• D6fer said on Jul 08, 2008....

  so who does that leave for you?

• crybabylu said on Jul 09, 2008....

  D6fer----took the words right out of my mouth!  Ha!...LOL....bloc---I wonder how he is going to vote on that one!  good post, bloc!

• silverwhisper said on Jul 09, 2008....

  maybe i'm just undercaffeinated, but...FISA?
  
  ed

• crybabylu said on Jul 09, 2008....

  bloc---as far as I am concerned the Patriot Act and FISA go hand in hand.  When the democrats got the majority, many of us were expecting them to repeal the Patriot Act or at least make some changes to it. It was born right out of FISA, wasn't it?

• Antimatter said on Jul 09, 2008....

  Does Congress even have the power to grant litigative immunity?

• Zayda said on Jul 09, 2008....

  @Silver: FISA = Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
  
  The original FISA became law in 1978; it's a U.S. federal law prescribing procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and collection of "foreign intelligence information".
  
  FISA was then amended by the Patriot Act of 2001 so that it covered  terrorism on behalf of groups that are not specifically backed by a foreign government.
  
  An overhaul of FISA, called the Protect America Act of 2007 became law August 5, 2007 but expired in February of 2008.
  
  The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 is what is currently pending in Congress.
  
  The current FISA is supposedly a compromise; it's their amendments/changes to the Patriot Act. And Obama, who had previously said he would not endorse/vote for the renewal of the Protect America Act, has reversed his decision because he says the FISA they are supposed to vote on today is better, due to some compromises, even though it is not as he would have written it.
  
  The new FISA would grant telecommunications companies that cooperated with the post-9/11 surveillance program protection from lawsuits.
  

• silverwhisper said on Jul 09, 2008....

  o good grief--thanks for the info, z. i see i have some e-mail to send.

• bloc said on Jul 09, 2008....

• bloc said on Jul 09, 2008....

  @d6 and cry
  it leaves me with a third party. Green, libertarian, or something.

• Antimatter said on Jul 09, 2008....

  So it's official now. The Senate rubber stamped the President's FISA bill. Obama and 21 other Democrats voted with all the Republican senators in favor of the bill. You can see the roll call vote on the Senate's web site.

  Obama also voted in favor of cloture on the bill, directly contradicting his vow back in October that he would support a filibuster of any bill granting telecom immunity. (A cloture is a motion to bring debate to a quick end. It requires three-fifths in favor to pass, and it's the only process for overcoming a filibuster.)

• crybabylu said on Jul 09, 2008....

  What this bill does, if I understand it correctly, is grant immunity for all telecom companies that participate in survellience, from lawsuits. To even be doing this survellience in my opinion is a Felony...No offense to any Republicans here, because it isn't just The republicans that are being affected here. The democrats hold the majority in the Senate, and they don't have to approve this bill, but they are going to.

  There is only a handful of democrats fighting it along with Civil Liberties agencies...This is illegal!  The bill that is being voted upon is saying it approves of illegal survellience of our citizens.  Our forefathers are rolling around in their graves over this one, believe you me, and this is going to have far reaching consequences.

  The 4th amendment needs to be protected, and instead, it is being bartared away.  What is it about this administration that allows them to raise themselves above the law?  Above the 4th Amendment? Is there no check and balance now?

  What a shame!  The video above calls it "political convenience".....but the democrats signing the bill say it is a 'compromise'.  A compromise for what??

  Everyone, 'the fix' is in, tell me how different that is from Hitler??  They started changing their laws to protect him! 

  Think about it!

• curmudgeon said on Jul 09, 2008....

  Seems to me that the Democrats are doing this because they know it makes sense and they don't want to hamstring their President, if he gets elected.
   
  As for freedom of speech or civil liberties, gee, a private telcom company isn't a soapbox on the street. It's just a conveyor of signals that they can distribute as they wish. I don't see any "right to privacy", or even "search and seizure" when one's speech is relayed over networks involving many many more parties that just the two on either end of a particular communication, especially if that communication is broadcast via frequencies that are owned by the American People, and relayed by satellites in orbits also owned by the American People.
   
  There's just no logic to these privacy objections whatsoever, which is why the Dems are supporting this bill.
   
