solarbird | Jan. 25th, 2008

Glenn Greenwald has the latest on Senators Rockefeller (D-W.VA) and Reid's plans to get retroactive immunity and warrantless surveillance of Americans through the Senate, as Chief Executive Bush demands. As in December, the version that requires 60 votes to strip out these evils will serve as the base bill, by a 60-36 margin:

The Motion to Table (i.e, kill) the Senate Judiciary Committee's bill -- which does not contain immunity and which does contain important safeguards on eavesdropping powers -- just passed 60-36. That means that the pro-immunity, pro-warrantless-eavesdropping Senate Intelligence Committee serves as the base bill. As usual, just enough Democrats -- roughly 12 -- voted in favor in order to ensure that the Motion passed while enabling Democrats generally to pretend that they opposed it. All GOP Senators voted in favor.

The pro-immunity, pro-warrantless eavesdropping Democrats: Rockefeller, Pryor, Inouye, McCaskill, Landrieu, Salazar, Nelson (FL), Nelson (NE), Mikulski, Carper, Bayh, and Johnson. Neither Clinton nor Obama bothered to show up for any of this.

There's more details on a GOP move to demand an immediate floor vote here. Apparently, there's a bit of an opening, because Senator Reid feels disrespected by the GOP maneuver, and that's enough to create a bit of a wedge that might could be exploited. (Gods forbid it be a matter of law, or constitution - but if Senator Reid's pendulous ego being pricked is the opportunity we have, then it's the opportunity we shall use.) There are action items and a list of Senators to contact here (scroll down to Update II), to support Senator Dodd's planned filibuster.

Here's a copy of the mail I sent to former Senator Edwards, Senator Clinton, and Senator Obama. Feel free to borrow from it, but do not copy it as-is. If you do, not only will your letter be worth less, mine will be nearly worthless as well, as identical (and nearly-identical) letters are discounted dramatically in value.

Dear Senator X -

I've been writing and faxing and calling people on this for months, but it's that time again. And at this point, it's very simple:

No candidate who fails to work, actively, against the Senate Democratic leadership's attempt to do the dirty work for Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and the telecommunications industry will receive my money or my vote. Since Congress refuses to do its investigative duty, and the Justice department has been politicized and refuses to investigate or prosecute in the case of clear violations of Federal law, there is only one path remaining to investigating the illegal spying of the Bush administration: private lawsuit actions against telecommunications companies for their separate and specific violations of the law. This path has already helped reveal the depth of the lawbreaking, and shown that this program began well before 9/11.

And yet, the contemptible swine which make up the Democratic leadership in the Senate are doing everything they can to shut this down, to protect their friends in the GOP, and their friends in the Republican administration, and their friends in the telecommunications industry who give them so very, very much money.

I have no words for this criminality. But I do have words for you, and Senator Y, and former Senator Z: fail to work actively against this travesty of justice, and you will receive neither money nor vote from me, and from tens if not hundreds of thousands of people like me. That's all there is to it. Convince us that you're actually better, by actual deeds, or stop pretending to be an opposition party, and stop wasting our time.

Sincerely,

solarbird