Political Waves » Speak up for your Constitution NOW!

Speak up for your Constitution NOW!

December 17th, 2007

FILIBUSTER! A gift to the nation from presidential candidate, Chris Dodd, who is behaving like a real, genuine American leader today, putting the Bushy immunity demand for illegal surveillance under fire. You can follow along, it’s being broadcast live on C-SPAN2.

FireDog is blogging regularly, as always.

Get involved with this — this is one of those rips, those moments of opportunity, that are all too rare in our political fabric.

You can support Dodd here or here.

Digby has a list of numbers, below, to call those who are standing with Chris and encourage them.

Below, you’ll find a Youtube of Dodd on Russert, yesterday — a copy of Dodd’s opening statements — bits of analysis … and reading them is important for the full picture, but getting involved is more important; DO stand up for the Constitution, today. Our collective voice is stronger than we imagine, especially in a time when the political pendulum is [finally ] swinging so quickly.

And DO NOT MISS the last article, because if you thought the Bushy’s weren’t much to start with and only got their sea legs after 9/11, you’d be WRONG WRONG WRONG! They were planning it all from the git-go; and there is no doubt … NONE … that they have succeeded in a deliberate and cynical “bloodless [sic] coup” on liberty. [Put a little Light around the courageous whistle blower, too!]

Today’s the day when you can register your support for change, demand your basic rights and put on your Patriot hat; and while you’re at it, keep Light on all this … it grows by tiny increments … but it grows!

Jude

Reid Wants Full Senate to See Warrantless Surveillance Docs
Spencer Ackerman, TPM Muckraker
December 17, 2007, 11:54AM

Today’s the big day: the Senate debates a permanent overhaul of surveillance law to replace the administration’s sweeping Protect America Act, which expires February 1. (Didja see Sen. Feingold’s TPMCafe post on all this?)

One milestone on the road to today’s debate was a White House agreement to let the Senate intelligence committee and the leaders of the judiciary committee see the legal justifications for its constellation of warrantless surveillance programs. Now Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), the Democratic leader, wants the full Senate to be able to review the closely-held documents. He wrote to intelligence czar Michael McConnell yesterday:

We appreciate that you have provided access to the documents necessary for evaluation of this issue to the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, as each has in turn considered it. As the debate now moves to the full Senate, I believe it is of critical importance that all Senators who will be called upon to vote on this important question have an opportunity to review these key documents themselves so that they may draw their own conclusions. In my view, each sitting Senator has a constitutional right of access to these documents before voting on this matter.

I strongly urge you to make the documents previously provided to the Intelligence and Judiciary Committee regarding retroactive immunity available in a secure location to any Senator who wishes to review them during the floor debate

One Senator who read those documents, Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), has already said in a recent speech that the legal basis for the program spelled out in the documents made him “increasingly dismayed and amazed.” They amount, in Whitehouse’s view, to a legal doctrine for presidential lawbreaking. Maybe Reid, who’s said he opposes retroactive immunity, is pushing a gambit to kill the telecom immunity provisions of the surveillance bill through the disinfecting power of sunlight.

Dodd ready to mount filibuster to block telecom immunity
Nick Juliano
Monday December 17, 2007

Live video of Sen. Dodd’s speaking on telecom immunity can be seen on C-Span 2 here.

Sen. Chris Dodd has taken to the Senate floor to urge his colleagues to block a proposal to grant legal immunity to telecommunications companies that facilitated the warrantless surveillance of Americans.

“I rarely come to the floor with this much anger,” Dodd said. “I’ve never seen contempt of the rule of law such as this.”

The Senate is considering an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that includes a provision aimed at invalidating some 40 lawsuits that have been filed against telephone and internet companies. Plaintiffs in those suits say the telecommunications industry acted illegally and ignored the constitution in facilitating warrantless government wiretaps aimed at Americans.

Debate over the FISA update began at 10 a.m. Monday, and Dodd began speaking around 11 a.m. The Senate will vote around noon to proceed to regular debate on the FISA update measure. Dodd is expected to begin his full filibuster sometime this afternoon, once regular debate begins.

