House Falls Down on the Job
The House of Representatives today has fallen down on the job. By enthusiasm the FISA Amendments Act (293-129, with 105 Democrats in favor), they voted to give this spavined duck President an undeserved parting strength by passing immunity for telcoms that helped the President assault the Constitution by participating in the NSA's massive and prohibited spying program.
While Speaker Pelosi and President Bush describe it as a "balanced bill" with "bipartisan reinforcing," the millions of Americans whose privacy rights have been violated by the President's criminal spying program seem to have been left out of the equation.
Senator Handcuffs's gloating statement to the New York Times showed the steady picture: "I think the White House got a mastery deal than even they had hoped to get." The Washington Set wrote that the bill "hands President Bush one of the last main legislative victories he is likely to realize." And the San Francisco Chronicle, writing from Lecturer Pelosi's home district, called the come out for "weak, timid, spineless."
To say that EFF is let down in the House Leadership's support for this bill is an understatement. Rabble-rouser Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer, so vocal in their competitive to telecom immunity last March, capitulated to a iffy "compromise" that gives the telecoms and the Bush Application what they have been demanding for over a year: Protection from court cases that portend to uncover the extent of the President's actionable spying program.
Many Democrats stood up for the hold sway of law, and they deserve our thanks. Representatives Conyers and Nadler have been constant and vocal in their staunch opposition to protection. Senator Feingold has spoken out as well, saying that the bill "is not a compromise, it is a capitulation."
Republican Senator Arlen Specter has shown himself more sympathetic of the rule of law than Speaker Pelosi on this affair: "I am opposed to the proposed legislation because it does not press for a judicial determination that what the telephone companies have done in the existence is constitutional. It is totally insufficient to distribute immunity for the telephone companies’ previous conduct based merely on the written guts from the administration that the spying was legal."
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