  One less vote for Obama. Praise the Lord!

• cotterall&elaineadams said on Jul 09, 2008....

  No, why vote for someone who sympathizes with Palestinian extremism and then when it comes down to the peace process, doesn't want to hand over East Jerusalem to them and has never made an issue over settlements?  Seems like common sense to me that the sharing of East Jerusalem and removal of settlements past the '67 border are parts of the peace process legal provisions.  Strange.
  
  He is a former cocaine user who has never been prosecuted for his use.  I am not suggesting if someone used alcohol or tried pot, he should lose his bid for presidency.  After all, a former drunk is in the White House.  People who use cocaine should not get a free ride when pot users sit in jail, convicted of felony charges when it should be legal. 
  
  His wife has a bad attitude.  She wants to run once and can't be bothered to run again. She can't take criticism.  She is bossy.  I have nothing against her as an African-American but her attitude is ridiculous.  She has no grace, warmth, intelligence and humor.
  
  He has no economic or political agenda.  Higher taxation and a host of social programs seem to be his foray.  Granted the U.S. could probably use some type of national health care program but spending more of the poor's money along with the middle class and taking them more is not a good option.  Neither is destroying the economy that needs to keep developing and progressing in order to create jobs and prosperity. On and on...
  

• D6fer said on Jul 09, 2008....

  I have to laugh my ass off at all of you liberals that were suckered in by your own party! They were against FISA when it was convenient for them.....they convinced all of you that it was evil, and now that the ball is in their court , they are playing the same game.......There is nothing wrong with FISA under the current administration.....name one American that has been wronged by wiretaps.....were all of you bitching when the Clintons acquired all of those FBI files on republicans? That was watergate x 100!......we are talking about spying on sleeper cells here in the U.S......people that want to kill us all!.....yes that means you too....all of you who think that if we understood them better, then we might find a way to get along.....you too will die if they have their way......if you don't think they are already here....then you are an idiot.....if you don't think that we need extraordinary means to keep on top of them, then you are a fool!

• crybabylu said on Jul 10, 2008....

  D6---go ahead and laugh if you want.....maybe you need to re-read your bible, and remember the persecution that is going to befall Christians in the future, then maybe you will re-think your position, eh?

• D6fer said on Jul 10, 2008....

  if it does, it will happen at the hands of the democrats and liberals....so maybe you should rethink yours?

• crybabylu said on Jul 10, 2008....

  D6--honestly, in the bible times, it was the pharisees who were responsible for the arrest of Jesus.  The phaisees were the "elect", the 'religious'....

• silverwhisper said on Jul 10, 2008....

  d6, i see a few months of not reading you haven't improved my opinion of how you argue points. :>
  
  ed

• curmudgeon said on Jul 10, 2008....

  crybaby - the democrats are presently the "elect". And from Obama's incessant proclamations of faith, coupled with the fact that Dems overlook his oh so public piety, I'd say they're looking more like the Pharisees every day.
   
  By this scriptural standard, you are mistaken as to which political party will be persecuting Christians.

• Antimatter said on Jul 10, 2008....

  Curmudgeon, you've completely missed the point. The fuss is over the retroactive immunity granted to telecom companies, not wiretapping. It means we've entirely lost our ability to challenge Bush's illegal wiretapping program in court. The Democrats supported this bill not because it made sense, but because they're afraid that Republicans will label them as "soft on terrorism" in an election year. They need to grow some balls, because the Republican record is no better; they've done nothing but kindle terrorism.

  D6fer, wire taps were already legal. Prior to now, they required a warrant from the FISC, a requirement that Bush has largely ignored for years in overt defiance of the law. The bill passed yesterday granted the Executive unchecked power to wiretap international phone calls passing through the United States, and it denied American citizens the ability to challenge Bush's illegal wiretapping of the past half decade.

  Frankly, I find all this Republican fuss over terrorism to be laughable. When you look at the numbers, terrorism really is a very minor threat to Americans, particularly after we beefed up baggage screening and cockpit doors. Yes, they want to kill me, but I'm more likely to get hit by a car as I walk to the bus. Why aren't we posting TSA agents at crosswalks? Terrorism is nothing more than Republican propaganda, and its most recent success was this awful law that covers up the crimes of a Republican President.