“Believe me when I say if I did not speak today, my conscience would not rest,” Dodd told his colleagues. He praised the Senate as a chamber in which even a “minority of one” can mount a protest against unacceptable legislation, to counteract the president’s bully pulpit, as he sought to turn his minority into a “majority” of senators against telecom immunity.

Accusing telecommunications companies of “betraying millions of customers trust” by handing over phone records to the government for construction of a massive database, Dodd said blocking lawsuits against the companies would eliminate the last bastion of oversight of the president’s warrantless wiretapping program.

“Was it legal?” Dodd asked. “That I don’t know, but if we pass this bill we will never know.”

The Connecticut senator accused President Bush of usurping the rule of law instead asking the country to simply trust that he wasn’t trampling on citizens’ constitutional rights.

“We say to the president of the United States that a nation of free men and women would never take ‘trust me’ for an answer, not even from a perfect president,” Dodd said. “At these times, I would be a fool to take that offer.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John Rockefeller (D-WV), whose committee passed a measure that would grant immunity to telecoms, insisted early in Monday’s debate, which is being televised on C-Span 2, that such immunity was narrowly targeted to telephone and internet companies that facilitated the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program between Sept. 11, 2001, and January of this year, when the FISA court ruled on the program.

Dodd, a dark-horse candidate for the Democratic presidential nod, tried to put a “hold” on any FISA update with telecom immunity, but that request apparently has been ignored by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).

The 64-year-old Connecticut Senator plans to filibuster the bill — the old fashioned way — when it comes to the floor Monday. There is no word on how long Dodd’s filibuster will last.

“It looks like the Senate Democratic leadership are not going to be the ones standing firm,” a source familiar with the filibuster plan told RAW STORY.

In the modern Congress, the filibuster has become a de facto tool to require 60 votes in the Senate to pass virtually any piece of important or controversial legislation. Dodd’s effort Monday would be the first time one Senator actually sought to block a bill by taking to the floor and refusing to yield since former Sen. Al D’Amato held the floor for 15 hours to protest job losses from his home state of New York to Mexico. That was in 1992 — more than 15 years ago.

In 2003, Republicans cooperatively staged an all-night session to dramatize Democratic efforts to block President Bush’s judicial nominations; earlier that week Reid held the floor for nearly nine hours to protest the Republicans stunt. And earlier this year, Reid kept the Senate in session all night to protest Republicans’ refusal to allow a simple majority vote on a measure aimed at withdrawing US troops from Iraq.

Already, Dodd has lined up support from Sens. Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA), to whom he plans to yield the floor for 20-minute “questions” that would allow him to take quick breaks but keep the filibuster going, reports FireDogLake…

Writing at TPM Cafe, Feingold criticizes Reid’s plans to proceed with a measure passed by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which does not included telecom immunity, instead of with a Judiciary Committee measure that has no immunity. The Intelligence bill will be the base when the Senate begins debate, and the Judiciary measure will be pending as a replacement amendment. It would require 60 votes to supplant the Intel bill with Judiciary’s version.

“We have a big fight on our hands, and unfortunately, the deck is now stacked against us,” Feingold said. “Instead of being able to defend improvements that were made in the Judiciary Committee, we are going to have to start all over again to try to salvage the good work that was done to improve the bill.”

Dodd and Feingold plan to offer an amendment to strip telecom immunity from the FISA update.

FDL says comments readers leave there could be read by Sen. Dodd when he takes to the Senate floor, and it is calling on the Senate’s other presidential candidates — Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — to stand by their pledges to support Dodd’s filibuster.

“The time for leadership is now, not January 2009. … You want to be our leader? Leadership begins by standing with Senator Dodd,” wrote Scarecrow at FDL Monday.

The Senate convenes at 10 a.m. Monday, and Dodd’s filibuster is expected to begin soon after that. His plan to hold up business on the Senate floor comes as the chamber scrambles to pass several important spending bills and other legislation before recessing for the holidays at the end of this week.

From Muckraker
David Kurtz
12.17.07 — 10:04AM

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) has a post up at TPMCafe on today’s debate on the new FISA bill and telecom immunity.

9:04AM
House intel committee makes a bipartisan vow not to be thwarted from investigating the CIA torture tapes.

