Glenn Greenwald has posted a detailed analysis of the Barack Obama's recently-released statement. While giving credit to Obama for engaging this way, and allowing his site to be a forum for disagreement, Greenwald notes:
Despite that, the statement contains many dubious claims and, in a couple cases, outright misleading statements. Worse, Obama's statement only addressed the objections to the telecom immunity provisions of the bill, while ignoring the objections to the (at least) equally pernicious new warrantless eavesdropping powers the bill authorizes.
In his analysis he notes one outright falsehood:
But in a free society, that authority cannot be unlimited. As I've said many times, an independent monitor must watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to protect the civil liberties of the American people. This compromise law assures that the FISA court has that responsibility.
This is just false. The new FISA bill that Obama supports vests new categories of warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President (.pdf), and allows the Government, for the first time, to tap physically into U.S. telecommunications networks inside our country with no individual warrant requirement. To claim that this new bill creates "an independent monitor [to] watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to protect the civil liberties of the American people" is truly misleading, since the new FISA bill actually does the opposite -- it frees the Government from exactly that monitoring in all sorts of broad categories.
And he concludes his analysis with the following paragraph:
This statement has so many equivocations and vague claims as to be worthless. In a society that lives under the rule of law, government officials and corporations which break our laws are held accountable by courts of law, not by vague promises from politicians of some future "review" and "recommendation" process grounded in claims that we can trust the Leader to do the right thing, whatever he decides in his sole discretion and infinite wisdom that might be. That is no consolation for blocking courts from adjudicating whether laws were broken here, which is what the bill that Obama supports will do.
I do not believe Obama's statement will fool anyone who's been following this issue, other than those who want to be fooled. Greenwald's analysis is strengthened by the fact that most of Obama's obfuscations are not new. We have heard it all before, and were expecting him to speak out against this sort of bilge water. Instead he's giving it to us on tap, and saying, "Happy Independence Day!" without the slightest hint of irony.
I believe a letter from leading law school deans would be in order. But I'm rather afraid they may be reluctant to speak out, simply because Obama is not Bush.
In the last couple days, there have been several posts across the blogosphere citing what various candidates running for Congress have said on FISA and retroactive immunity for the telecoms. But so far, it's been all over the map. I'll try to corral all their statements into this diary, so you can see who the "good guys" are.
First, let's start off with the current House and Senate members who voted against this bill. They do deserve credit, as it's their jobs on the line.
Follow me below the fold to see the dozens of Democratic challengers who are standing up for the Constitution, and are against this FISA bill and retroactive immunity.
A couple of months ago I shot a quick video expressing my appreciation for the House standing up and refusing to grant retroactive immunity around warrantless wiretapping. I guess I should pull it down now, and replace it with this one.
(This is a hilarious video. Courtney's a good guy in a Northeastern conservative district. Not conservative Republican, more conservative Democratic, so it's a good sign that he is this excited about what happened. - promoted by Matt Stoller)
I was making calls at the DCCC today when I overheard Congressman Joe Courtney proudly telling his constituents about the Democrats defending the Constitution today. I thought you might like to hear him for yourself, though:
At least for now, it's looking like the house dems are standing up on retroactive immunity. They are now proposing a compromise that maintains liability of the telecoms, but enables them to have their trials behind closed doors.
I wonder if holding secret trials might be partially undermining the ability to actually conduct oversight of the president, but this seems like a good effort on their part--they haven't surrendered the principle that the telecoms be held accountable, and they have offered a compromise now that is still unpalatable to the President.
I am sincerely still shocked at the ability of the house to stand firm on this, especially after how casually the Senate gave up. That is still looking like our biggest problem. From the above article:
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid yesterday called the House Democrats' proposal "a tremendous step forward," but an aide said the Nevada Democrat is not planning to take it to the floor soon. "Since Republicans have refused to participate in the negotiations that led to this bill, it seems unlikely to achieve 60 votes in the Senate," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said. "Republicans should stop playing games on this important issue."
Come on, Harry. You don't have to be afraid of Bush any more. Stand firm. Make him veto this, and explain to the American people how the telecom's cash is worth more than the common person's privacy. Please.
Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the last 48 hours, you no doubt realize that we are in the middle of an epic battle in our nation's capital. Heroes and villains are clashing. Sparks are flying.
On one side, we have Bush, Cheney, the Republican party, felons and corporate lobbyists. On the other side, we have patriots standing up for the rule of law, equal justice for all, and the Constitution.
I am, of course, speaking of the bloody battle over whether to grant retroactive immunity to those corporations that chose to engage in felonious activities in violation of FISA. (One company, QWEST, chose to obey federal law because...uhm...well...it's the law.)
There is growing evidence that hundreds, if not thousands, of federal felonies were committed by Bush, Cheney, and certain telephone companies, in violation of existing federal law (FISA). Their solution? Bush, Cheney, Republicans and the corporate lobbyists are pushing for retroactive immunity (a get out of jail free card!) for all these crimes.
And they have the audacity to try to push this through a Democratic controlled Congress! Ha, ha, ha...right, not gonna happen. THAT will never happen...er...uhm...will it?
I'm getting lots of questions about FISA and retroactive immunity. Honestly I have no idea what's going on, and I stopped following Senate procedure a few weeks ago.
It seems like the best bet is to force something to Bush he doesn't want and have him veto the bill. Eventually, we're going to get to a February 1 deadline, and Bush will simply put a bill on the table with everything he wants. House and Senate Democrats will then have to decide if they will give him what he wants, or if they will let FISA expire.
It's likely Bush's bill will pass, as it did in August, but that moment will be a great opportunity to put as many Democrats on the record as possible and get a public mandate to fix this in 2009. It would be nice if there were a two year sunset put into the final bill.
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.
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