I spent most of my free time this weekend reading and writing about this compromise on FISA that passed the house. I can't believe that the House Leadership (Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and especially IL Rep Rahm Emanuel) think this legislation that passed is a "compromise". The Democrats have given everything that the Republican members wanted and more.
Full immunity to the telecoms for participating in the illegal warrantless wiring taping program will be granted. This will shut all of the civil lawsuits that are now in the court system. In addition to possibly penalizing the telecoms in the pocketbook (which is what will make them change), this is last way that citizens can have accountability of our government and find out exactly what this program encompassed. If this bill passes in the Senate, we will never know what happened with this warrantless surveillance program. And, it will be harder to bring any criminal charges against government employees now.
Just as bad as the immunity part of this bill are the changes to the FISA program that will be made. No warrants will be needed to monitor all overseas communication. The FISA law as it was, worked. When it was written in 1976, the types of communication were covered. The one hole in the law dealt with routing calls through the US that did not originate or terminate in the US. To monitor these calls, a warrant was needed. The FISA law allows the government to listen to calls before getting a warrant, as long as there is enough evidence and within 72 hours a warrant is presented to the FISA court.
The Democrats are really unbelievable. Whoever is guiding them (the consultants) are giving them bad advice. In 2002 and 2004, Republicans framed the Democrats as weak on National Security and it worked. People were scared and voted out of fear and Republicans won and Democrats lost. The Democrats are doing whatever they to win an election and don't care too much about our Constitution or the rule of law. The Democrats care more about winning then their own principles.
In 2004, Republicans nationally ran a grass roots retention program to encourage their core base of voters to get out and vote. They spent a year and a half on this (they started in 2003) and it worked. Bush won and they picked up seats in the House and Senate. Democrats in 2004 ran a persuasion grass roots campaign to attempt to persuade swing voters to vote. It didn't work.
This is the one of the issues with National Democrats. They run terrible campaigns and are attempting to falsely attract people that will never vote for them. By actually leading the could rally their core and maybe attract additional voters on a national level.
The other issue here is money. Nancy Pelosi represents portions of CA near SF. SBC had their western headquarters in SF and build a special room to store all email, web and phone communications made to turn over to the government at the governments request (and SBC was PAID to do this. Why wouldn't they comply if there was profit to be had?). If this was illegal, which it was, we need evidence to prove it in a court of law. I think, the company, now at&t, and its executives would want to make they are held responsible for decisions they made which were illegal. I would like to know how much money, directly and indirectly, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Party, its leadership and all of its interests (including Nancy's daughter, who is a film maker who always needs financing for her projects) got from SBC and at&t over the past 2 years. I think her BOLD Leadership on this issue is about money and power, not about our Constitution and our security.
The other issue is CYA. There have been several house Democratic members, including Jane Harmon, who have known what was going on with this program and haven't tried to stop it. But, they want to run on both keeping America safe AND holding the Bush Administration accountable.
Benjamin Franklin said it best, "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