Sen. Chris Dodd’s First Speech On FISA Today
Christy Hardin Smith, FDL
Monday December 17, 2007 9:00 am

Sen. Chris Dodd gave a barnburner of a speech this morning, laying out the reasons that the rule of law ought to trump the CYA demands of the Bush Administration and complicit telecoms who trailed along in their unlawful wake — before and after 9/11, for years. I’m reprinting the speech in its entirety — as it was prepared for delivery — because I felt that folks who weren’t able to follow along would appreciate the read.

In the face of a challenge to the rule of law and the foundations of government, true patriots stand up. Thank you to Sen. Dodd for doing so today.

I rise to urge my colleagues to vote against cloture on S. 2248, the FISA Amendments Act of 2007.

Opposing cloture is essential, because there is no unanimous consent agreement in place providing for the immediate adoption of the Judiciary Committee substitute amendment.

As you know, Mr. President, the Judiciary substitute amendment, among other things, strikes Title II of the Intelligence Committee bill—the title which seeks to provide retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies who are alleged to have violated their customers’ privacy rights by turning over information to the government without warrants.

I am fully aware that the Majority Leader has various parliamentary options at his disposal to move this legislation forward. It is his right to attempt to invoke cloture.

But I regret that decision, and I hope that my colleagues will join me in stopping this legislation.

Mr. President, why do I feel so strongly about this matter?

For the last six years, our largest telecommunications companies have been spying on their own American customers.

Secretly and without a warrant, they delivered to the federal government the private, domestic communications records of millions of Americans—records this administration has compiled into a database of enormous scale and scope.

That decision betrayed millions of customers’ trust. It was unwarranted—literally.

Read the rest of this entry here.

Being A Patriot Is Something That You Do
Christy Hardin Smith Monday
December 17, 2007

FYI: Discussion of the FISA bill (S.2248) has begun in the Senate this morning and is being broadcast live on C-Span2. I’ll be updating as I can on this throughout the morning, and following the proceedings closely. At the moment, Mitch McConnell is speaking — and, apparently, the “Democrats are trying to unpatriotically steal your money” meme is alive and well inside the Beltway. Do these people never get new material?!? Here’s a thought Mitch: America is watching, and your willingness to give away the Constitution in subservience to an imperial presidency is duly noted. Rockefeller is up next mainly talking process, and according to the order as read, Dodd will be given a chunk of time to control as opposition to the SIC bill. Here we go…
______________________

In this nation of ours, our elected leadership is only as good — or as bad — as the American public allows them to get away with being. Thomas Jefferson said it best here:

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.

- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781

The power for change rests in our hands alone. The Constitution and the rule of law are not just arcane concepts that lawyers throw around for billing purposes. They are, in fact, bedrock principles that we allow to be ignored at our peril.

Congressional Quarterly has an updated article on the ins and outs and various currents of influence involved in the FISA legislation, including some updates on potential amendments that may be offered today. And Glenn has some information about the superhero powers of the “hold,” except when it is placed on legislation by Chris Dodd apparently.

As you can see from the video, Sen. Chris Dodd fundamentally understands that the rule of law and patriotism are things that go hand in hand. And he’s willing to put action and leadership where his values are. As do Senators Russ Feingold and Ted Kennedy who have agreed to aide in the filibuster today and are to be applauded for it. Sen. Feingold has an article at TPMCafe this morning detailing why this fight is so important. As is Rep. John Conyers who sent out a note of support for Sen. Dodd’s efforts yesterday.

I would hope that every Senator who was a signatory to the letter to Harry Reid urging that the SJC version of the FISA bill be the base bill would stand in support of Dodd’s filibuster efforts:

Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI), Chris Dodd (D-CT), Barack Obama (D-IL), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Joe Biden (D-DE), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), Daniel Akaka (D-HI), Jim Webb (D-VA), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), and Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

As the day progresses, we’ll see which other Senators stand up for American values…and which ones stand only for themselves. I know I’ll be watching.

Reader Jim White distilled the FISA battle against retroactive telecom immunity very well yesterday, and I wanted to be certain everyone saw this:

I see this FISA battle you are waging as a clarion cry for our country to return to the rule of law. I am not asking that the government abandon surveillance. I am only asking that the government abide by reasonable laws and allow appropriate levels of independent oversight so that we the people can be assured that the powers which we vest in our intelligence community are used for the purposes for which they have been designated. Please make it clear to anyone listening tomorrow that the Senate Judiciary Committee version and House version of the FISA renewal do not weaken our surveillance capability in any way but instead improve the Constitutionally mandated oversight function which has been missing.

