Dems rally to oppose telecom immunity, White House still spinning

October 25, 2007

So, where are we with the Senate surveillance bill, which has already garnered the White House’s blessing? The key sticking point remains retroactive immunity from lawsuits for the major telecommunications companies that cooperated with Bush’s warrantless surveillance program.

Chris Dodd took the lead, responding to the netroots’ concerns, and vowed to filibuster the bill. Joe Biden said he agreed. Yesterday, Barack Obama’s campaign, under pressure from MoveOn and bloggers, unequivocally said, “To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.” Hillary Clinton said she was “troubled by the concerns” raised about the bill and pledged to “study it very hard” (her comments were not well received by the netroots).

Newsweek reports that Republicans, unable to come up with anything substantive, are responding to all of this with nonsense.

[T]he administration and top Republicans are moving to exploit the issue. They accuse Democrats of sacrificing national security for short-term political gain. “Al Qaeda is not going to give us a break just because we’re having an election,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, who demanded last week that Dodd donate to charity any campaign money he raised as a result of his filibuster threat.

The White House also attacked Democrats for political maneuvering and reiterated its call for protection for the telecommunication companies. “This issue is too important to play politics with,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto told NEWSWEEK. “Private firms that answered their nation’s call for help in the days after the 9/11 attacks should be applauded and not used as campaign props.”

Does this many any sense at all?

First, the notion that Dodd’s recent fundraising surge is somehow ill-gotten gains is ridiculous. The senator took a policy position, people liked it, and they rewarded him for it. Hoekstra seems to think this is wildly inappropriate. Hoekstra, regrettably, doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Second, “al Qaeda isn’t going to give us a break”? OK, but what does that have to do with Congress extending retroactive immunity to telecoms that broke the law? How is that relevant to lawmakers taking on the role of activist judges, and short-circuiting ongoing legal battles that are currently in the judicial system?

And third, it’s possible the White House doesn’t keep up with the news, but arguing that the telecoms “answered their nation’s call for help in the days after the 9/11 attacks” is transparently wrong. As part of the warrantless-search program, the NSA started leaning on the telecoms for private data six months before 9/11, not “in the days after.”

Stay tuned.

As part of the warrantless-search program, the NSA started leaning on the telecoms for private data six months before 9/11, not “in the days after.”

That’s precisely why they have to keep hammering “in the days after the 9/11 attacks”. Just keep repeating it, and everyone will believe it forever (even long after you eventually disavow it).

It’s worked before, and I’ve got $20 that says it’ll work again.

(Is this even a story in the MSM yet, the fact that they started well before 9/11?)

  • Since when does the truth matter to Bush and his criminal friends? And since when does the media ever point out when they’re lying?

    1/3 of Americans still think Saddam was personally involved in 9/11. I’m pretty sure there will be at least half who will buy Bush’s BS this time around, but not if the Democrats do the smart thing, and chain the latest bogus arguments to a president who no one really believes anymore. Just precede all rebuttals to the latest BS with “These are the same people who lied to America about the WMDs…”

    But if Democrats were smart Bush would be the lamest duck ever, and his disgraced and impeached former Vice President would be in a federal prison.

  • “They accuse Democrats of sacrificing national security for short-term political gain.”

    Now, where have we heard this all-encompassing kneejerk remark before? It looks as though a few Dems finally are realizing that the bogus antiAmerican smear isn’t as effective as they’d feared–and I’d like to think that they believe this is important enough to do even if it would hurt them. Let’s see, in the mists of time wasn’t this called “leadership”?

    Yes, I’m certain that AQ wins if the megacorporations lose–or even are questioned.

  • At the risk of sounding extremely sarcastic: Why doesn’t Bush just whip out his magic Pardoning Pen?

  • The White House also attacked Democrats for political maneuvering and reiterated its call for protection for the telecommunication companies. “This issue is too important to play politics with,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto told NEWSWEEK. “Private firms that answered their nation’s call for help in the days after the 9/11 attacks should be applauded and not used as campaign props.”

    Senator Dodd’s intention to filibuster the surveillance bill should not surprise anybody who does a little research about the central spoke of his campaign. Here he is >A HREF=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5wxwzJJQJw&eurl=http://correntewire.com/say_kos_what_is_the_democrats_plan_to_restore_constitutional_government”>campaigning in July 2007 on the basis of restoring the Constitution.

    Other Democrats are a bit slow at catching on. I have made the erroneous claim that none of the candidates was campaigning on this critically important issue, and I was wrong. Dodd was.

    The White House wants to frame this, and every other unconstitutional act it performs, as necessary for national security with the administration above and beyond the law.