• curmudgeon said on Jul 10, 2008....

  It's really really naive to think that the majority party will vote for a bill that goes against their strongly held principles out of fear of the opposition, which is currently in the minority. It's even more of a stretch that that they will submit a bill they vehemently oppose to an unpopular lame-duck President.
   
  You write as though the Democrats are still underdogs when they are the ones in power. They can look as soft on terrorism as they want. They're in the majority in both houses.
   
  Democrats are just as beholden to telcom companies for campaign support as Republicans. It only makes sense to protect the telcoms from frivolous lawsuits becuase the wiretapping will go on whoever may be in the White House.
   
  Risking our telecommunications infrastructure, just for spite of a President you don't like, by the way, is a really stupid policy position.

• Antimatter said on Jul 10, 2008....

  "Risking our telecommunications infrastructure, just for spite of a President you don't like, by the way, is a really stupid policy position."

  It's also silly to think that a handful of lawsuits poses any threat to our telecommunications infrastructure, and it's quite a stretch to argue that a lawsuit over illegal behavior constitutes a "frivolous" lawsuit.

• D6fer said on Jul 10, 2008....

  antimatter.....and yet the dems are going along with it.....so I guess it might as well be called the bush/obama illegal wire tapping program right?

• bloc said on Jul 10, 2008....

  This issue is really simple. We had very clear laws on spying and privacy. Bush and the telecoms broke those laws, and now the Democratic congress has given them immunity without even knowing the details of the crime. 
  
  
  Either we believe that the President has to follow the law, or we believe that he doesn't. I'll leave it up to everyone to decide if Presidents should be above the law, but I'll side with the founding fathers wisdom on this one.

• D6fer said on Jul 10, 2008....

  whoa whoa whoa....wait a minute there blocster!.....lets call it how it is....the president and the congress....lets not leave them guys out ok....cause they are on board!

• Antimatter said on Jul 11, 2008....

  No, Congress hasn't done anything illegal with respect to the President's wiretapping program. They may have just passed an "unconstitutional" law, but that's not "illegal." The Executive overtly ignored laws that explicitly require a FISC warrant to perform an international wiretap. That is illegal, and Congress has just granted the entire enterprise judicial immunity.

• D6fer said on Jul 11, 2008....

  lol.....you cant even admit it....the dems are going right along with it!

• curmudgeon said on Jul 12, 2008....

  "It's also silly to think that a handful of lawsuits poses any threat to our telecommunications infrastructure, and it's quite a stretch to argue that a lawsuit over illegal behavior constitutes a "frivolous" lawsuit."

  A handful of cases? Who's being silly???

  Don't you get the implications of this program? The wiretapping program potentially affects every customer who's made or received calls to areas of the world designated as sources or supporters of terrorism. That's millions of customers making billions of international calls involving themselves in major class action lawsuits. The vast majority, of course will be fruitless fishing expeditions, but that won't stop the lawsuits from emerging.

  Either way, taxpayers lose on both ends. They have to fund the government's facilitation of these cases. They will also have the costs of these lawsuits passed on to them with higher phone and cable bills. In the event that hefty judgements are passed against them, major telecommunications companies could become bankrupt, all for complying with a government request. Yeah - that's a risk to our telcom infrastructure and that's why Congress is at least wise enough to have sent this bill to the President.

  This hypocritical partisan defense of the Democrats in Congress - where is the ire for passing an "unconstitutional" law - is truly pathetic. Bush is excoriated for allegedly trampling the constitution but for the Dems it's not "illegal, just unconstitutional".

  Sad. Really sad.

• silverwhisper said on Jul 12, 2008....

  antimatter, i think you're playing apologetics on this one. every single legislator who voted for this is getting one hell of an e-mail from me.
  
  ed

• bloc said on Jul 12, 2008....

  @curm
  "The wiretapping program potentially affects every customer who's made or received calls to areas of the world designated as sources or supporters of terrorism. "
  
  
  Sadly, you underestimate. It applies to all international calls. If someone in your family goes to Europe for vacation and they call back home they can by spied on without a warrant. 
  
