An opposition party that does not oppose is not an opposition party

[solarbird]

I'll write out my own reactions later. For now, have this summary, which, in a less horrific environment, would be the wire-service's coverage of these events:

Congress votes to immunize lawbreaking telecoms,
legalize warrantless eavesdropping
Glenn Greenwald, Salon
WEDNESDAY JULY 9, 2008

The Democratic-led Congress this afternoon voted to put an end to the NSA spying scandal, as the Senate approved a bill — approved last week by the House — to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, terminate all pending lawsuits against them, and vest whole new warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President. The vote in favor of the new FISA bill was 69-28. Barack Obama joined every Senate Republican (and every House Republican other than one) by voting in favor of it, while his now-vanquished primary rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, voted against it. John McCain wasn't present for any of the votes, but shared Obama's support for the bill. The bill will now be sent to an extremely happy George Bush, who already announced that he enthusiastically supports it, and he will sign it into law very shortly.

[...]

What is most striking is that when the Congress was controlled by the GOP -- when the Senate was run by Bill Frist and the House by Denny Hastert -- the Bush administration attempted to have a bill passed very similar to the one that just passed today. But they were unable to do so. The administration had to wait until Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats took over Congress before being able to put a corrupt end to the scandal that began when, in December of 2005, the New York Times revealed that the President had been breaking the law for years by spying on Americans without the warrants required by law.

[...]

Today, the Democratic-led Senate ignored those protests, acted to protect the single most flagrant act of Bush lawbreaking of the last seven years, eviscerated the core Fourth Amendment prohibition of surveillance without warrants, gave an extraordinary and extraordinarily corrupt gift to an extremely powerful corporate lobby, and cemented the proposition that the rule of law does not apply to the Washington Establishment.

ETA: The ACLU is suing, calling the bill "plainly unconstitutional." The EFF is also suing, asserting that Congress has no right to end the current lawsuits via retroactive immunity, and doing so constitutes an unconstitutional infringement of the rights of the justice system. We'll see.

Also, I forgot this:

Pledge Now

Comments

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Hang 'em all, hang 'em high.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

A majority of Senate Democrats voted the right way across the board, and unless you count the half-assed speechmaking of Arlen Specter--I don't--every key opposition figure to this legislation was a Democrat.

Some Democrats are not doing their job as an opposition party. That is not true of most Democrats.

The fate of this legislation is now in the courts. The best thing we can do in the long run to turn this around and restore the Fourth Amendment is to appoint pro-civil liberties judges. You're more likely to get that with a president and Senators from the Democratic Party. Giving up or allowing the Republicans to win through either inaction (such as not voting or voting for an irrelevant candidate of another party), or adhering to a "throw the bums out" mentality that only brings in more Republicans, will only make matters worse.

Just sayin'.

[solarbird]

In the vote that mattered, I did the math (see ETA3). Less than an outright majority of Democrats opposed this when it mattered, and these are the Democrats who elected the leadership who organised passage. Today was theatre.

(ETA: To be fair, it was really 50/50. But do you really think that after sweeping to wider Congressional victory this fall, the Democrats will throw out the leadership that they elected and that will no doubt take credit for getting them there?)

[solarbird]

And besides, you can't get away from the sheer simple fact that you have their leadership making sure this happened. And that leadership includes their Presidential candidate, who endorsed it, voted for cloture, and for the final bill.

And the simple fact that when the Republicans had the Senate, they couldn't get this passed, despite trying. Adding more Democrats made the situation worse.

That's not opposition.

[wrog]

Adding more conservative/authoritarian Democrats made the situation worse.

fixed it for you. The key is not to vote for people or give them money just because they're Democrats. I myself have yet to give a single penny to the DCCC or the DSCC, which are both nothing more than incumbency protection rackets. In fact I told the DSCC once again to fuck off this morning and exactly why.

I said months ago that we never had a majority in the Senate in the first place. The conservatives chose the leadership -- which is why it's Harry Reid running things and not, say, Ted Kennedy -- at which point it was game over.

What I hadn't anticipated was the extent to which the Blue Dogs had such a lock on things in the house (by basically voting with the Republicans on everything... ). Note that Steny Hoyer --- who is probably the single person most responsible for this latest debacle since the House was the place where it had been stopped -- wasn't Pelosi's choice to be Majority Leader. Not that I'm really all that interested in defending Pelosi at this point, and to be fair, her 1st choice, Jack Murtha, also voted yes on the final House FISA bill; on the other hand he wasn't anywhere near as much in bed with the telecomms as Hoyer is, so who knows how things would have actually gone if Murtha had won that leadership vote.

One more thing

[solarbird]

Congress has signed off now on its own irrelevance. Even insofar as judicial appointments go, the only election that matters this election cycle is the Presidential election; if Senator McCain is elected, Congress will rubber-stamp whatever worthless authoritarian hack the Chief Executive Commander In Chief orders.

[wiredhound.livejournal.com]

To me the point of an opposition party is that they should vote as such, in a bloc, on important issues. Had the Democrats been capable of unity, they could have defeated the President months ago.

This is my larger issue with the Democrats -- I think they would be more effective and end up with more respect from independents if they took consistent, unified stands on issues. I can't countenance the Republican position on any point, but I grudgingly admire how they get their members to toe the line ...

The real problem is our two party system, which always makes people think they need to hold their noses and choose the lesser of two evils.

[mhaolain.livejournal.com]

Excellent coverage of the debacle, solarbird. I knew we were going down, down to goblin town. But, it's nice to have the details. What a bunch of backstabbers, those Democraty cheese balls. It's enough to make the repub-bubs look like front-stabbers. I hope you got some flower or kittie photo chasers saved up.

- Paul

[solarbird]

Yeah. The real vote was last week; this was just the theatre. But it was historically important theatre, and I was there to watch the gutting of the corpse.