ACLU of WV at West VA Blue

After boldly standing up to The Bush administrations’ fear mongering in February, word comes that House leadership may now be working with Senator Jay Rockefeller to possibly rush a pro-telecom amnesty bill through Congress in the next few days.

Civil libertarians in the Mountain State, say no to back room deals.

The FireDogLake community is trying to do something about this.

I don’t like Steny Hoyer. There’s just no way around it. Now he’s conspiring with Jay Rockefeller to force retroactive telecom immunity through Congress, so George Bush and his criminal conspiracy won’t have to answer any questions about violating the Constitution by spying on American citizens without warrants.

Again.

Did I mention I don’t like Steny Hoyer?  Read more 

The House, to its great credit, passed a FISA reform bill that doesn’t eviscerate the rule of law by granting the telcos retroactive immunity, and doesn’t completely gut the Fourth Amendment*. That’s good news, and if we get lucky, the whole abomination might just get deep-sixed, at which point we would return to the status quo ante legally, while much strengthened politically. Kudos, I freely grant, to Nancy Pelosi** and the rest of the House leadership, including — lambert blushes modestly for calling this one, against all odds — Steny Hoyer. That said, let’s do the classic blogospheric media critique thing on WaPo’s not totally fucked coverage. Jonathan Weisman reports:  Read more 

Via TPM, this from the Online WSJ:

Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans’ privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But the data-sifting effort didn’t disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system.

According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called “transactional” data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA’s own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge’s approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected.

The effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called “black programs” whose existence is undisclosed, the current and former officials say. Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach. Among them, current and former intelligence officials say, is a longstanding Treasury Department program to collect individual financial data including wire transfers and credit-card transactions.

What could go wrong?  Read more 

So what do local bloggers think of the FISA sellouts?  Read more 

Excellent work by Stoller, getting this statement from the Foster campaign:

[FOSTER] Nobody is above the law and telecom companies who engaged in illegal surveillance should be held accountable, not given retroactive immunity. I flatly oppose giving these companies an out for cooperating with Alberto Gonzalez on short-circuiting the FISA courts and the rule of law.”

Bill Foster, Democratic Candidate in IL-14 March 8th Special Election

So, when you make your calls to the Blue Dog traitors on FISA, be sure you stress that point.  Read more 

South Texas Chisme cries shame. PrairiePundit says that Reyes Sivestro Reyes insults our intelligence on intelligence.

Check out the local bloggers in your area.

If you are unhappy with the Democrats, you can email your concerns to info@dccc.org
note - it is necessary to be polite - no flames

Remember how Bush’s illegal and unconstitutional warrantless surveillance program was originally about wiretaps? And then morphed into being about foreign-to-foreign communication? Well, that was all disinformation. Turns out it’s all about email. Your “papers,” as the Fourth Amendment has it. WaPo:

At the breakfast yesterday [Kenneth Weinstein, assistant attorney general for national security] highlighted a different problem with the current FISA law than other administration officials have emphasized. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, for example, has repeatedly said FISA should be changed so no warrant is needed to tap a communication that took place entirely outside the United States but happened to pass through the United States.

But in response to a question at the meeting by David Kris, a former federal prosecutor and a FISA expert, Wainstein said FISA’s current strictures did not cover strictly foreign wire and radio communications, even if acquired in the United States. The real concern, he said, is primarily e-mail, because “essentially you don’t know where the recipient is going to be” and so you would not know in advance whether the communication is entirely outside the United States.

Just as we said from the very beginning.

10-to-1, 100-to-1, these fascist weasels decided to suck up all email, just to get some of it right away. And the odds are that they archived it all, on the chance that some of it would be useful later (especially if privatized).  Read more 

From Congressional Daily (subscription only, no link, sorry)

To break an impasse over legislation overhauling the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, House Democratic leaders are considering the option of taking up a Senate-passed FISA bill in stages, congressional sources said today. Under the plan, the House would vote separately on the first title of the bill, which authorizes surveillance activities, and then on the bill’s second title, which grants retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies that aided the Bush administration’s warrantless electronic surveillance activities. The two would be recombined, assuming passage of both titles. In this way, Democratic leaders believe they can give an out to lawmakers opposed to the retroactive immunity provision. Republican leadership sources said their caucus would back such a plan because not only would it give Democratic leaders the out they need, it would provide a political win for the GOP. It remains to be seen if such a move will placate liberal Democrats who adamantly oppose giving in to the Bush administration on the immunity issue.  Read more 

Where’s Jack Bauer?