  
  Again I ask, are we a nation of laws or not? Should the President be above the law? I know what the founding fathers thought, and it's what I think as well. 

• bloc said on Jul 12, 2008....

  in all seriousness, there is no risk to our infrastructure. A lawsuit will not blow up a telecom center. What would happen in the worst case is that the company would go bankrupt, and ownership would change hands. Consumers would see no effect at all!
  
  
  How do I know this, because I was an employee at a telecom that went bankrupt and have seen it happen. 

• husbandhater said on Jul 12, 2008....

  Listen you still got so many people frightened by 9-11 and the things that came from it,that even if in their heart they knew that some of the laws that are currently being proposed are wrong they are going to vote for them anyway. This is not excusing Mr.Obama or anyother that said they would vehemtley oppose then turned to endorse this new Fisa bill. But in all honesty the Constitution as we know it was written in the late 1700's and early 1800's with add ons along the way.

  It was not written with the expressed vision of the American society as it stands today. It was written for the things they were experiencing back then. It was written for how they hoped America would develope not how it actually did. Remember Thomas Jefferson didn't free the slaves b/c they thought that eventually that way of life would die out. Would he have done it had he had knowledge that later it would tear this country apart the way it did?

  We are working from a manuscript that is what it is(already written and we are adding stuff to it) and has no regards for the advancements of technology,and the hate and disgust of other countries/societies that do not respect or share our visions of the how the world should be. I don't think our forefathers thought that far ahead in the future. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing just giving food for thought.

  Think about it.

• curmudgeon said on Jul 12, 2008....

  bloc - but it wouldn't be just one telcom company, now would it? All the major telcos are at risk here. One company going under might not be a risk, but all the majors all of sudden being liable poses a major problem to the industry. You yourself have stated the seer magnitude of this legal problem. If this involved just one company, Congress would not have bothered.
   
  You're correct about the hardware aspect, but hundreds of millions of customers and investors will be affected if the biggest telcoms see their legal liability skyrocket.
   
  And the other question is how far could legal liability spread? Sprint? Verizon? AT&T? T-Mobile? What about Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, which provide satellite communications and transmission trechnolgy AND are major defense contractors? What about the myriad companies that supply telecommunications hardware and software? Lawsuits, especially against companies with deep pockets can go way farther than we think.
   
  I'm glad that you take a stance principled enough not to support Obama, but it's not just about the President being subject to the law. I feel that justice in this case will not be served by risking a vital industry and our security organizations simply to get at one guy.

• SocialPenguin said on Jul 12, 2008....

  *yawn*  Remember when the Patriot Act was going to be the end of civil liberties as we knew them? 

  So Bloc, is this the end of your pro-Obama posts, now that you clearly won't be voting for him?

• curmudgeon said on Jul 12, 2008....

  You will note that the constitution does not mention the word privacy. The Fourth Amendment forbids "unreasonable searches and seizures."
   
  In this day and age, I would suggest that mining data for terrorist communications is indeed reasonable.

• bloc said on Jul 12, 2008....

  @curm
  it was clearly illegal. If it is reasonable then the President should ask congress to change the law BEFORE breaking the law for many years. Wouldn't you agree?
  
  
  "You're correct about the hardware aspect, but hundreds of millions of customers and investors will be affected if the biggest telcoms see their legal liability skyrocket."
  
  
  Shouldn't companies that commit crimes for many years face such things? 
  
  
  @husbandhater
  
  
  You are right, the constitution is not a static thing. However, our government has ways to change it. Again I ask, should Presidents secretly break laws they don't like, or should they ask congress to change them first?
  
  
  Are we a nation of laws or not?

• Antimatter said on Jul 12, 2008....

  “You will note that the constitution does not mention the word privacy.”

  I'm not at all concerned about privacy. I have absolutely no qualm with lawful wiretapping under a judicially sanctioned search warrant. The courts have developed exceptions to the warrant requirement, and data mining for terrorist communications may very well be “reasonable” under the law, but the Executive cannot make that decision for itself.

  The FISA law is unequivocally unconstitutional because the Constitution expressly denied that power to Congress. Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 3 declares, “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” That means that Congress cannot pass any law that applies retroactively.