    That framing needs to be soundly smashed, and the Democrats could do it by refusing to be sucked in by the preposterous demand by the White House that the telecoms must have retroactive immunity. The White House is desperate to avoid rulings in the lawsuits against those that cooperated with Bush’s unconstitutional warrantless surveillance program. It’s already gotten away with Bush’s authorization to torture innocents by claiming it can’t be sued because its illegal actions are state secrets. This joke of a Supreme Court has given Bush a green light and an open road.

    Think the Democrats will stand fast alongside Dodd? I’ll believe it when I see it.

  • A “government of laws” granting corporate donors/masters “retroactive immunity”?

    Sounds like something straight out of the theoretical writings of Karl Marx. Or Animal Farm.

  • Why doesn’t Bush just whip out his magic Pardoning Pen?

    Because Bush isn’t concerned about these guys getting convicted on his watch – he’s worried about what the NEXT guy does. The next guy may not be so quick with the pardon when he/she finds out what laws the telcos violated.

    I suspect that the telcos are EXTREMELY worried right now. Because public perception of their business is key to keeping their lucrative monopolies. Specifically, business leaders have to trust that they can talk about their illegal activities over the phone without the records getting turned over to the IRS for scrutiny – especially if that scrutiny varies depending on who is in office. If it turns out that the telcos rolled too quickly, their allies among the Big Business elite may turn on them and sick the dogs on them (i.e. the public) and get their lucrative businesses broken up and “neutral carrier” laws passed and enforced. And that’s the last thing that the telcos want. Retroactive immunity basically makes this a dead story because no prosecutor is going to decide that it’s up to him/her to pursue leads in a case that isn’t going to be prosecutable and the whole thing just ends up swept under the rug.

  • Anney in 5:

    Think the Democrats will stand fast alongside Dodd?

    Depends on the definition of fast.

    There’s fast as in “steadfast”. And then there’s fast as in “fast and loose”.

  • Re: anney @ #5
    Other Democrats are a bit slow at catching on. I have made the erroneous claim that none of the candidates was campaigning on this critically important issue, and I was wrong. Dodd was.

    Apparently you completely ignored Kucinich and Gravel. Figures.

    When everyone else was intent on repealing the Bill of Rights and voting in favor of the Patriot Act (Clinton, Edwards, Dodd, and Biden), probably because they were afraid of receiving anthrax in the mail, Kucinich was being rational and voting against that legislation and in favor of the Constitution.

  • Would the other invertebrate Democrats be showing such spine without Dodd loudly taking a stand against immunity? I think not. On a daily basis he comes out with the right stand on issue — taday he came out in opposition to mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia. We ignore Chris Dodd at our own peril.

  • JKap,

    No, actually, I knew that Kucinich was very much opposed to the illegal wiretapping and the Iraq invasion and I’ve decided to vote for him, though I’ll have to write him in in my state. What I meant is that I hadn’t seen any candidate campaigning specifically on restoring the Constitution, with the umbrella focus rather than on individual unconstitutional issues. ALL of Bush’s illegal moves need to be wiped off the books, not just some of them.

  • Much like the evangelicals who insist Sin must be eradicated from the face of Earth because they’re afraid THEY won’t be able to withstand the temptation, the GOP (filled with so many Evangelicals, coincidence?) think in equal extremes. All roads lead to the annihilation of the USA. Anything that smacks of freedom, right to privacy, differing opinions on the war in Iraq, all of that is part of slope that slides us to the United States of Islamofascism (patent pending). Never mind the fact that our freedoms and our right to privacy are part of the fabric that IS America, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, ergo, if you feel the need to have the right to have something to hide, you must HAVE something to hide, and therefore hate America.

    And enough sheepizens continue to fall for it, that it is still an issue and not an embarrassing footnote in our nation’s history: “Hey, remember when Bush tried to insist he was above the law and got the telcos to illegally provide him with data about their customers? How long did it take ofr us impeach him? 5 minutes?”

  • TAiO @#4, Bush doesn’t whip out his magic pardoning pen on this because the immunity is only ostensibly for the telcos. The true immunity is for him and the NSA and the other alphabets government entitieswho asked, ordered, begged, paid huge bucks to the telcos to spy on us. If Congress immunizes the telcos retroactively, they also make Bush’s illegal and unconstitutional actions in re the Amendment formerly known as the 4th also immune. This is pure CYA for Bush.

  • Dee Loralei

    If Congress immunizes the telcos retroactively, they also make Bush’s illegal and unconstitutional actions in re the Amendment formerly known as the 4th also immune. This is pure CYA for Bush.

    Absolutely correct. It will establish the same kind of precedent-setting confirmation of Bush’s illegal surveillance, much as the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the Khaled el-Masri case established the “legality” of illegal rendition-for-torture.

  • Also, in order for Bush to “whip out his magic pardoning pen,” there has to be some kind of conviction, and to get a conviction you have to go to trial, and during the course of the trial all sorts of nasty things will come to light…

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