The latest word from the Dodd camp regarding what will happen on the FISA bill is that tomorrow, Dodd will take the floor and not yield.
He can take "questions" from other senators during the filibuster, which can be no more than 20 minutes. We understand that Kennedy and Feingold so far have agreed to do this.
They’re asking for people to express their thoughts on the subject and leave them in the comments below. Dodd is going to have plenty of time to read, so if you’d like to have your feelings on the matter read on the Senate floor you can leave your them in the comments below.
Go Dodd.
Related posts:
- Dodd: Reprimanding Lieberman is “Ridiculous”
- Health Care: HELP Bill Released During Public Option Call With Sens. Dodd, Brown and Whitehouse
- Which Senate Democrats Would Join a GOP Filibuster on a Public Option?
- If Harry Reid Allows the Silent Filibuster, It’s All on Him
- Member of Veterans Group “Gathering of Eagles” Told Dodd to Kill Himself
Spotlight
Hi Jane!
I am relieved and cautiously optimistic.
We need to revamp the whole Congressional process, Senator, and bring it back to within the parameters which served us so well .
Thank you, and bless you!
Can Dodd yield to other Senators so they can take over the filibuster? How does that work?
I’m confused as to the assignment – are we looking for questions to be asked of Sen. Dodd, or things for him to talk about during his filibuster?
according to Glenn Greenwald, we can presume that:
working to overcome this presumption will be very difficult at this point, but it is encouraging that Senator Dodd is giving it a try.
Nonetheless, the lack of leadership on the part of the other Presidential candidates on this issue makes them unsopportable for me in a general election, even if the Republican candidate is a little bit worse in some areas.
From Looseheadprop some weeks ago:
No retroactive immunity for telcoms!
No prospective immunity for telcoms!
No basket warrants!
See:
http://firedoglake.com/2007/12/02/the-fi sa-vote-is-coming-the-fisa-vote-is-comin g/
Don’t forget there’s a new Dodd Whip Count linky for your use to push back.
Hi Jane!
Senator, can you please read the list of senators to whom AT&T, Verizo, Sprint, and any PAC to which their employees have made a significant (say over $10,000) have made campaign contributions, as ask them to recuse themselves from the vote?
http://chrisdodd.com/blog/dodd…..ement-fisa
Here is his statement on this
The fourth amendment reads:
How should the citizenry feel about acts of Congress, signed into law by the President, executed by the Executive branch, and out of reach of the Judiciary, that directly contravene this amendment?
Thank you Senator Dodd for being a true American patriot.
The Constitution is a cornerstone of American democracy, why do you think some of the leaders in both parties are affraid of preserving it, and demonstrating to the world that America is strong and confident that our liberty and freedom can endure any challenge from the inside and out outside?
I’m also a little confused. Does this mean that each question from another Senator can only last 20 minutes?
Let us hope that this plays out. Dodd is the only one between us and oblivion.
I don’t relish the thought of having to spend the rest of this year and next trying to defeat Bush’s GOP and the Democratic leadership.
Time to play our cards.
A little “Mr Dodd goes to Washington” speechifying tomorrow would be a nice followup to the weekend viewing of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
That’s the Fourth.
thank you, Senator Dodd, for doing something that should have been done from the very beginning of this maladministration, which is to say TALKING SENSE AND NOT SHUTTING UP.
we, as a nation, should all filibuster those who would drag us into neverending fear with the sole aim of enriching themselves until they all step down and slink away.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Joe Lieberman is set to endorse John McCain…
Explain to me again why Senate Democrats stuck with Lieberman instead of Lamont?
I get confused by this stuff.
I think what it means is that when Dodd needs to step out to visit the Little Senator’s Room, he can yield to a friendly colleague who would ask him a question . . . and this being a friendly colleague, said question could take up to twenty minutes. When Dodd returns, he gets to answer the question and then continue speaking.
Hmmm . . . wordy questions . . . Has Biden signed on to this? When it comes to asking wordy questions, there aren’t many in the Senate who can top him.
To give the telecoms retro-immunity will spell the end of democracy in the U.S. and will ensure that all Americans, especially progressive politicians and organizations, and any other government policy opposition organizations, will be targeted (even more than they are now). This is a sprint to fascism and amounts to our own U.S. version of Hitler’s “enabling act”. The bill spells the end of America.
We are under the iron hell of a criminal administration that most likely attacked us and murdered over 3000 on 9/11 in a false flag operation.
It’s time for a wakeup call. You can get yours at http://www.secretwarsinter.com
Oh thank God you’re here! I’ve been trying to get a good enough handle on this to write to my local progressives and get them behind this, but I’m afraid of explaining it wrong.
Question: Everything I’ve read is about telecom immunity – what about blanket warrants?
I just read Senator Dodd’s Letters from Nuremberg. Thomas Dodd must be horrified right now that the United States has come to this, but he must be proud of his son for taking on this fight.
Sen. Dodd,
PLEASE do not let this crybaby fraud of a president have his way!
Filibuster!Filibuster! Take a stand on this issue and maybe on the many many other issues DEMS will wake up and get a backbone to fight this 25% failure of a preznitwit.
Perhaps Senator Dodd would like to read Hugh’s List Of Bush Scandals on the Senate floor. The list now has 289 Scandals.
Folks, time to start your engines.
Get the phone fingers ready for a blitzkrieg of calls to Senators to support Dodd. I’ve got Sen. Murray and Cantwell’s number on speed dial.
We got to make sure we have his back, otherwise it will be a fools’ errand.
Jane, thought you would want to know in case you can do something about it, the alarm line that tells of a new post upstairs leads nowhere. The name of the post is listed as: The GOP’s Huckabee Dilema. So it’s talking about a post that doesn’t exist just yet, I think.
Terrific idea! Send links to Dodd and all the others who stand up to help him(?)
Link to Hugh’s List of Scandals:
http://www.netrootsmass.net/Hugh/Bush_list.html
I promise to call every single Senator while Dodd filibusters. We need to light up their phones like bubble lights on a Christmas tree. Bubbling for the 4th amendment!
Dear Senator Dodd:
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking on this essential issue. I am a New York resident, and I have exhorted Senators Schumer and Clinton to do everything in their power to support your filibuster of the Intelligence Cmte version of the FISA bill. This is a key moment in the constitutional history of our Republic, where we as a nation either repudiate or embrace the rule of law. Allowing telecommunications companies to avoid the consequences of committing felonies while reaping massive profits rewards corporate lawlessness at the expense of ordinary citizens.