They have no shame.

Glenn speaks for me:

There is some (understandable) confusion around about what is going to happen tomorrow with the FISA vote and Dodd’s promised filibuster… I shared this confusion until earlier today when these matters were clarified.

Contrary to the emphatic promise Dodd repeatedly made during his presidential campaign to lead a filibuster on the floor of the Senate to stop any bill that has telecom immunity in it (a promise which, incidentally, led to hundreds of thousands of dollars being donated to his campaign), there isn’t going to be any actual filibuster tomorrow. Under the Unanimous Consent framework agreed to by all Senators (including Dodd), there will be a 60-vote requirement to invoke cloture on the FISA bill and for ultimate passage, followed by an allotted 4 hours of post-cloture “debate,” but there will not be any real filibuster to prevent cloture. When Leahy says that he will “join” Dodd’s filibuster, what he means is that he will merely cast a vote against cloture.

Dodd’s efforts against this bill have been quite commendable, and the UC Agreement isn’t completely worthless. It means that Democrats do not need 60 votes, or even 50 votes, to stop this bill. Rather, they only need 41 Senators willing to oppose cloture (which everyone knows they’re not going to get).

Still, Dodd is not, after all, going to lead an actual filibuster on the floor of the Senate to stop the bill. Worse, the Republicans are going to be permitted to impose 60-vote requirements on key Democratic amendments without actually having to filibuster at all — exactly the situation which Harry Reid vowed just two weeks ago he would not permit.  Read more 

Scum. Primary challenges needed:

Some House Democrats were prepared to support immunity, regardless. In a Jan. 28 letter, 21 Democrats in the conservative Blue Dog Coalition sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., supporting [retroactive] immunity and listing other provisions that they believed were needed in a FISA bill.

They wrote that the Senate bill “contains satisfactory language addressing all these issues, and we would fully support that measure should it reach the House floor without substantial change.”

Meanwhile, Steny Hoyer says:  Read more 

I’ve got to run, so forgive the C&P post direct out of my email box. From CQ:

Legislation to overhaul the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act remained stalled in the Senate Tuesday, held hostage by a partisan clash over procedures for consideration of an unrelated economic stimulus package.

A frustrated Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., complained that Republicans were blocking his efforts to schedule votes on proposed amendments to the bill (S 2248). He questioned Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s commitment to the legislation, saying Republicans have declined to allow FISA to move forward.

“The Orwellian Bush administration has now slopped over into the Senate, and now the Republican leader is now becoming Orwellian himself,” Reid said.  Read more 

Slate magazine runs a podcast called Gabfest, featuring Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz. This week’s episode also aired on the POTUS election channel on XM Radio.

At about 22:14 into the program, the discussion turns to FISA and telecom immunity. And the “point” was repeatedly made that the topic is unbearably dull, even to listeners of a quasi-alternative political show.

I couldn’t always be sure which was John and which was David, so I’m supplying my best guesses.  Read more 

Typical toll tower on Rhine in Bingen

Finally—we’re nothing if not open-minded here at The Mighty Corrente Buiding—a solid reason to vote for Obama—a dogwhistle I can hear.

Via Ezra, this from XKCD:

Obama has shown a real commitment to open government. When putting together tech policy (to take an example close to home for xkcd) others might have gone to industry lobbyists. Obama went to Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons (under which xkcd is published) and longtime white knight in the struggle with a broken system over internet and copyright policy. Lessig was impressed by Obama’s commitment to open systems — for example, his support of machine-readable government information standards that allow citizens’ groups to monitor what our government is up to. Right now, the only group that can effectively police the government is the government itself, and as a result, it’s corrupt to the core. Through these excellent and long-overdue measures, Obama is working to fight this corruption.

Obama stands against bad governing not only in his support of specific practices like open data standards and basic network neutrality, but in his work against corruption from day one.

The Mighty Corrente Building, and the blogosphere in general, could not run and would not even exist without open standards, so Obama’s embrace of them is good news. For example:  Read more 

The plot thickens, as seen in Glenn’s latest update:

There was some significant, and apparently unexpected, obstructionism on the part of Republicans this afternoon, whereby they blocked votes on any of the pending amendments and then filed a Motion for Cloture (i.e., to force a vote on the Senate Intelligence Committee bill as is), the vote on which will occur on Monday at 4:30 p.m. Supposedly, the obstructionism angered Reid and other Democrats and now Reid will not only support Dodd’s filibuster but urge his caucus to do so as well.  Read more 

All your social networking belong to us:

DAVOS, Switzerland - AT&T Inc. is still evaluating whether to examine traffic on its Internet lines to stop illegal sharing of copyright material, its chief executive said Wednesday.

