I spent some time today collecting the list of 19k people who signed the noretroactiveimmunity.com petition to hand in with the letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Last week was really quite a stunning outburst, and with all petitions in from various groups at least three hundred thousand people have petitioned their government not to grant amnesty to corporate interests who spy on us.
The Senate Intelligence panel has approved a bill that would establish new procedures for court warrants for foreign-intelligence surveillance on Americans, but some of those provisions did not go far enough to satisfy some liberal Democrats and civil liberties groups.
Most controversial, however, was the measure's inclusion of a provision that would grant retroactive immunity for telecommunications firms that participated in the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program after the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Although the Intelligence panel saw the internal White House documents on the NSA program before it voted on the bill, most freshmen are unlikely to see those papers. That puts them in a tough spot as they decide whether to support a Bush-backed provision to wipe away about 40 lawsuits accusing the companies of giving away private information to the government.
"I'm a little bit concerned ... of fear-mongering and politics by the Bush administration and an enormous amount of confusion kicked up around this," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).
Whitehouse joined 12 of his colleagues in voting for the Intelligence panel's bill earlier this month. He signaled that there would likely be efforts to alter that language when the Judiciary Committee considers the bill in coming weeks.
Whitehouse is one of the people who voted for retroactive immunity in the Senate Intelligence committee, so it's good he's having second thoughts. It looks like various freshmen understand that the Republicans are going to throw the terrorism card at them no matter what they do.
"Republicans are going to say we're weak on terror - that's their rhetoric, that's what they're going to say," said freshman Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.), who voted for the PAA and is planning on supporting the leading House bill.
Altmire is one of the more conservative House freshmen, a 'Bush Dog', so it's a positive sign that he's aware of the fearmongering going on and the strategic stupidity of knuckling under to it for political expediency.
I'd be impressed if Congress managed to hold firm on this. I don't know if they will, but activism works.