I commend you for standing staunchly on the side of embracing the rule of law, and I dearly hope that you succeed in your efforts. In these acts, you are a true patriot and defender of our Republic.
Best regards,
PhysioProf
Dear Senator Dodd and other Senators who are standing up for the Constitution;
My family and I are so proud of you!! We pay our hard-earned money to the telephone companies for telephone service, not to assist in a program that spies on us without warrants. We pay our taxes to help support America, not to spy on us without warrants. While we support protecting this Nation from external attacks, we consider spying on American citizens without warrants to be a violation of the 4th Amendment of the Constitution, and an internal attack on the citizens of this great Nation.
Clearly, the request for retroactive immunity is needed, because there must have been illegal activities perpetrated on us by our government with the complicity of the very telephone companies that service us. The Administration and the telephone companies must be held accountable, no matter how painful it is or our Constitution really is becoming worthless. We are a nation of laws not men. Therefore, you, together with the other Senators that stand up for America are true heroes!!!
Congress:
No retroactive immunity for telcoms!
No prospective immunity for telcoms!
No basket warrants!
Signed: A Patriotic American family that wants its country back!!
PS. Please make sure that at all times, the United States of America is referred to as The United States of America and never, ever, ever as
The FatherlandThe Homeland. It causes WWII War Veterans in our family to roll over in their graves.Any Senate “Rules wonks” here. From what I have read, a cloture motion can be presented while a Senator is speaking, it is read by the clerk, and is acted on 24 hours later, unless it is a Friday. So a cloture motion could be presented 1 minute after Dodd start talking and it’s over 24 hours later, if 60 votes are for it. What am I missing?
Another thought, Senator Dodd…
Read out the names of the Senators that do not stand with you to protect the Constitution in this serious matter. You know, the ones that support spying on Americans and excusing illegal activities by the Administration and the Telephone companies.
Thanks.
Explain to me why, if the gutless democrats can’t get anything passed anyway, what the point of not running Liebershitz out of the party on a rali is?
Dodd gets the nod in this house.
Yes to Dodd.
Yes to Edwards.
No to Obama.
No to Hillary.
Yes to Democrats.
No to Republicans.
I think you are correct. 60 votes in favor forces invocation of cloture, and ends the filibuster. This is why it is important to also exhort your Senators to vote no on any cloture motions. If the Repubs can get 11 Dem votes in favor of cloture, the filibuster fails (assuming that all 49 Repubs vote in favor of cloture).
Ann in AZ – A hard refresh cleared this problem up here…
Senator Dodd could also list what type of legislation is on hold and being honored by the hold rules. Yet his hold is being ignored.
Another thing, Senator Dodd…
Those who have taken the oath of office, who do not stand up and protect the 4th Amendment of the Constitution, do not deserve to be elected to Congress or to the Presidency or Vice Presidency.
How much money have the telcos made by providing this unknown service to the government? I’m sure they were not doing this for free.
And isn’t it amazing that just the thought of a Senator actually standing up and doing his job puts me on the edge of tears.
True. Reid has honored holds of Republican Senators, yet refuses the courtesy to a member of his own party.
I think standing up for our rights as Americans is basic to being a good American. We cannot so easily slide into giving up our rights one by one to governmental overreach and expect to remain a democratic Republic. If we do give up our rights, before we know what happened, we will have become a dictatorship. Senator Dodd and the Senators who are standing with him are doing the heavy lifting necessary to maintaining our Republic as it was founded and not giving way to those politically inclined toward creating a dictatorship, and we citizens thank them very much. As for any Senator that doesn’t, you too will be remembered. Thank you for revealing your true colors, Senators, because what you do here is the proof of who you are.
Yes, yes, yes!!!
Thank you Senator Dodd for your patriotic service to our country.
I see this FISA battle you are waging as a clarion cry for our country to return to the rule of law. I am not asking that the government abandon surveillance. I am only asking that the government abide by reasonable laws and allow appropriate levels of independent oversight so that we the people can be assured that the powers which we vest in our intelligence community are used for the purposes for which they have been designated. Please make it clear to anyone listening tomorrow that the Senate Judiciary Committee version and House version of the FISA renewal do not weaken our surveillance capability in any way but instead improve the Constitutionally mandated oversight function which has been missing.
Without law, we have no government.
GG’s always been as much (if not more) con-friendly than lib-friendly; he’s done writing for The American Conservative and he went on record, pre-Salon, as stating that Bush and his crew weren’t real conservatives. That’s one reason why it’s so funny to see people like Joe Klein attack him as an ultra-liberal, because he himself has said that he isn’t.
Don’t forget to read the 4th Amendment out loud as many times as you can!!!
A little “Mr Dodd goes to Washington” speechifying tomorrow would be a nice followup to the weekend viewing of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
In “Mr. Smith’s” day, it took the equivalent if 67 votes to get cloture. A huge difference for the 60 votes today. That is also one of the reasons that the anti-civil rights filibusters were so successful.
That’s a great idea! Perhaps he could be steered toward that sight that showed the size of Hugh’s list if printed on banner paper and unrolled like a scroll. He could start reading it like a scroll on the floor of the Senate. I’m sure they’d all love that!
digg it
John Conyers is in Chris Dodd’s corner:
Thanks Senator
jo6pac
Photos of the scroll available at firedog ET’s blog.
Lieberman, Feinstein, Rockefeller, Nelson, Nelson, Bayh, Baucus, Johnson, Landrieu, Pryor, Lincoln, Carper, Whitehouse(?)…..Who have I missed?
many thanks to senator dodd and senators feingold and kennedy. it’s exciting to see someone fight for something – been hoping for something like this since january with the new congress.
senator dodd – would you please have your team explain the process to us, and take questions? it’s quite frustrating to not understand the how the senate rules play out here.
i have a lot more reading to do this afternoon/tonight – but here’s may layperson’s understanding so far:
the cloture vote on the motion to proceed will be at 12 noon monday after a bit of debate.
will you be (or have you) submitted amendments? when do they have to be submitted to be considered?
after the cloture vote on the motion to proceed (which i expect to pass), the debate will begin but can not last more than 30 hours. i understand you will be limited in how much time you are able to speak (how much time are you limited to, and how much time will senators feingold and kennedy be limited to – in total)? will you be able to use the entire 30 hours? if now, how many other senators will you need to be able to use the entire 30 hours?
when the debate is done – either in 30 hours or before. then, i think, there will be the vote on the motion to proceed. i expect that will pass.
then what happens? is senator reid expected to file a cloture motion at that time? if so do you expect it to be on the ssci version (with the sjc version as an amendment in the nature of a substitute)? or something else – for example, maybe controversial amendments like the the sjc version?
that would mean another cloture motion, a two day wait, then the vote on the motion to proceed, another debate of up to 30 hours and then the vote on whatever bill/amendments are in order (depending on what the cloture motion was).
is that close to being the process for next week? is your goal to drag it out through next weekend, and so put pressure on everyone who wants to go home for the holidays (i like that!).
or am i thoroughly confused?
one more question, while i’m on a roll… why didn’t you object to the consent agreement friday night? wouldn’t that have given you one more day?
thanks for everything – and i’d be very grateful if you would ask someone on your staff to explain these process issues to us.