CEO Randall Stephenson told a conference at the World Economic Forum that the company is looking at monitoring peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, one of the largest drivers of online traffic but also a common way to illegally exchange copyright files.  Read more 

Reid to DFHs: “you talk too much, you nevah shut up” early hip hop groove track

[I]f people think they are going to talk this to death, we are going to be in here all night. This is not something we are going to have a silent filibuster on. If someone wants to filibuster this bill, they are going to do it in the openness of the Senate.

Go read the rest at Glenn’s where Reid explains what he ’really meant’ by that. I think you already know.

Fucking A, Matt:

Bush is about to get his number one priority through Congress, a move that could be stopped by Edwards, Obama, or Clinton, especially the latter two. This is the move to implement retroactive immunity for telecom companies who spy on Americans and violate core constitutional principles.
All that is required to fight this is for Clinton or Obama to put the glare of the Presidential spotlight in the Senate. To, you know, lead. All three campaigns are well-aware of this fight, and at least Clinton and Obama have been completely unresponsive.  Read more 

I’m not a weepy-eyed romantic when it comes to the Constitution, but I do believe in rewarding good behavior and symbolic gestures that can have an impact on the political process. As a Little Person, the chance to make the latter comes very, very infrequently. Most of the time our Betters don’t give a flying fuck what we do. I think this time it’s different. Even if you only give a buck, think of what you’re doing not so much as a way to help an old rich White guy make his next payment on the condo in Gstaad, but as a reminder that unlike millions of others, the Constitution is more important to you than the next episode of ’American Idol.’ and of course, give your real money to your long suffering Correntian Heroes or we’ll kill your dog.

Dear CD-

No, I’m not retiring from the Senate - I’m working hard as ever, to restore the Constitution, stop that terrible FISA bill and put a Democrat in the White House.

But after our incredible journey campaigning for the Presidency, there is something that does need retiring: our debt.

My internet team tells me the campaign inbox was flooded with messages of thanks and inquiries about how you can continue to help now that the presidential campaign is over.

Today, you can help by contributing financially to our effort to retire the campaign debt.

Love your Constitution. ok, i changed that part a lil bit.

I’ve spent the past days with my wife and family, unwinding after a grueling process that changed the debate at home and abroad — that is our legacy from the campaign.  Read more 

Okay, maybe it’s only one cheer.

A provisional cheer at that, although I’m inclined to make that two provisional cheers.

What I’d like to suggest, no doubt to the consternation of most readers, is that Reid’s decision to pull the FISA bill Monday evening was pretty much what Reid had in mind the whole time.

What I’m sure of is that the many comments I’ve read that characterize what happened on the Senate floor on Monday as Reid having been forced to pull the bill by Chris Dodd’s threat of a filibuster simply don’t match what I saw, via C-Span’s live streaming.

Before I proceed, let me make clear that I wish to take nothing from Chris Dodd’s role here. He deserves all of the praise he’s getting and then some.

His speeches on the Senate floor were magisterial. I’ve been watching him for more years than most of you and I have never seen him so compelling. And yes, it counts that he left his campaign in Idaho to come back and lead the opposition to a version of the Senate bill that was inadequate to the task of restoring the good sense, the respect for civil liberties and constitutional government, that had fueled the passage of the first FISA legislation in the late 1970s.

As Dodd graciously acknowledges in the video Lambert has posted here, many Democrats contributed to the sense I had, watching the debate on Monday, that I was not looking at a dispirited, disunited, frightened caucus, without a clue about how to oppose the policy of obdurate obstructionism employed so successfully in the past six months by the Bush administration and its enablers in the Republican Senate caucus.

Democrats were on the attack, making compelling, easy-to-understand arguments that have wide-spread appeal among a majority of Americans, and they were ready and able to shoot down the lies and prevarications employed by key Republicans, like Orrin Hatch. Most important, the list of Democratic contributors to this success was long and varied, and included Harry Reid.  Read more 

Via TPM, Reid’s statement on FISA in full:

“I will shortly move to proceed to S 2248, the FISA Improvement Act of 2007. I spoke briefly on this subject earlier, but I want to provide a more complete explanation of the process by which the Senate will consider this important bill. Earlier this year, the Director of National Intelligence came to Congress and alerted us to what he described as a significant gap that had emerged in our nation’s foreign intelligence gathering capacity.

