastily passed a bill--the Protect America Act--which gutted FISA in a way that even the prior administration proposals had not.
Stinging from the well-deserved criticism they received for allowing this atrocious piece of legislation to pass, Democratic leaders vowed to undo the damage when they came back from recess. President Bush, for his part, demanded more capitulation. He demanded that Congress retroactively immunize the telecom industry for any illegal behavior it may have engaged in over the past six years.
And now, less than five months later, the Democratically-controlled Senate is one lonely filibuster away from caving in to this demand as well. It's truly unbelievable that it's come to this.
I wish Senator Dodd luck and thank him for caring enough to do this. If Senators Clinton, Obama, and Biden are smart, they will cancel whatever campaign events they have tomorrow and come to Dodd's aid. If they don't, they'll be missing yet another golden opportunity to demonstrate leadership through actions and not just words. They'll also incur a lot of well-justified anger.
I understand that Senator Dodd's staff is looking for suggesting for reading material to keep the filibuster going. Here are a few:
1) The text of the statement President Bush made while signing the Patriot Act (which consisted primarily of amendments to FISA) into law back in October 2001. In it he said (among other things):
3) The full text of the Church Report, issued April 26, 1976. How quickly we forget. Lots of material here. [via a helpful commenter, here's a link to all 14 volumes of the reports from Church Committee]
4) And if the Senator really wants to make my day, he can always read this post.
[update: another good way to pass time on the podium would be to read from Charlie Savage's book Takeover.]
The latest word from the Dodd camp regarding what will happen on the FISA bill is that tomorrow, Dodd will take the floor and not yield.Dodd has been forced to take this unusual step because Harry Reid chose to introduce the Intelligence Committee version of the bill (which grants retroactive immunity to the telecom companies) instead of the Judiciary Committee version (which doesn't).
He can take "questions" from other senators during the filibuster, which can be no more than 20 minutes. We understand that Kennedy and Feingold so far have agreed to do this.
As you've probably noticed, I haven't written anything recently about the legislative fight over FISA. I've received a number of emails questioning why I've stopped writing about this issue. The short answer is this: it's just too depressing. As Reid's actions make clear, the leadership in the Democratic party has very little stomach for this fight. They'd prefer that it just go away, and they're willing to give the White House just about everything it wants in order to make that happen.
A year ago, when the Democrats managed to take back both the House and Senate, I felt enormously relieved. The Bush administration had fought like hell to gut FISA prior to the November election. They wanted to change the law to make what they were doing legal and they figured that if the Democrats took over, they'd lose their chance. They came very close; their bill made it through the House but was stalled in the Senate (due mainly to opposition from Republicans like Arlen Specter).
So when the Democrats won the election, I took comfort in the belief that, whatever else was to happen, FISA was at least temporarily safe. If Bush couldn't get the unprecedentedly subservient Republican Congress to pass his CYA legislation, surely it was a non-starter in the newly Democratic Congress.
Boy was I wrong. Less than a year later, under pressure from a historically unpopular administration, Congress hastily passed a bill--the Protect America Act--which gutted FISA in a way that even the prior administration proposals had not.
Stinging from the well-deserved criticism they received for allowing this atrocious piece of legislation to pass, Democratic leaders vowed to undo the damage when they came back from recess. President Bush, for his part, demanded more capitulation. He demanded that Congress retroactively immunize the telecom industry for any illegal behavior it may have engaged in over the past six years.
And now, less than five months later, the Democratically-controlled Senate is one lonely filibuster away from caving in to this demand as well. It's truly unbelievable that it's come to this.
I wish Senator Dodd luck and thank him for caring enough to do this. If Senators Clinton, Obama, and Biden are smart, they will cancel whatever campaign events they have tomorrow and come to Dodd's aid. If they don't, they'll be missing yet another golden opportunity to demonstrate leadership through actions and not just words. They'll also incur a lot of well-justified anger.
I understand that Senator Dodd's staff is looking for suggesting for reading material to keep the filibuster going. Here are a few:
1) The text of the statement President Bush made while signing the Patriot Act (which consisted primarily of amendments to FISA) into law back in October 2001. In it he said (among other things):
The existing law was written in the era of rotary telephones. This new law I sign today will allow surveillance of all communications used by terrorists, including e-mails, the Internet, and cell phones. As of today, we'll be able to better meet the technological challenges posed by this proliferation of communications technology.2) The text of President Bush's weekly radio address the following day, in which he repeated many of the same lines:
[F]or along time, we have been working under laws written in the era of rotary telephones. Under the new law, officials may conduct court-ordered surveillance of all modern forms of communication used by terrorists.Of course, as we know now, within days of making these statements, the President authorized the NSA to bypass FISA altogether. When caught breaking the law four years later, President Bush would claim that FISA was an obsolete relic from the era of rotary telephones. Now the Bush administration is claiming that FISA needs to be modernized so as to take into account the realities of modern terrorism.
3) The full text of the Church Report, issued April 26, 1976. How quickly we forget. Lots of material here. [via a helpful commenter, here's a link to all 14 volumes of the reports from Church Committee]
4) And if the Senator really wants to make my day, he can always read this post.
[update: another good way to pass time on the podium would be to read from Charlie Savage's book Takeover.]
posted by A.L. at 11:20 PM
14 Comments:
"too depressing", indeed. When will Congressional Democrats show a little backbone and stand up for us?
I suspect that Obama will be missing out on a chance to seal his victory for the Prez nomination if he passes on the chance to help filibuster.
It would show great strength and the "courage of conviction" rhetoric we always hear from politicians if he helps filibuster, and I would feel a little bit better about the direction our country is headed in if he (and other Dems) helps put up a fight.