Sorry wrong quote:
Our view is that Dodd is presidential timber. He has respect abroad and will do the proper job here at home.
After one of those Senators that want to spy on Americans and grant immunity to the Telcos throws some silly justification at you, you could always respond with Tom Petty’s lyrics: *G*
Well I won’t back down
No I won’t back down
You can stand me up at the gates of hell
But I won’t back down
No I’ll stand my ground, won’t be turned around
And I’ll keep this world from draggin me down
gonna stand my ground
… and I won’t back down
Chorus:
(I won’t back down…)
Hey baby, there ain’t no easy way out
(and I won’t back down…)
hey I will stand my ground
and I won’t back down
Well I know what’s right, I got just one life
in a world that keeps on pushin me around
but I’ll stand my ground
…and I won’t back down
(I won’t back down…)
Hey baby, there ain’t no easy way out
(and I won’t back down…)
hey I will stand my ground
(I won’t back down)
and I won’t back down…
(I won’t back down…)
Hey baby, there ain’t no easy way out
(I won’t back down)
hey I won’t back down
(and I won’t back down)
hey baby, there ain’t no easy way out
(and I won’t back down)
hey I will stand my ground
(and I won’t back down)
and I won’t back down
(I won’t back down)
No I won’t back down…
It has the word “hell” in it, so that may be considered inappropriate in Congress, I dunno…
excellent idea.
i pledge to call every senator’s office while senator dodd filibusters.
The ideal situation. Dodd becomes president and Lamont takes President Dodd’s place in CT. Delicious. ;0)
Ding Dong!
Those are the Senators whose contituents need to press hard to vote against cloture.
clammyc over at BooTrib has this point to make about the fisa debate in reference to lack of funding being provided by either bush or the congress for homeland security:
“Put differently, Bush and Congressional leaders it is more important to provide cover for illegal acts in the name of national security than it is to actually step up and provide funding for national security.”
it’s an interesting observation and thought it might be helpful.
Thank you Senator Dodd.
I too will call every Senator tomorrow morning while you filibuster.
Sen. Dodds’ backstabbing colleague is set to endorse John McCain in NH.
Could this be the beginning of the Lieberpud-McCain war, war, war bus tour?
-G
Senator Dodd, please read this:
Hoorah for Senator Dodd! and any Senator who supports his filibuster in person. This is the email I sent to Senator Reid (I sent other emails to Senator Feinstein and Senator Boxer)…
Dera Senator Reid:
I am extremely concerned that you seem to be managing the FISA Bill to make it impossible to remove the section of the Bill that gives retroactive immunity to the telecommunication companies who have been illegally spying on Americans since George Bush took office. Some telecommunication companies knew this spying was illegal at the time and correctly refused to break the law. This illegal spying has nothing to do with the “War on Terror” because it was started before there was such a thing. Why is the Bush Administration illegally spying on every one of us all of the time?
Please stand up for our rights in our Constitution, for the rule of law FOR EVERYONE, and for our democracy that is supposed to have three equal branches of government. Please stand up to maintain the checks and balances of our democracy and stand up for the right of Congress and the people of this country to know what this President has secretly authorized. George Bush is not a king and our democracy is not a dictatorship.
Please pull this Bill and get all the facts in front of Congress and the American people before you reintroduce any bill to rework FISA. There is no need to rush this legislation when so many important questions remain unanswered.
If you do not pull the FISA Bill that includes retroactive immunity for illegal spying, I am in total support of the filibuster by Senator Dodd, and by any other member of Congress, to stop you and this Bill. I will be watching to see if any of the Democratic candidates for president lend their voice and their physical presence to the filibuster. My vote in 2008 depends on it.
I think what it means is that when Dodd needs to step out to visit the Little Senator’s Room, he can yield to a friendly colleague who would ask him a question . . . and this being a friendly colleague, said question could take up to twenty minutes. When Dodd returns, he gets to answer the question and then continue speaking.
Ok, that’s terms I can understand. I think what is needed is an essay, scholarly treatise, or something of that nature which could be read in its entirety, then have Feingold or Kennedy end with “what are your thoughts on that, Senator Dodd?”
Maybe a chapter from a good history of the Constitutional Convention, dealing with the original thoughts behind the Separation of Powers issue, and something on the history and thought behind the institution of the Fourth Amendmentment.
BTW, it is sad that the Dems in the Senate “need 60 votes to move forward with legislation”, but they also need to filibuster to prevent this fiasco. Remind me who is in the majority?
Let me share a fear I have. The description of what’s going to happen states that “Dodd takes the floor” – what if Dodd doesn’t GET the floor? What if Reid refuses to recognize him? Can he do that?
We need to remember that Reid is the Senate Majority Leader and is on the wrong side of this. We’re in this situation today because he’s bringing to the floor the bill WITH immunity rather than the one without it, because he’s breaking with decades-old Senate tradition by refusing to recognize Dodd’s hold on the bill. For some reason that escapes me, he WANTS immunity to pass, and he’s willing to trample Senate precedence and Senatorial courtesy to get it. So I can’t help but fear that if it’s POSSIBLE for him to refuse Dodd permission to speak, he’ll do so.
Any parliamentarians here who can lay my fears to rest?
Oh, I just remembered. It is the bipartisan pro-Bush coalition.
Senator Dodd,
Thank-you, and God bless! You will be standing representing the Constitution of the United States of America, do not yield and allow its power to fracture further.
I also agree with this comment from above:
“Senator, can you please read the list of senators to whom AT&T, Verizo, Sprint, and any PAC to which their employees have made a significant (say over $10,000) have made campaign contributions, as ask them to recuse themselves from the vote?”
I’ll support you in this endeavor any way I possibly can.
