Tuesday, January 29, 2008

FISA success!

Success! Our phone calls did make a difference! The Senate Democratic coalition held together enough to support Chris Dodd's filibuster on the FISA bill that contains an immunity provision for the telecom industries for what they did in helping the Bush administration spy on American citizens. So now they and the GOP want immunity from ever facing any punishments for breaking the law.

And if any of you are wondering, the GOP's excuse of "9/11 changed everything" is bullshit; reports show the Bush administration first asked the telecoms to help them spy on Americans in February 2001. You'll note that that was seven months before 9/11. Bush and his cronies wanted to spy on us long before the terrorists attacked us.

Today on the Senate floor, even Hillary and Obama showed up for the vote. We flipped several votes our way from those who voted with the Republicans last time. Republicans couldn't even break 50 votes for cloture on Dodd's filibuster (60 are needed to stop a filibuster). They only got 48 votes, versus 45 against. Four Democrats, all from southern/midwestern red states, voted with the Republicans. Only one Republican, Arlen Specter, voted with us on this, and that was because he wanted his own amendment heard, which it wouldn't be after a filibuster.

Now, there was a second cloture vote on a bill that would extend the current temporary FISA bill for 30 days beyond its expiration date on February 5th. This time, it's the Republicans that wanted to block this bill with a filibuster, as Bush wants to veto it. But see, if Bush does veto it, then that would destroy the entire GOP talking point of caring about protecting us from terrorists, as they would then have allowed FISA to expire even when presented with a 30-day extension, It also shows that they place telecom immunity ABOVE protecting America. Cloture failed on this too, also by a 48-45 margin (but with the entire vote basically switched from the first one), so Republicans did succeed in blocking this extension from being voted upon. This time, it was a straight party-line vote: every Democrat (and Independent Bernie Sanders) voted for cloture, every Republican voted to keep the filibuster on this alive. This does now show us that Republican Senators care more about giving the telecoms immunity than protecting America.

(Oh, and Joe Lieberman wasn't there today, as he was campaigning for John McCain down in Florida.)


Markos had a very important question for all those libertarian Paultards regarding the FISA fight.

For all the talk of "freedom" that the Paulbots claim to believe in, they sure as heck have been silent on the horrible FISA bill we're fighting to fix in the Senate right now. Same for Ron Paul. Why the silence? And the CATO people and the libertarian publications like Reason, where are they?

Here we are engaged in a huge civil liberties issue, and progressives are being forced to fight this thing alone. It's easy to talk about "liberty". It's much more impressive to actually do something about it.


And as a commenter noted about libertarianism:

Funny isn't it when you take out the civil liberties part of the equation. George Bush was the libertarian that the Randoids dreamed about, I mean he was the John Galt who cut taxes, got rid of regulations and hell, he is doing a heckavajob with New Orleans and Baghdad so some future Howard Roark can do some work there. As for the rest of us? We The Living? It's Orwell time.


Amen. Now watch how many Paultards flood the comments section to defend their man.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

And if any of you are wondering, the GOP's excuse of "9/11 changed everything" is bullshit; reports show the Bush administration first asked the telecoms to help them spy on Americans in February 2001. You'll note that that was seven months before 9/11. Bush and his cronies wanted to spy on us long before the terrorists attacked us.

Bullshit?
The FISA court has ruled that every communication between intelligence agents and law-enforcement officials requires its approval. In 2001 two efforts by the FBI were squelched. In Minneapolis, FBI agents sought permission to monitor Zacarias Moussaoui. In New York, another FBI agent sought clearance to throw his squad into an 11th-hour search for Khalid Almihdar. The Justice Department bureaucrats refused both requests. Had Moussaoui been monitored, leads to two of the 9/11 terrorists and to the Hamburg al-Qaida cell that planned the attack would have been uncovered. Had the FBI been able to find Almihdar, it would have apprehended the pilot who crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.