Thank God for the ACLU

At least SOMEBODY still has some fight left in them:

“With one vote, Congress has strengthened the executive branch, weakened the judiciary and rendered itself irrelevant,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “This bill – soon to be law – is a constitutional nightmare. Americans should know that if this legislation is enacted and upheld, what they say on international phone calls or emails is no longer private. The government can listen in without having a specific reason to do so. Our rights as Americans have been curtailed and our privacy can no longer be assumed.”

In advance of the president’s signature, the ACLU announced its plan to challenge the new law in court.

“This fight is not over. We intend to challenge this bill as soon as President Bush signs it into law,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. “The bill allows the warrantless and dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international telephone and email communications. It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment.”

More here: www.aclu.org/fisa

FISA: There's still hope - Thank you, Russ Feingold and Barry Welsh

Despite the cave-ins by Democrats last week on the FISA bill, you need to be aware that people ARE still on the job and working on the problem. There's hope, not only in the future House:

Barry Welsh on FISA:

"I would not have been able to vote for the bill in its current configuration. A couple of things really troubled me, and the telecom immunity is probably the main troubling spot.

It’s not a situation where I want to necessarily be prosecutorial towards the telecoms. My concern deals with the attempted acquisition of immunity. My concern is that the immunity is not so much for the telecoms as it is possibly as a cover for the current administration.

The reason I say that is that I go back to the Nixon years in Washington D.C., and in the Nixon White House. When Nixon resigned, everything was forgotten, if you will. There were few investigations after that, and it seemed that once the President left town, everything was rosy, and that wasn’t the case. We didn’t do due diligence during the Nixon Administration, and several of those players popped their heads up again throughout the Reagan and this, the George W. Bush Administration.

So, I don’t want to see the same thing happen again. I want to make sure that we’ve got all the people that have bent the law for their own benefit and taken advantage of the people, I want to make sure that we don’t allow those people to slip away again. Quite honestly, I have a feeling that the immunity through the telecom is more of a potential cover for the Administration than necessarily for the telecom community."

But in the current Senate as well:

Russ Feingold on FISA - Whats Next

Saved by the "Bell"

If only we'd known it was this easy. . .no need to push back against "W" and his illegal wiretaps - we just needed to allow his past business experience catch up with him and let nature take it's course. He has no time or interest in paying those pesky phone bills. . .

Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.

A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI's lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. In one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from one phone company totaled $66,000.

In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation "was halted due to untimely payment," the audit found. FISA wiretaps are used in the government's most sensitive and secretive criminal and intelligence investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies.

"We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence," according to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

More than half of 990 bills to pay for telecommunication surveillance in five unidentified FBI field offices were not paid on time, the report shows.

Can you hear me NOW? When da shrub tried to grab the light, you could have heard a pin drop when he found himself left in the dark again. Here's a job more befitting of his intelligence:

Chris Dodd: Today's Hero

From Crooks & Liars:

Chris Dodd thanks the netroots for their support and congratulates his colleagues for their help in the fight against retroactive immunity.

“Today we have scored a victory for American civil liberties and sent a message to President Bush that we will not tolerate his abuse of power and veil of secrecy. The President should not be above the rule of law, nor should the telecom companies who supported his quest to spy on American citizens. I want to thank the thousands of Americans throughout the country that stood with me to get this done for our country.”

The progressive blogs, who played a huge role in lobbying the Senate to support Dodd’s leadership against retroactive immunity, are joining in the celebration now that the FISA bill has been pulled until next year.

In an email, Athenae of First Draft writes, “Seriously, that was some awesome with awesome sauce and a side of pure, crispy win.”

Crooks & Liars has video of Dodd’s closing remarks this evening.

Jason Rosenbaum at The Seminal writes, “This victory means Dodd’s filibuster has weight. It also makes it much more likely that he will win round two as he continues to stand up for the Constitution and against telecom immunity.”

Sam Stein at the Huffington Post sets the early narrative - one which I think accurately describes how events evolved over the course of the last few days - in an article titled “Dodd’s Filibuster Threat Persuades Reid.”[..]

Also, thanks to everyone at FireDogLake for all the help driving activism today.

You can keep giving Chris Dodd the props he’s due at ChrisDodd.com