I guess my point is that the game was lost when Rockefeller, Feinstein and Whitehouse turned coat and voted the SIC bill out of committee..that is where it should have been stopped. As far as I am aware there is no effective “discharge petition” mechanism in the Senate.
Good question. We need a Senate rules expert to weigh in.
Where will Senators Clinton, Obama and Biden be tomorrow? Will they be supporting Senator Dodd as promised? I sure hope so!
i think the problem is that senator dodd will be filibustering against members of our own party (see
jello jaysenator rockefeller).I’m in Indiana, so I’m on the case tomorrow with Bayh’s office. Multiple calls to multiple offices, and will follow up with a fax.
When the Democrats we elected turn out to be Republicans in disguise, then we have a single party system and nothing to counter it. When we are in that situation(now) there is no actual Democracy. Thanks to the few brave enough to speak truth to power. Thanks Mr. Dodd.
If we manage to get through this without the Gestapo armed and monitoring every street corner, then we have a lot of work to do just to undo the worst of the damage that has already be done. But as bad as things have turned out to be I believe we can do it.
Let me share a fear I have. The description of what’s going to happen states that “Dodd takes the floor” – what if Dodd doesn’t GET the floor? What if Reid refuses to recognize him? Can he do that?
Reid already said Friday that he would grant Dodd and Feingold “Opponents’ Time”. How sad is that that the Democratic Majority Leader is reduced to publicly recognizing that his own party is largely against him?
(and I think that he is require to allow such time, having no choice in who his “opponents” choose to speak).
All Dodd has to say is something this,
1) There is absolutely no reason for us to grant immunity at this time. We have no idea how vast this conspiracy of lawlessness reaches. If after the facts come out we determine the TELCOS acted in good faith then we can consider immunity at that time. But, for all we know every single call made in the US is being illegally recorded by the NSA. If the TELCOS were to be found guilty we have plenty of time during any appeal process to remove their liability. The only thing granting immunity does is cover up for the crimes of George Bush and Dick Cheney.
2) No prosecutor in his right mind would ever grant immunity unless he had some idea of what the underlying crime was. Not one prosecutor would do that. And if they did grant immunity it is rarely blanket immunity for anything they might have done. Rather, it is very specifically tailored to “forgive” a limited set of actions.
Otherwise, I would just read a litany of criminal accusations against the Bush Cheney administration so it appears on all the Television stations. Or just keep reading the Kucinich articles of impeachment.
I am not going to say what I’d like seen done with Joe Lieberman. This is the holiday season in full swing in this house. So we will just say Merry Christmas or Happy Whatevers, Mr. Lieberman.
i don’t think so – here’s rule 22 .
this is a perfect opportunity for us to learn more about how the senate operates, if there is an expert willing to teach us.
Could be worse…if the rules hadn’t been changed in 1974, it would have taken 67 votes.
Thank you Senator Dodd for doing your job and for showing the proud legacy of the Dodd family in service and honor to this country, democracy, and the world.
Senator Lieberman–you are beneath contempt. Your warmongering selfishness betrays democracy. Being a wholly-owned subsidiary of BushCo is no legacy to be proud of. Have your children enlisted yet?
Sorry for going OT.
Sen. Dodd, you are clearly listening to the people.
Please continue on with this present course. You have my utmost support and respect.
-G
I’m not sure what that means, but if there is insufficient support for cloture, then the continued filibuster could eventually induce Reid to withdraw the SIC version and allow consideration of either the JC or House version.
Joyce,
One of the first calls I will place tomorrow morning will be to Senator Byrd’s office, asking him to comment on Reid’s break with Senate tradition. As the longest-serving member of the Senate and a long time student of Senate procedure, Senator Byrd is just the person to point out how large a break with tradition Reid has made.
Exactly. And that makes me sad.
or better – if the goal is block bad legislation from this administration.
put some elbow grease in this one, folks, we’ll be publishing many on the front page of FDL.
This is an opportunity for all Democrats in Congress to show what they are made of. Democratic Congresspersons; don’t let us down.
and…
Feinstein, Nelson, Nelson, Bayh, Baucus, Johnson, Landrieu, Pryor, Lincoln, Carper, Whitehouse(?)
Senator Dodd, please remind your colleagues of the findings of the Church Report:
According to Clinton and Obama’s Web sites they have campaign appearances scheduled tomorrow. I didn’t see anything on Biden’s site about appearances.
I’m in Indiana, so I’m on the case tomorrow with Bayh’s office. Multiple calls to multiple offices, and will follow up with a fax.
Maybe you could mention my name, and report back as to how loud the responding groan was?
What I think it means that, unlike the HR, if a bill is held in committee there is no mechanism to get it out.(other than back room threats.)
You have familiarized Bayh with your views previously?
Hillary? Barack? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
Screw Clinton and screw Obama if they pull a disappearing act on this one. I mean it – if these supposed “front runners” duck out on this one, the rebuke should be immediate and painful.
Senator Dodd is commanding. Please follow his lead.
What is up with the Senate Democrats? Why isn’t every ONE of you standing up for Americans? Are you really TRYING to lose in 2008? I’m here to say I have had it with you Mr. Reid. You need to stop kow towing to George Bush THE WORST PRESIDENT EVER. MR. 24% approval rating.
Spying on us? Destroying CIA torture tapes? Outing a CIA agent? The Blackwater whores? Losing BILLIONS of dollars in Iraq (OUR money).
I applaud you Mr. Dodd. It appears you are the only one left with a spine.
Obama and Clinton? Where are you? Campaigning? In Iowa? You need to get back to DC and stand up with Senator Dodd.
And Jim Webb better be standing up or else he will be a one term senator.
“According to Clinton and Obama’s Web sites they have campaign appearances scheduled tomorrow.”
If they don’t show up and support this, I certainly can’t be bothered to support them on election day.
You have familiarized Bayh with your views previously?
Oh, once or twice… *g*
Honorable Senator Dodd:
Thank you! We are in your debt.
My suggestions:
Read from the book, 1984, on the dangers of the all-controlling state.
Read from any of the good accounts of the Revolutionary War -deprivation and freezing cold in fight for Independence
jane – will you be leaving this comment thread open for the evening (as usual)?
Has Congress learned nothing from the immunity granted to Ollie North and the other thugs behind Iran Contra? Look where it’s brought us. What do we have to look forward to if this reckless outlaw legislation passes?
My country NSA, sweet land of ATT, off we Reid feeds.
We are constantly told that we have nothing to fear from surveillance if we have done nothing wrong.
Why do the telecoms need retroactive immunity? It follows that they know for a fact that they have broken the law and need immunity so that the true extent of this lawbreaking is not disclosed.
