The United States Senate reprehensibly passed a bill that legalizes the Bush administration’s illegal wiretapping of American citizens while granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms that allowed it to happen. Glenn Greenwald has an insightful opinion post on this blatant attack against liberty, where he has this to say near the end:
On a related note, The Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin cites the primary justification for telecom amnesty — that these companies were just doing what they were told by the Government — and then asks rhetorically: “isn’t that the very definition of a police state: that companies should do whatever the government asks, even if they know it’s illegal?” I used to think that amnesty supporters held their position because they didn’t understand this extremely simple point, but now I think that most of them have their position precisely because they do understand it. A lawless “police state” — and that’s the only term that can be used to describe what this bill creates — is exactly what our political establishment desires.
So here we are once more, sitting idly by while our government tramples all over the core values upon which this once great nation was founded. I can’t count the number of times over the past seven years when I thought we had sunk so low that we couldn’t sink anymore. Yet we keep going down.
Anyone who cares about our country, about liberty and freedom, about what it means to be an American, should be enraged by this vote. Make your anger known. Emailing your Senators and telling them how disappointed you are, or where they can stick their vote, isn’t going to help. What you can do is contact your Representative in the House to make sure that they stand by the bill they passed, which doesn’t provide retroactive immunity to the telecoms. You can start by signing the petition Greenwald links to.
As for the senators who voted in support of retroactive immunity for the telecoms, you can send them a message by giving your vote to their opponents when they are up for reelection. Take a look at the Roll Call Vote for Senator Dodd’s amendement that would have stricken retroactive immunity from the bill. Every senator who voted ‘nay’ on that amendment, meaning that they wanted to leave immunity in the bill, is a lawless traitor. If any of your senators are in the list of nays, make sure their names are burned into your brain so that you know who not to vote for at the polls.
Technorati Tags: Senate, telecoms, immunity, wiretapping, Bush, politics, Chris Dodd, Glenn Greenwald
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