| Tomorrow, Chris Dodd is going to get on the floor of the Senate and filibuster the new FISA bill which grants retroactive immunity to telecom companies for illegally spying on Americans. Chairman Conyers emailed his list asking people to support Dodd's action.
You can't do much better than to read Glenn Greenwald's work, who points us to this New York Times article on the extent of the spying. Greenwald writes.
"the N.S.A.'s reliance on telecommunications companies is broader and deeper than ever before" and includes both pre-9/11 efforts to tap without warrants into the nation's domestic communications network as well as the collection of vast telephone records of American citizens in the name of the War on Drugs. The Executive Branch and the largest telecommunications companies work in virtually complete secrecy -- with no oversight and no notion of legal limits -- to spy on Americans, on our own soil, at will.
More than anything else, what these revelations highlight -- yet again -- is that the U.S. has become precisely the kind of surveillance state that we were always told was the hallmark of tyrannical societies, with literally no limits on the government's ability or willingness to spy on its own citizens and to maintain vast dossiers on those activities. The vast bulk of those on whom the Government spies have never been accused, let alone convicted, of having done anything wrong. One can dismiss those observations as hyperbole if one likes -- people want to believe that their own government is basically benevolent and "tyranny" is something that happens somewhere else -- but publicly available facts simply compel the conclusion that, by definition, we live in a lawless surveillance state, and most of our political officials are indifferent to, if not supportive of, that development.
Chris Dodd is going to be on the floor of the Senate, and his office is collecting comments that he will be reading. Leave your comment here if you would like your words to be considered.
As someone with no legal training primary interested in coalition-building, I have found this whole episode fascinating and extremely significant. While the political press is focused on stupid nonsensical personality-driven politics in Iowa and New Hampshire, Chris Dodd is illustrating genuine leadership on a core principle of Constitutional government. The strong cooperation of business leadership and government leadership to jointly break the law and invade the privacy of ordinary citizens is a deeply authoritarian development. To be sure, this is not a fascist state, as the core element of violence against domestic political opposition is thankfully missing. But it is useful to understand that a significant portion of the Senate, and a good number of Blue Dog Democrats, are committed to extending the authoritarian reach of government and business into every corner of our lives.
Even understanding that is a hugely positive first step towards remedying it. The greatness of America is that every generation has the capacity to remake it anew, and we have that opportunity before us over the next twenty years. It is clear that Bush, Clinton, Pelosi, Reid, Rockefeller, and the huge army of telecom and energy GOP activist/lobbyists empowering them are bent on turning America into a series of gated communities and ghettos. But we do not have to let them, and we can show the future political leaders, the ones currently in training, the path forward. We do not have to allow Hillary Clinton's allegiance to telecom lobbyists to go without cost, or Reid's betrayal and bad faith to go without criticism.
I am reminded, contrasting Dodd's leadership here, of the lack of leadership from Clinton or Obama during the episode before the 2006 election when the Republicans passed the Military Commissions Act to legalize torture and remove the right of habeas corpus. Neither Clinton nor Obama voted for the act, but both refused to do anything but adopt the most cursory and cynical positions on it. They are repeating their behavior here, signing a letter and doing nothing else to prevent the further evisceration of a core American principle.
And yet, even as they obviously do not want this to become an issue, they have been forced by the public to take positions. They did not lead, but others - including Dodd and all of you - did. And they were forced to follow. I am hopeful that we can repeat this kind of systemic attack from the inside and the outside, and eventually cease and then reverse the rightward drift of this country's politics. We are putting more and more of our people into positions of authority within advocacy groups, governance positions, and political office. Both Mike Huckabee and John Edwards, and their stubborn positions in the Presidential race, are evidence that the Beltway press no longer wield the same influence they once did, though they are still very very powerful.
And now you can put your words onto the floor of the Senate, working through Senator Dodd. |
