In “Good Faith” With Telecom Companies and Lawless Bush Administration, Senate Passes FISA:

A message to Senate supporters of HR 6304

To Pro-HR 6304 Senators:

      Today, with the passage of HR 6304, I mourned the death of the 4th Amendment to our Constitution, and I grieved for the loss of any conviction that I am a citizen of a democratic republic, governed and secured by the principle of the rule of law. Today you forced me to realize, once and for all, that I am not free, not a citizen with inalienable rights; today you disabused me of any trust I had in my government, by showing me this: whatever an administration and corporations want to do to me will be supported by you, as long as they act in “good faith” with each other, as opposed to acting in good faith with the American people and the Constitution of the United States.
      Today I grieve over your abandonment of the notion of government of, by and for the people, in favor of government of, by and for criminal corporations.
      Watching you over the past two days, as you defended your position in support of HR 6304, I grieved as your hearts bled for the telecom companies; as you pretended 9-11 was a legitimate and factual excuse for the President’s warrantless surveillance program, even though you knew he had begun the program immediately after his first month in office; as you granted unprecedented legal authority to the executive branch to violate the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, fixing the executive branch as the sole judge of its own behavior and removing the judicial branch as a check on executive power; as you sided with the likes of Kit Bond (R. Missouri), who framed telecom immunity as “liability protection” and bemoaned the possibility of holding to the rule of law as “penalizing the companies” with “frivolous lawsuits.” What is the matter with you that you approved such garbage?
      I grieved, and my stomach turned, as the bill passed, with only twenty-eight good Senators voting against and holding fast to the Constitution and the rule of law, a mere twenty-eight true patriots, compared to sixty-nine lumps of Senatorial cowardice and shame.
      I have to ask of Barack Obama and his Democratic comrades who voted for the Feingold-Dodd Amendment, which would have removed telecom immunity from the bill, but failed, and then went ahead and voted for the bill itself, which contained telecom immunity —a profound contradiction— why would you do that? So, your distaste for telecom immunity was a whim of the moment, which changed for the final vote? Or, was it the other way around? No. You knew what you were doing. Clearly, you wanted to have it both ways, so that you could say, “Well, it’s too bad about immunity, but I want conservative voters to know I’m tough on terrorists.” Sir, you have no moral compass, no profound or ethical position to offer as reason to vote for you. You are lost. I, for one, will never forgive you, never vote for you again.
      The most frightening aspect of this dark moment is that of precedence—you, Senators, have set the stage for what? What’s next after this? You have now established that a mere executive-branch say-so can be sufficient justification for lawbreaking on the part of a company, so, why should not the Bush administration, or any other administration, use other private companies to do further harm to our liberty, our privacy, our fundamental human rights? Now that you have given Bush, as well, license to gather up whole masses of communications between Americans without warrants, in violation of the 4th Amendment, why should he not go whole hog with his vile intentions against freedom, democracy and the rule of law and break more laws than he already has?
      Today you have done what Al Queda could not have done with all their miserable, ragged might, without your help—you have taken the essence of American freedom and liberty and subtracted it from the body politic; you have injured the soul of America.
      Shame on you!!!

—LM

ACLU on this subject

Judge Walker

Comic relief: Mark Fiore on the subject