The Senate on Wednesday affirmed its intention to protect from civil lawsuits telecom companies that helped the government wiretap Americans without court authorization after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Just under a third of the Senate, including presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, supported an amendment proposed by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., that would have stripped immunity from the bill. It was defeated on a 32-66 vote. Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain did not vote.
Fuck Congress.
And here’s the best part:
The bill restates that the FISA law is the only means by which wiretapping for intelligence purposes can be conducted inside the United States. This is meant to prevent a repeat of warrantless wiretapping by future administrations.
You got it. Democrats promised to end the war and put an end to shenanigans. Instead, they’ve all collectively stuck their tongues even farther up Bush’s ass.
Excuse me, I meant “not rock the boat so they don’t risk offending anyone and gain even MORE seats this November.” Which makes no fucking sense, because no one’s going to vote for any of these incumbents come November, unless the alternative is a complete psychopath.
Clinton didn’t vote. That’s disappointing. Then again, she probably doesn’t want to be stuck voting for a big issue that somebody else will use against her when she runs for President again.
At least Boxer and Feinstein voted against it. But they probably wouldn’t get re-elected if they had voted for it.
Wow. Go to the tab that shows the top 20 recipients of money from the telephone folks. The top three get significantly more than the rest - while #4 got around $50,000, #1, 2, and 3 got $366K, $247K, and $221K.
Huffington has a typical apologist post for Obama up
Apparently they think there is some kind of moderate support for wiretaps, and his standing up to the ‘radical progressives’ on this issue is a good thing? WTF?
I’ve read your views on this before, IIRC, and I think you’re really profoundly wrong. They broke the law repeatedly, before 9/11 and they’re getting a pass on it because it’s politically convenient. That’s corruption in anyone’s language.
I think it’s interesting the amount of bad information floating around on this topic. It’s really the first time I’ve seen QT3 P&R start reading like lgf. There’s a lot of rage with nobody really articulating a good reason. But there are a lot of people stirring misinformation into the pot to keep the rage bubbling.
To address the specific factual mistake in your post, there is NO immunity for telcos for anything they might have done pre 9/11. The immunity period is 9/11/2001 - 1/17/2007. The immunity is time boxed and requires a telco to be able to show written orders from the govt for any intercepts they might have done.