Americans have a fundamental right to unobtrusive actions by the government into the privacy of their lives. Sen. Dodd understands this.
What am I missing? Isn’t the only reason for immunity is because THEY HAVE BROKEN THE LAW? And why exactly should we allow them to get away with it? It’s not exactly that the U.S. has made any dramatic breakthroughs in the drug or terror wars. Shouldn’t there be some evidence of national benefit in exchange for the lawlessness?
The Senators could use any of the many
Glenn Greenwald essays on the subjects of
Bush’s law breaking and Constitution shreading.
All are well written and filled with concise
arguments.Very effective.Not hard to put in the form of a question.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness does not include being spied upon by one’s own elected government.
What they are arguing is that they shouldn’t have to undergo the burden of establishing their innocence.
Are any of the Republicans — Hagel for example — possible “good guys” on this? How about Olympia Snow & Collins of ME? I’d think New Englanders might be a little worried about such unbridled lawlessness.
I’m really disheartened when I see that list of DINOs above. You forgot include Mikulski; she’s been horrible on a wide range of issues.
Donate to Dodd – Tell Obama and Clinton that this is a litmus test issue.
Senator, please divulge the names of the senators who received campaign contributions from the telecom companies who willingly and knowingly broke the law. If a senator is paid by a telecom company this is a conflict of interest and makes it impossible for the person to hold the companies accountable for breaking the law.
Also, if telecoms receive retroactive immunity does the same privilege also apply to ballplayers and their trainers who are accused of taking steroids?
Will all crimes be granted retroactive immunity from the long arm of the law?
Thank you for your courage and honor. We notice.
What is the precedent?
Can you say something about the nature of the relationship between big corporations and our government. Perhaps, talk about the melevolent relationship in regards to the telecoms receiving federal money and favorable legislation in exchange for cooperating…and how that guy who had reservations (Qwest was it?) back a few years ago (sorry, forgot his name) was prosecuted…More than the spying, American’s need a better understanding of how the Bush Administration actually operates as a government. And why we should all be SKEPTICAL about the arguments being put forth in favorable of Amnesty.
Senator Dodd, I’m a supporter of yours (went to your break-out session at YKos2 in Chicago), have donated to your campaign (there was a field for comments so i said you had guts), and i have bought your book.
I’m going to stay home from work so i can watch C-Span (not a hard thing to do with this snow and ice here). I may have to call a party for tomorrow to form a cheering section!
Please do read Hugh’s Scandal Sheet and also the Federalist Papers! Maybe the others need reminding what it is that they are throwing away. (spineless wussies)
I wish you an easy filibuster, and more power to you.
Senator, thank you for showing us that even though true Constitution supporting law-and-order democrats seem to be a dying breed, there are still one or two of you around yet. Maybe if they listen real heard during your time on the floor the rest of them will remember their duty to their constituents, to their country, and to the Constitution of the United States. We are a renegade nation that tortures, spies on its citizens, and has been thoroughly discredited throughout the world. Thank you for showing that there are a few of us left that respect the rule of law and have a deep regard for human rights and the civil rights that we were promised by the people who founded this country.
Thank you so much.
P.S. Harry Reid should resign.
Why the heck is Harry Reid dishonoring the hold, putting the worst legislation up and doing it all in such a RUSH?
In any event:
1. Court filings in several court cases have set forth that the domestic spying programs began well before 9/11 and were not based on a national exigency.
2. Court filings and administration spokespersons have indicated that, when telecoms were approached with “the program” the telecoms were allowed to involve their counsel in making their determinations. By contrast, members of Congress and the Adminstration admits that when there were finally briefings (and there are no assurances – per the weasely Gonzales testimony – that anyone in Congress has even been briefed on all the “programs” and all the things that have been done – especially before the pre-Comey revisions) to a very small number of members of Congress, they were NOT ALLOWED to consult with counsel. If both the President and the telecoms were allowed to have access to counsel and Congress still has not, then they – and not Congress – are the ones in the position to determine whether their actions were defensible.
3. Congress is being asked to grant “amnesty” for crimes and civil penalties without ever hearing one word from the corporate executives who made the decisions and without ever seeing, but for a few people, any of the paperwork and memoranda on what was done and why – they are being asked to grant an amnesty of ignorance.
4. Congress is attempting to not only give a criminal amnesty, but also to take away individual citizens contract privacy rights and state law statutory privacy rights and subvert private causes of actions in favor of corporations.
5. Litigation will not cease with the so-called “amnesty” because the only Judge who has ruled on “the program” on the merits found that it violated the FOURTH AMENDMENT. Congress does not have the Constitutional ability to legislate in derrogation of the Constitution – you cannot nullify the fourth amendment by granting immunity to quasi government actors for violating the fourth amendment (Bivens). How can any telecom claim to be acting in good faith after Judge Taylor’s ruling and how much disdain can Congress have for the citizens of this nation than to take a program declared to violate the fourth amendment and rally support for it?
6. If the United States does not act, it becomes more and more likely that other countries will seek to act to determine what has been done with their citizens information by corporations who were given the grace to operate within those countries. Similar to the SWIFT case, if the US is going to allow multinationals to invade personal information at the whim of a US nutcase, especially one who ships stray Canadians and Germans to blacksite torture, then they are going to draw lines and make it more difficult for these kinds of things to occur. Once the US “adminsitrative subpoena” approach was struck down by the European court, the banking consortium began moving operations away from the US to make it less available to being bullied by a US Frat boy.
7. The only Judge to rule on the merits ruled that “the program” even after the Comey changes, clearly violated the 4th Amendment. Another Judge who has not ruled on the merits yet, but who has had pleadings filed with technical allegations of what was being done, has said no idiot would believe that was legal (also post-Comey revisions). Pre-Comey revisions, the first versions of the program caused a large swath of DOJ to be willing to walk out rather than go along. EVEN more telling, BOTH Chief Judges of the secretive FISA court, when each was briefed on the program, were so horrified that they demanded firewalls to keep all the clearly illegal information out of their courts and Judge Lamberth, now off the court, has taken the unusual step of criticizing “the program” in public speeches.
8. Telecoms never asked for any legislative support for their position for 6 years. They never pushed the WH for legislation. Six years. Never asked. This is THEIR DECISION and the consequences, civil and criminal, should be theirs.