“Members on both sides of the aisle – and from all sides of this important debate – became convinced [became stampeded before the August recess] that this problem was real, and that we had an obligation to address it [because otherwise David Broder might say bad things]. Although we may differ on the solutions required, all Senators – both Democrats and Republicans [no, they don’t] – want to ensure that intelligence professionals have the tools they need to keep our country as safe as possible. We worked in good faith with the Administration through July and August to provide those tools in a way that protects the privacy and liberties of law-abiding Americans. Unfortunately, the final bill signed by President Bush fell well short of that goal. [Nice use of passive voice.]

Yeah, and how’d that happen?

“Many other Democrats and I [ineffectually] opposed the so-called Protect America Act [before passing a Republican bill, at midnight, before blowing town on vacation]. That’s why we made sure that it had a six-month sunset so that we could come back to do a better job of ensuring judicial and congressional oversight of these sensitive activities.

As my colleagues know, the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees share jurisdiction over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Both Committees have worked diligently over the past few months, this hard work has resulted in two different versions of legislation to improve FISA – S. 2248 – reported out of the Committees. I consulted extensively with Chairman Rockefeller and Chairman Leahy about the best way for the Senate to consider this subject.

“I have determined that in this situation, it would be wrong of me to simply choose one committee’s bill over the other.

But that’s what you did! You made the Intel bill the base text! That’s choosing one bill Why?! Read on:

I personally favor many of the additional protections included in the Judiciary Committee bill, and I oppose the concept of retroactive immunity in the Intelligence bill. But I cannot ignore the fact that the Intelligence bill was reported favorably by a vote of 13-2, with most Democrats on the committee supporting that approach. I explored the possibility of putting before the Senate a bill that included elements of both two committee bills. Earlier this week, I used Senate Rule 14 to place two bills on the calendar.

But if the issues are Constitutional, then a 100-1 vote on Intel shouldn’t matter, since that’s the field in which the Judiciary Committee is expert. So, the real point here is that Reid buys into the frame that intelligence issues are primary, and that Constitutional issues are secondary. That just pins my bogometer. And what does any of that have to do with retroactive immunity for the telcos, pray tell?

“The first – S. 2440 – consists of Titles I and III of the Intelligence bill, but did not include Title II on retroactive immunity. The second bill – S. 2441 – consists of Title I of the Intelligence bill and Titles II and III of the Judiciary bill. But after consulting further with Chairman Rockefeller and Chairman Leahy, a consensus emerged [Cue tiny violin playing The Theme From Process Dodge! Nice use of passive voice, too] among the three of us that the best way to proceed would be by regular order. Both Chairmen agreed with this approach.

“Under regular order, and the rules of the Senate governing sequential referral, I will move to proceed to S. 2248 – the bill reported by each committee. When that motion to proceed is adopted, the work of both committees will be before the Senate. Because of the order in which they considered the bill, [And how did that happen?] the Intelligence Committee version will be the base text, and the Judiciary Committee version will be automatically pending as a substitute amendment.

[Reach me that bucket, wouldja hon?]

“In the weeks since the two committees acted, Senators Rockefeller and Leahy have been working hard to narrow the difference between their two versions of the bill. The ranking Republicans, Senators Bond and Specter, have been included in many of these conversations. I expect that when we begin debate on the bill, there will be amendments to incorporate many of the Judiciary Committee provisions into the Intelligence Committee text.

“In my view, that will make the final product stronger. There is one issue that cannot be resolved through informal negotiation. As some are aware, the Intelligence Committee’s bill provides the telephone companies with retroactive immunity from lawsuits filed by their customers for privacy violations. Many members, myself included, believe that such a grant of immunity is unwise. I expect there will be a full debate on this subject next week.

“Senators Specter, Feinstein, Whitehouse and others are working to craft a compromise that might give the phone companies some relief [that is, the risk the telcos took in breaking the law would be socialized, and the taxpayers would pick up the tab] – but allow the lawsuits to go forward in a manner that would preserve accountability.

And now the part that’s threatening my cranial integrity.

In one way or another, we must ensure that President Bush is held accountable for his actions. It is important for the Senate to complete work on this bill next week to allow time for the Senate and House to produce a final bill. Our ultimate goal is a bill that commands broad bipartisan support in the Congress and in the country. The process I just outlined offers us the best opportunity to do so.”

Anybody see a flaw in this reasoning?  Read more 

And genius like this should be preserved before Wikipedia’s NPOV killer T-Cells destroy it. Here’s the current entry for Time para-Editor Richard Stengel:

And why this foul-mouthed vituperation?  Read more