I mean, really, what's the point of even voting (D) if they capitulate on (R)'s every demand?
Reading the Church report sounds like a good idea to me: it's long, it's informative, and it's been sadly absent from much of the public debate on this issue. The entire Church Committee report (all seven hearing volumes and six report books, plus the interim report) can be found at the AARC, and in addition to Book 2, which you link to, I'd suggest these other parts of the report for reading: Book 3's supplemental committee staff reports on " Warrantless FBI electronic surveillance" and "National Security Agency Surveillance Affecting Americans," and all of hearing Volume 5: "The National Security Agency and Fourth Amendment Rights." One interesting facet of the latter is the Committee's decision, discussed in the hearings, to expose the names of the telecom companies that had aided the NSA in Operation Shamrock, allowing the government to copy almost all of their outgoing international telegrams for over twenty years.
Other reading suggestions for the filibuster: the majority opinion (1972) in U.S. v. U.S. District Court (Fourth Amendment requires a judicially-issued warrant to authorize domestic intelligence wiretapping), and the majority opinion in Marcus v. Search Warrant (1961), observing that "[h]istorically, the struggle for freedom of speech and press in England was bound up with the issue of the scope of the search and seizure power."
Also, another Bush quote for one of those nice senatorial charts, from April 20, 2004: "Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution" (emphasis added).
He could read Naomi Klein's book, "The Shock Doctrine" which would explain- on the record- the disastrous privatization of our government that has been staged in the wings while the press and everyone else was watching the disaster unfold in Iraq.
You could almost say that the REAL goal of Bush/Cheney was this privatization and that Iraq and the oil were just the useful (and, to them, beneficial) distraction.
Harry Reid's contact page
Use address Virginia Street, Reno NV 89501. Share your respect for him for being such a sell-out.
Mike
I am hearing that the cloture vote passed, 70-10, but I haven't yet seen the report. If true, it's a genuine bipartisan victory for sound, grownup policy toward balancing privacy with the need to protect the citizenry. It would mean that even a Democrat-controlled Senate can recognize the need to adapt to changes in telecommunications technology.
Since Dodd's filibuster apparently has succeeded in at least postponing this to next year, I, for one, am going to donate all I can afford to Dodd.
Maybe, if he gets enough traction out of this, the rest of the field will see that principles matter.
I'm not sure just what principle is involved. Dodd himself laments that, if retroactive immunity is enacted, "we'll never know if this was legal or not." What he means, I suppose, is that he can come to no conclusion as to the legality of what the telecoms did until he hears what Harry Pregerson and two other Ninth Circuit Democrtic appointees, and then some 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court, have to say on the matter. And he actually wants to become president?
Venting one's spleen against George W. Bush by backing a lawsuit that would ultimately punish only millions of innocent shareholders does not strike me as a mature expression of policy preferences. Impeach the president if you will, or elect a new board of directors. But take this whole matter out of the realm of civil litigation, the very least fair and honest means of resolving political disputes.
Too depressed to blog about it: echo that! What the HELL is wrong with Harry Reid?
Loved the recommends for filibuster readings, both in the post & in the comments.
Neutral, I don't know you, & I know I should not feed trolls, but I don't understand why you're here. Don't you belong to another, more hospitable group that shares your particular anti-democratic views? If you don't see where Bushco's otherwise inexplicable positions on extra-legal spying & other highly questionable activities are going, here & abroad, all I can say is, "God bless you little domestic lamb." We'll wake you when the jackboots come for you, if possible.
Neutral, if you want to know why I think telecom immunity is a really bad idea, read the link under #4.
As for this:
I don't understand why you're here. Don't you belong to another, more hospitable group that shares your particular anti-democratic views?
I share the wonder, but let me be perfectly clear that--while I disagree with you on most things, neutral--I welcome your comments. It would be a far less lively comment section without you. And you have been known to have some unique insights from time to time. Mi casa su casa.
The principle, in case anybody is wondering, is that nobody is above the law, and that they cannot be made so by presidential fiat.
That the stockholders of these companies would suffer is a bogus argument, since the stockholders have, by now, known for months that the companies were engaged in illegal activities. If they have chosen to benefit from the illegal activities, then they can take the penalties.
Thanks, A.L. I hope I haven't appeared to make a secret of the fact that I disagree with almost everything you have to say here, but you have certainly forced me to go back and research and reconsider on a number of matters.
And I haven't understood this to be a place that is restricted to those who agree with the host. Wm. Buckley's Firing Line wasn't such a delightful show because he invited people who agreed with him; it was delightful because he welcomed those who disagreed forcefully.
The "anonymous" post immediately above was from me--forgot to enter my name.
At the risk of seeming trivial -- he could do worse than read West Wing scripts. I've been reminding myself for a couple of hours, via Youtube, of how cinematically principled Sorkin wanted Democrats to be. I commend to you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZU4twOTXX0
and the great speech which doesn't seem to have made it there:
Leo:
"Because I'm tired of it: year after year after year after year having to choose between the lesser of 'Who cares?' Of trying to get myself excited about a candidate who can speak in complete sentences. Of setting the bar so low, I can hardly bear to look at it. They say a good man can't get elected President. I don't believe that. Do you?"
Nora Carrington
Neutral, I owe you an apology. I am (surprise!) a hothead, or, more precisely, have become one over the past 6 years. I hardly recognize my own country, & have become REALLY impatient with neocon views. It would be another thing entirely if the neocons in office showed the slightest bit of respect or tolerance for "liberal" views, but that's a rant for another day which I will confine to the pages of my good old-fashioned broadside of a blog, wherein I make no bones about its purpose.
The community as a whole benefits by civil discussion, even (& particularly) the other person's apparent position makes no sense to one. My bad.
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