9. Telecoms are not being “prevented” from protecting themselves in court cases by the invocation of the “state secrets” doctrine. They have not once objected to the government invoking that doctrine – they have not made filings to offer up how they complied with statutes and FISA and the telecom federal and state and international privacy laws and their contractual obligations and had gov seek to redact parts of those as secret information. Instead, the telecoms have hidden behind the government invocations and benefitted by them.
10. The recent reports indicate that the telecoms and government are not just easvesdropping on almost everything, but they are also scooping it up, storing it without minimization, and keeping it indefinitely to be used by anyone for anything on down the line.
11. Some of the abuses may date back to the Clinton era and Americans are entitled to a Church style investigation.
12. If the opinions relied upon by the telecoms say what Sen. Whitehouse has indicated, that the President can decide what his powers are and the telecoms chose to go along with that instead of demanding to see input from Congress acquiescing in the exercise of that power, then the telecoms failed in their due diligence and that failure should and does have consequences.
13. When “the program” was revealed, Gonzales was interviewed and said that the admin did not ask Congress for approval of their program because they did not think (the REPUBLICAN MAJORITY by 2004) Congress would give it. The minute that the telecoms learned a) Congress was not being asked bc COngress would not authorize; b) of the FISA judges reactions to the illegality of the program; c) to the refusal of Comey/Ashcroft to sign off; or d) of the Judge Taylor opinion that the program violated the Fourth Amendment, they were no longer, by any stretch of any imagination, acting in good faith to continue, yet Congress has failed to question them on this matter or on why they did not become concerned when Qwest raised illegality.
14 Per 13 – what have we devolved to when the Democratic Majority in Congress is willing to hand over power to an incompetent Executive that a weasely Atty General said a Republican majority would never grant?
Here’s a proposed compromise that makes sense and should address the concerns of needing to have corporations work with government, while protecting the equality of the three branches of government. Offer up immunity – for the time period beginning on 9/11 (but not before) and ending when the Patriot Act was passed (10-24 I think?)
That takes care of the concerns. Corporations will be protected for acting in exigent circumstances, but they need to know that if they continue to cooperate soley with the Executive, in secret, without ever receiving supporting legislation – they are then on their own and will have to rely upon Presidential pardons if they proceed past the point where legislation could legitimately have been proposed.
Suggestions:
I would read Glenn Greenwald’s posts on the subject into the record.
Is there an emptywheel © Timeline?
Why the heck is Harry Reid dishonoring the hold, putting the worst legislation up and doing it all in such a RUSH?
Simple answer is that he really wants to pass this legislation.
I’d like to see President Dodd recite the “Gettysburg Address”. Then move on to recitation of the Constitution and the preamble, and other relevant material.
Word to Senators Conrad and Dorgan: please support Senator Dodd, the Constitution, and the oath of office you swore to. Uphold the law, don’t strangle it.
Thank you. Your constituent in Fargo.
I have written many times to Senators Reid and Feinstein on this issue.
I sent this letter to Senator Boxer last night:
12/15/07 to Boxer
If we let the corrupt administration and the fearful Democratic leadership give immunity to the telecoms, I believe that it will be the last nail in the coffin of our democracy.
There will be no end to immunity for lawbreakers who are destroying the public trust, and shredding the Constitution to do it.
It is an open road toward fascism.
What will they teach in the schools now?
That this used to be a “country of laws, not of men” but in the year 2007 that was ended.
I have no trust that the wiretaps have anything to do with looking for terrorists anyway.
They are undoubtedly looking for more Democratic Governors to imprison.
I don’t know why the Democratic leadership does not perceive the danger.
If I perceive the danger so clearly, why can’t they?
So the answer appears to be that those who are engineering a Senate vote for immunity for the telecoms are participating in the overthrow of our form of government.
For that is what it clearly means.
Please stand up for us and show some leadership.
Support Senator Dodd by standing to filibuster any bill that includes immunity for telecoms or gives further vague and egregious powers for spying to the government, and to private corporations.
This is the moment of truth for our democracy.
If you 100 Senators give it away, it will be gone.
It’s not an argument based on legal precedent. It is based on “Terrorists are gonna gitcha!!1!1!!! Telecoms are saving your children from going up in a MUSHROOM CLOUD!!1111!!1!!!!”
Senator Dodd:
I recently saw a film in German called, in English, “The Lives of Others”.
It depicts efforts by the Stasi to spy on pro-democracy activists and literary people in the former GDR. In it, we see scenes of wiretaps, the planing of microphones in people’s apartments, and sleepy agents of the Stasi working in shifts to listen to all the private goings on, taking copious notes.
The powers our U. S. government is now allowing the executive branch to wield would be the envy of the Stasi.
By coopting, without court review or any oversight of warrants, the power to record and retain all communications records of any American at any time without cause or need to show cause, our government need not plant microphones in your home or my home. Any cell phone with a battery, even when it’s switched off, can function as an in home planted microphone if designated to do so through a central switching system. Though the government claims no such activities are occurring, and no detailed databases are retained for any length of time, with no content analysis of what is recorded, we actually have no way to verify this.
This does not even account for all other records of communications, through email or other new technologies never anticipated by framers of the 4th Amendment, who sought to ensure freedom from government intrusion in people’s lives, having been subject to violations of person, privacy and property by the King’s government in England.
In history, no government that assumed to itself such unreviewable power has been able to resist the temptation to abuse this power. In every case, the fallibility of human nature will out. Government invariably use such tools not merely to fight legitimate crime, but to punish dissent and political enemies. Because we opposed such practices and ant-democratic values, we fought, and ultimately won, the Cold War. None of us of a certain generation could ever have imagined we’d have to fight the emergence of a Stasi Sate here at home in our own lifetimes.
These indeed are the stakes: allegedly to protect our freedom, this FISA bill with its blanket or “umbrella” warrant provisions, and its efforts to grant retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies who have abetted our government’s illegal surveillance activities, violates the intent and the spirit of the 4th Amendment. It presents to us the very evils our country was founded to protect against. It represents an abomination of law and to any free man or woman’s conscience.
I want to thank you for fighting to oppose the efforts of those in both parties to render all truth about past illegal activities on these matters forever unrecoverable, as they seek simultaneously to end the guarantees of freedom afforded us through the U. S. constitution.
On behalf of the lovers of liberty at the online web community of Firedoglake.com, I offer you my sincere thanks, and I urge all of your colleagues in the senate, regardless of party affiliation, to rediscover their oaths first and foremost to the Constitution, and to join you in your filibuster of the heinous legislation proposed for adoption.