Without law, we have no government.

For every elected leader out there let me just say this: actions speak far louder than words, and we will be watching what you do today…and what you do not do. So think carefully before you try a dodge and phony show of support without actually providing any support on this filibuster. That goes for procedural manipulations as well. We have long memories…and we have learned a lot about primary challenges that we are willing to put to good use.

You take an oath to uphold and support the Constitution of the United States and the laws of this nation. Isn’t it time you did everything you could to uphold that oath — for your nation, for this generation and every one that follows, and for the very foundations of our government? That responsibility rests on your shoulders, and we will hold you to every ounce of it or you’ll have to step aside for someone who will actually do the job. And last I checked, the Fourth Amendment doesn’t have an exception for the President’s demands not quite meeting the letter of the law that day.

Being a patriot is something that you do. How about some inspiration and leadership today?

Mr Dodd Goes To Town
digby, Hullabaloo

Today, Chris Dodd is going to show the Senate what integrity looks like. It’s probably going to be quite shock. It’s a rare thing these days.

As you all probably know, the illustrious Senate Majority leader is insisting on allowing the bill that contains retroactive immunity for huge wealthy corporations to be the basis for debate on the new FISA legislation. (I won’t go into all the arcane details, but suffice to say that he’s making it impossible for an alternative bill, which doesn’t contain immunity, to pass, which he doesn’t have to do.)

Chris Dodd signaled his intention some time ago that he would place a “hold” on such legislation, which is Senate speak for tying a bill up indefinitely. Republicans do it all the time — the latest example is Huckleberry Graham’s hold on the new anti-torture legislation that would have required the CIA to adhere to the Army Field manual. Senator Reid is honoring that hold as he has honored every other hold Republicans have put on legislation.

For reasons that can only be speculation about, Reid is not honoring Dodd’s hold. Therefore, Dodd is going to filibuster. A real Jimmy Stewart style filibuster, not the “signal of intent to filibuster” that is done these days to keep the Senate moving. Reid has not required any Republicans to do this despite the fact that they are setting records for filibusters in this congress.

Dodd needs help. He’s going to be talking a long time and he could use some suggestions from average people about what to talk about. If you have a special historical speech or literary passage you think might be relevant, that would be great. Leave them in the comments here and I’ll collect them. (Links would be useful.) You can also express your support for Dodd filibuster here. They will be collecting the comments and putting them on the front page for the press and others to see.

Senator Dodd is prepared to stand up and talk and talk and talk as long as his voice holds out. He will have a little help from his friends, Feingold and Kennedy (bless the old Lion.)

He could also use some help from his fellow Senators. Courtesy of FDL, here are the phone numbers of the 14 Senators who promised to support Dodd. Give them a call today if you have the time and ask them to go to the floor and give Dodd a breather.

‘We the People’ Must Save Our Constitution
digby, Hullabaloo
Monday, December 17, 2007

If Senator Dodd needs something relevant to say, this speech, which Al Gore made on Martin Luther King Day, 2006, could be worth making again:

In spite of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in strong agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power.

As we begin this new year, the Executive Branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses.

It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored.

So, many of us have come here to Constitution Hall to sound an alarm and call upon our fellow citizens to put aside partisan differences and join with us in demanding that our Constitution be defended and preserved.

It is appropriate that we make this appeal on the day our nation has set aside to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who challenged America to breathe new life into our oldest values by extending its promise to all our people.

On this particular Martin Luther King Day, it is especially important to recall that for the last several years of his life, Dr. King was illegally wiretapped-one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government during this period.

The FBI privately called King the “most dangerous and effective negro leader in the country” and vowed to “take him off his pedestal.” The government even attempted to destroy his marriage and blackmail him into committing suicide.

This campaign continued until Dr. King’s murder. The discovery that the FBI conducted a long-running and extensive campaign of secret electronic surveillance designed to infiltrate the inner workings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and to learn the most intimate details of Dr. King’s life, helped to convince Congress to enact restrictions on wiretapping.