• husbandhater said on Jul 13, 2008....

  We are a nation of Laws Bloc and No one should have the right to tamper with said laws as the President is not a Dictator or ABSOLUTE in POWER. But How do you propose we stop these Terrorists? We can't very well ask them to listen in on their conversations! I'm pretty sure there is a compromise out there we just have to as a people work together to find the solution. This is not like the Commies. These extremists are a whole NEW BREED of Terrorist. They have no regard for life including their own. They are Brainwashed. How do you fight something like that?

• bloc said on Jul 13, 2008....

  "I'm pretty sure there is a compromise out there we just have to as a people work together to find the solution."
  
  Exactly, but that's not what Bush did. Bush secretly broke the law for 5 years!!! He could have asked for the laws to be changed, and he would have gotten it, but he didn't. The Bush Admin has this theory that the President should have absolute power.
  
  Right now we are NOT a nation of laws. Well, you and I have to follow laws, but the President doesn't. And this isn't the only law he's intentionally broken.
  

• TinSoldier said on Jul 13, 2008....

  I, too, am disappointed in Obama. As well as my own Republican Senator.
  
  I was considering voting for Obama, as liberal as I am, but now voting third party looks a little more inviting.
  
  Still many months to go until November.
  

• curmudgeon said on Jul 15, 2008....

  I guess we'll have to see whether or not this telcom shield law passes Constitutional muster - at least according to the opinions of the current Supreme Court justices. As controversial as this bill is, I can't imagine that the lawmakers didn't take that Article 1, sec. 9 para. 3 into account. I'm not terribly interested in researching this, though.
   
  Again bloc - you're putting principle before practicality. Both pro and con artists will pull out the "nation of laws" thing at one time or another, but we also have to weigh the consequences of our policies - at least I hope we would. I think most folks would fall on the side of husbanhater on this one, which is one reason why the Democrats sent this bill to the President.

• bloc said on Jul 15, 2008....

  @curm
  I agree that most people will fall on that side IF they don't think about it. Bush could have asked for new laws, instead he secretly broke the law for many years. I can't find any good justification for that. As we have seen, the congress is willing to give him whatever he wants and they certainly would have change the laws had he asked. 

• curmudgeon said on Jul 16, 2008....

  You know what - that's a really great point. Bush could have used the aftermath of 9/11 to push Congress into revamping intelligence gathering procedures openly. His administration didn't necessarily have to conduct these operations in secrecy. He could have also pushed Congress for greater latitude in interrogation techniques. He probably would have been criticized, but how is this different from what's been going on for the last seven years?
   
  What would motivate this? Better to ask for forgiveness than permission? The belief in the unilateral power of the Executive Office? I can't put this down simply to Bush being a bad guy.
   
  Whether or not folks will actually hold the Administration to account is another question.

• bloc said on Jul 16, 2008....

  "the belief in the unilateral power of the Executive Office?"
  
  
  This is my guess. He, or more likely Cheney, wanted to grossly expand the power of the executive and used 9/11 as a means to that end. However, there is a huge difference between asking for forgiveness vs permission. One is a nation of laws, and one is a nation with a dictatorial president.

• crybabylu said on Jul 16, 2008....

  I here you  loud and clear @bloc!   Downright sickening, for lack of a better word!  Could have said terrifying, but it hasn't got to that stage yet, but I know that this serious infraction of our liberties is going to bite us in the behind if not now, then later!......I still say, good post, bloc!...........L dee.

• curmudgeon said on Jul 17, 2008....

  I think it speaks to a lack of trust that the American People will agree to do what needs to be done to protect the nation from terrorist threats. Granted there will be calls from civil libertarians, but that has happened anyway.
   
  The depressing part about this is that no matter who is elected, either party will not want to give up its newfound powers. That could also be why the Dems went along.

• bloc said on Jul 17, 2008....

  "The depressing part about this is that no matter who is elected, either party will not want to give up its newfound powers. That could also be why the Dems went along."
  
  
  This is so true and why we shouldn't allow such things. 

• Antimatter said on Jul 17, 2008....

  This new law has inspired me to increase my monthly donation to the ACLU.

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