Contrary to what the Rove’s, Bushe’s, Rice’s, Runsfeld’s, Libby’s and Cheney’s would have us believe, this is not the born again “America, Love it or Leave it” era. “America, Right or Wrong” doesn’t get it.
On C-SPAN2 right now is an author (psychologist) discussing how the paranoia switch has been used to keep us in an authoritarian state.
I understand what they’re doing. I simply feel obliged to enter into the record how a normal person would thinkk about this subject.
What troubles me is that all successful dictators of the 20th century used spying on its own citizens as one of the means to consolidate its power. Why are we following their lead in this abuse?
Dodd will do the job. The man looks and sounds presidential to me.
Senator Dodd, remind the Senate that we are ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave.’ And the other senators have to have the bravery to stand for the constitution. (ferkryssakes!)
They don’t. They are innocent until proven guilty.
The top 2 senate recipients of telecom campaign donations for this election cycle are John McCain, and Hillary:
http://www.opensecrets.org/ind…..cycle=2008
I kinda doubt Hillary will show up for the fillibuster then, eh?
Richmond at 101 – you are right, Chris Dodd’s title is ‘The Honorable Senator Dodd.”
I’m sure the neo fascist Bush crowd would love for us to have a mini cam in all of our rooms plugged into them. Get over it guys. Ain’t gonna happen. Sen. Dodd: a nation turns it’s worried eyes to you.
Mentioned here before, but Glenn Greenwald knocked it out of the park today:
That right there is what I want Dodd to address. I want Dodd to put the Senate directly in a position where it’s either voting for a country under the rule of law, or against it.
Rational people are waiting with bated breath.
Got it. Unfortunately, I am afraid that the vast majority of “normal” people in this country have only the vaguest idea of what is going on. Hillary’s cackle and Obama’s dope-smoking are much more important issues for MSM coverage.
I am sitting in a room right now with an extremely intelligent person. I asked her if she knew about the big showdown that is going to occur in the Senate tomorrow. She said, “No.” I said it was about FISA, and asked if she knew what that was. She responded, “It’s some kind of wiretapping thing, right?”
Read the link, #3 after Hillary is Obama, Rahmbo is #4
http://www.opensecrets.org/ind…..cycle=2008
Also, CALEA became a requirement during Clinton….
She has other priorities.
It is upsetting, but, sadly, no longer shocking to see that the United States Senate, which nominally changed hands in 2006, is set to yet again betray the American people and shred the Bill of Rights, by granting retroactive immunity to the giant corporations of the telecommunications industry.
There was a time when the media, the people, and the Senators who are ostensibly elected to represent them, would have expressed outrage and indignation at the idea that the federal government was, in a remarkable impersonation of the abuses of the totalitarian USSR, spying on its own people. There was a generation–the “Greatest Generation”–which would have decried these abuses, and would have balked at the notion of immunizing the multinational corporations who actively assisted this wholesale and illegal evisceration of the Fourth Amendment. But, that Generation had courage, and had fought against the kind of corporate totalitarianism which is now apparently, and inexcusably, embraced by leaders of both parties. And, perhaps, that wasn’t a generation which accepted tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the telecoms. That lost Generation understood that ours was a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Senators, you have lost your way. You have forgotten–perhaps willfully–whom you were elected to represent. You have decided that it is more important to protect the knowing and intentional violators of the Bill of Rights, than to preserve the protections provided to the people by the Constitution. And for that, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
Do you think there would be a place for Gore in a Dodd Administration?
Pups, do we have any home remedies to prevent a dry throat?
Senator Clinton will be meeting with her consultants. Thank you, very much.
That’s a good example of why we & Senator Dodd have a lot of work cut out for us.
So, if the government tells me to break into my neighbor’s house, read and copy all of their correspondence, without a warrant or even with a warrant, and then I give to the government…and then my neighbor has me arrested for breaking and entering and theft…can I get immunity??
OT – don’t know if this has been brought up. Lieberman endorsing McCain.
Candied ginger in hot oolong tea.oo
To be sure there is much work to be done. But I think that Christopher Dodd can whip the pants off Mittie, Rudy, or Huck.
Exactly: “I can haz immunitee? kthxbai!”
I had the TV (CNN) not paying close attention until I heard Gore being interviewed, and he said that he hadn’t ruled out running for office sometime in the future, but the only office he would run for is president! Did anyone else hear this?
Only if you’re a really BIG contributor to the pols.
Gore/Dodd. Now there is a dream ticket.
Senator Whitehouse being on the wrong side of this is a startling disappointment.
You bet. As long as you are on the Bushco team.
Martha Stout: The Paranoia Switch….sounds like a great book!
Yep, except I haven’t learned anything new yet. Good that more people are talking about it, but remember she’s speeaking in the PR of Cambridge, like preaching to the converted.
Teaspoon of local honey with a few drops of lemon.
That is awesome news, a real Filibuster! Mahalo Nui Loa, Senator Dodd!!!
Dodd is a person for the times. So is Gore. Both men instill confidence.
Capital idea AZ:
Send the list to the printer and have the page set up easel 289 24×36 color board that Dodd can point to. Make a fanfare of it.
Time to fix supper. lahoma has a cold and she’s in bed, so I’m going to fix her favorite food for Sunday dinner and serve it to her upstairs. Dodd!
The Preamble to The Bill of Rights
“THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.”
Read the constitution.
Out loud.
Ask if it still means anything.
Senator Dodd, I really admire you for doing this.
Out them, Senator Dodd. All of them. Dick Cheney has already begun to do so, so get ahead of the curve and talk about who is receiving telecom contributions, how much, and for how long. Out the leadership, especially Reid, for the hold nonsense, and use stuff he’s said behind closed doors. Ruin that man, please, before he ruins the nation. Burn as many bridges as you can. Let’s have it all out in the open, because that is the American way. This is rhetorical warfare, so don’t be afraid to go nuclear!
OT
EPU’d last thread but thought the new members would appreciate Hugh’s Scroll from ET
http://progressivealaska.blogs…..h%27s+List
Thank you, Senator Dodd, for standing up for the rule of law and our Constitution.
Vice President Gore’s “US Constitution in Grave Danger” speech on January 16, 2006 speaks for me and many Americans. Within it he states that “Freedom of communication is an essential prerequisite for the restoration of the health of our democracy.”
I would appreciate your reading the entire text of Gore’s prepared remarks into the record. See http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bi…..i/48/16982
Thank you.
