Time to Unite

Out of three possible bills, the Senate Judiciary Committee, headed by Republican Senator Arlen Specter, passed a bill that is fully supported by the White House and will be voted on sometime next week by the full Senate. This bill gives Bush Inc everything they want. It allows Bush Inc to continue to wiretap without warrants at the discretion of the Attorney General, now Alberto "Torture" Gonzales. The other bills apparently were "un-American". A bill sponsored by DeWine (who's facing Sharrod Brown in November), seeks to give Bush Inc the right to freely wiretap without warrants but the only caveat is that Bush Inc will have to report to Congress every forty-five days and tell them what's going on. Well, Bush Inc can't have that. The third bill, supported by Democrats, called for Bush Inc to fully abide by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; i.e. Bush Inc will have to get warrants. But, like everything else, that gets rejected and the co-sponsor of that bill, Arlen Specter, changes his mind and does a 180.

The FISA court is a rubber-stamp; something I don't have much confidence in. But I'd rather have some court looking over the information than Bush Inc deciding who gets tapped and who doesn't. If this Specter bill passes the Senate, Bush Inc will jump with joy over their new powers.

First, it requires (if the Attorney General requests it, which he will) that all pending cases challenging the legality of the NSA program (which includes the EFF and ACLU cases) be transferred to the secret FISA court. Thus, the insufficiently deferential federal judges would have these cases taken away from them. Second, it would make judicial review of the administration's behavior virtually impossible, as it specifically prohibits (Sec. 702(b)(2)) the FISA court from "requir(ing) the disclosure of national security information . . . without the approval of the Director of National Intelligence of the Attorney General." That all but prevents any discovery in these lawsuits. Third, it quite oddly authorizes (Sec. 702(b)(6)) the FISA court to "dismiss a challenge to the legality of an electronic surveillance program for any reason" (emphasis added). Arguably, that provision broadens the authority of the court to dismiss any such lawsuit for the most discretionary of reasons, even beyond the already wide parameters of the "state secrets" doctrine.

Cite: http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/defeating-specter-bill.html

So now it's time for the Democrats to stand up and filibuster this horrid bill. Most likely, the Repukes will vote in lockstep; the bill will easily pass without a filibuster. But the required 60 votes to break a filibuster will not be achieved if the Democrats stand united. I don't want to see thirty of the vote for it, ten vote against it and the rest abstain. That's crap. They do that with Iraq and they did it with A-LIE-TO. During the A-LIE-TO-buster, I phoned, faxed and emailed all of the Dem Senators. I even phoned up Lincoln Chafee. I did this only to be utterly disappointed, again, by the party. I'm going to be doing this again but will not give my hopes up. If the Democrats succeed, a glimmer of hope may be restored. But if they wimp out, I'll be pissed off. Stand up Democrats and VOTE for the right thing.