The result was the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA), which was enacted expressly to ensure that foreign intelligence surveillance would be presented to an impartial judge to verify that there is a sufficient cause for the surveillance. I voted for that law during my first term in Congress and for almost thirty years the system has proven a workable and valued means of according a level of protection for private citizens, while permitting foreign surveillance to continue.

Yet, just one month ago, Americans awoke to the shocking news that in spite of this long settled law, the Executive Branch has been secretly spying on large numbers of Americans for the last four years and eavesdropping on “large volumes of telephone calls, e-mail messages, and other Internet traffic inside the United States.” The New York Times reported that the President decided to launch this massive eavesdropping program “without search warrants or any new laws that would permit such domestic intelligence collection.”

During the period when this eavesdropping was still secret, the President went out of his way to reassure the American people on more than one occasion that, of course, judicial permission is required for any government spying on American citizens and that, of course, these constitutional safeguards were still in place.

But surprisingly, the President’s soothing statements turned out to be false. Moreover, as soon as this massive domestic spying program was uncovered by the press, the President not only confirmed that the story was true, but also declared that he has no intention of bringing these wholesale invasions of privacy to an end.

At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA’s domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently.

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution - our system of checks and balances - was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: “The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men.”

An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution - an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet, “On Common Sense” ignited the American Revolution, succinctly described America’s alternative. Here, he said, we intended to make certain that “the law is king.” read on…

He concluded with this:

It is particularly important that the freedom of the Internet be protected against either the encroachment of government or the efforts at control by large media conglomerates. The future of our democracy depends on it.

I mentioned that along with cause for concern, there is reason for hope. As I stand here today, I am filled with optimism that America is on the eve of a golden age in which the vitality of our democracy will be re-established and will flourish more vibrantly than ever. Indeed I can feel it in this hall.

As Dr. King once said, “Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.”

People like Al Gore and Chris Dodd and Martin Luther King are out of fashion these days. People laugh at passionate men of principle in this time when principles are considered something for chumps and fools. There’s no angle on principle, no immediate political upside in saving the constitution when the Republicans are spending every minute of the day preaching fear and bloodlust and superficial political gossip rules our discourse. But they stand up anyway and suffer the taunts and jeers of people who think they are naive or narcissistic or crazy, because they believe in something. And I am exceedingly grateful for it.

Gore quoted a fellow in his speech who knew something about fear and bloodlust. And about leadership too:

“Any who act as if freedom’s defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America

—Dwight D. Eisenhower

AT&T engineer says Bush Administration sought to implement domestic spying within two weeks of taking office
John Byrne, Raw Story
Sunday December 16, 2007

Nearly 1,300 words into Sunday’s New York Times article revealing new details of the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program, the lawyer for an AT&T engineer alleges that “within two weeks of taking office, the Bush administration was planning a comprehensive effort of spying on Americans’ phone usage.”

In a New Jersey federal court case, the engineer claims that AT&T sought to create a phone center that would give the NSA access to “all the global phone and e-mail traffic that ran through” a New Jersey network hub.

The former AT&T employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity to the Times said he took part in several discussions with agency officials about the plan.

“The officials, he said, discussed ways to duplicate the Bedminster system in Maryland so the agency “could listen in” with unfettered access to communications that it believed had intelligence value and store them for later review,” Times reporters Eric Lichtblau, James Risen and Scott Shane wrote. “There was no discussion of limiting the monitoring to international communications, he said.”

“At some point,” he told the paper, “I started feeling something isn’t right.”

“Two other AT&T employees who worked on the proposal discounted his claims, saying in interviews that the project had simply sought to improve the N.S.A.’s internal communications systems and was never designed to allow the agency access to outside communications.”

AT&T’s spokesman said they didn’t comment on national security matters, as did a spokesman for Qwest, which was also approached but apparently rebuffed the plan. The lawyer for the engineer and others in the New Jersey case says AT&T’s internal documents would vindicate his clients.

“What he saw,” Bruce Afran, a New Jersey lawyer representing the plaintiffs, told the Times, “was decisive evidence that within two weeks of taking office, the Bush administration was planning a comprehensive effort of spying on Americans’ phone usage.”

The full Times article is here.

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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