My offering to Senator Dodd:
Growing up during the Cold War, I was constantly reminded that we Americans were so much better than the Soviets because we played by the rules. The evils of the Soviet regime were mentioned at every turn, and very high on that list of evils was the complete lack of privacy for Soviet citizens. We were told that all phone calls were monitored, all mail was read and neighbor was encouraged by the Soviets to spy upon neighbor. This could never happen in America, we were told, and our freedoms were what set us apart.
Very high on that list of freedoms was our freedom from government intrusion into our privacy. The Church Commission, in the mid-1970’s, found that this was not entirely true, and that the privacy of Americans had been violated by the intelligence agencies. With the passage of the original FISA act, the intelligence community was provided with an apparatus that still enabled them to collect information vital to national security, while at the same time being subject to appropriate oversight constructed in conjunction with the concept of the separation of powers set out by our Constitution.
Our feelings of moral superiority were fed by the downfall of the totalitarian Soviet regime and its related totalitarian states behind the Iron Curtain. In my opinion, these regimes collapsed principally under their own lawlessness. A major factor in this downfall was the realization on the part of the citizenry that the state had no legitimate right to govern them. It was not legitimate because it did not act in their interests and it did not recognize their rights. But the United States, on the other hand, is a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
Or is it? It is now clearly established that our government has spied on citizens illegally. It is now clearly established that our government manipulated intelligence to wage an illegal war of aggression. It is now clearly established that our government tortures prisoners. It is now clearly established that our government has abolished the ages-old legal concept of habeas corpus. It is now clearly established that political, rather than legal considerations have driven the Department of Justice.
Today it stops. Thank you, Senator Dodd for having the courage to draw a line and say “no further”. By refusing to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunication companies which have aided the government in its illegal surveillance activities, you are saying that we must return to the rule of law. We start here. We must restore the rule of law regarding surveillance and re-establish meaningful oversight. We must extend this to removing our troops from Iraq. Our illegal occupation has resulted in the displacement of over 4 million Iraqis and the deaths of hundreds of thousands. This must stop. We must extend this to bring about an immediate stop to the practice of torture and the immediate filing of charges against those who have taken part in these atrocities. We must extend this to the restoration of habeas corpus as one of the keystone principles of our laws. And we must restore Justice to its Department.
I urge all Senators to join with Senator Dodd in bringing our country back from the abyss. We now are teetering on the brink of the same lawlessness which brought down the Soviet Union. If forty-one patriotic Senators take a stand today in the name of the rule of law, we can reverse this perilous course of action. If they do not, I fear it will very soon be too late.
“First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists
and I did not speak out – because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me -
and by then there was no one left to speak out for me.”
- Pastor Martin Niemöller
Hi there for Senator Dodd.
The freedoms we expect as Americans are enshrined in the Bill of Rights. It is so much harder to gain new freedoms than to give them up. The American democracy has succeeded for so long because of its freedoms not the fear of government surveillance. Sadly, you can’t trust the government. If you give up one inch of freedom, they take a mile. How dare we give up some essential freedom for security from terrorists, and the government use that for law enforcement of drug trafficking. That’s not what we agreed to. Don’t let anyone take any more.
Freedom from thinking the government or any authority is watching you is the hallmark of our democracy. It’s what makes us different from the nazi and communist totalitarianians. How dare people legislate that away. And how would we ever get them back.
My sister lost her dear childhood friend on September 11, she was a flight attendant. But Alicia would never have wanted all that has been done in her name to be done. I would rather lose my life if some crazy person blew himself up in my general vicinity, than have the government watch everyone’s every move.
How dare you all take that away.
KT
Dear Senator Dodd:
Thank you for standing up for our Constitution; you make us proud to stand with you. Although we cannot be in the Senate Gallery, please be assured that we are standing toe to toe with you in spirit, cheering you on. Many of us will watch you on C-SPAN.
Thanks also go to Senators Feingold and Kennedy for standing with you. Hopefully with the efforts of phone calls/faxes from concerned citizens to Senate offices, you will garner the support of many more senators.
May you and your family have the Merriest of Christmases and Happiest of New Years.
Sen. Dodd, This is not just a question of one piece of legislation. This is a question of whether or not Congress will assert itself finally and insist that the executive branch and all the actors in the Bush/Cheney administration be held accountable to one simple principle: To act in accordance with the rule of law under the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
It has really come down to that. We as a nation are skating on thin ice that separates us from the dark, cold waters of fascism and police state totalitarianism, where all citizens are subject to full time warrantless surveillance. Where does it end it not here? I was watching DemocracyNow TV this morning. They were interviewing small organic farmers. They report that even the smallest of farms are going to be required to register with homeland security, and register all their animals, down to the last chicken and goat. Where does this end? How does ANYTHING that the Bush / Cheney regime has done differ one whit from Hitler’s German as that nation slide towards dictatorship?
This really needs to be a defining moment, when the few remaining members of the Senate who actually paid attention to their oath of office when they recited it wake up, and start on the salvation of this nation, before it is just late.
KATZ v. UNITED STATES, 389 U.S. 347 (1967)
Petitioner was convicted under an indictment charging him with transmitting wagering information by telephone across state lines in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1084. Evidence of petitioner’s end of the conversations, overheard by FBI agents who had attached an electronic listening and recording device to the outside of the telephone booth from which the calls were made, was introduced at the trial. The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction, finding that there was no Fourth Amendment violation since there was “no physical entrance into the area occupied by” petitioner. Held:
1. The Government’s eavesdropping activities violated the privacy upon which petitioner justifiably relied while using the telephone booth and thus constituted a “search and seizure” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Pp. 350-353.
(a) The Fourth Amendment governs not only the seizure of tangible items but extends as well to the recording of oral statements. Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511 . P. 353.
(b) Because the Fourth Amendment protects people rather than places, its reach cannot turn on the presence or absence of a physical intrusion into any given enclosure. The “trespass” doctrine of Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 , and Goldman v. United States, 316 U.S. 129 , is no longer controlling. Pp. 351, 353.
2. Although the surveillance in this case may have been so narrowly circumscribed that it could constitutionally have been authorized in advance, it was not in fact conducted pursuant to the warrant procedure which is a constitutional precondition of such electronic surveillance. Pp. 354-359.
and joe lierman is coming out for mccain in the repug primary election….these dems are getting worse and worse….and telcos WILL get their way cuz this dem bunch don’t have a baby’s spine grrrrrrrrr
Senator Dodd~ The Federal Government and the Telecommunications providers need to be reminded that the Framers of our Constitution knew the direct effects of Government intrusion into their personal lives. They feared the Writs of Assistance that were used to pry into their daily privacy. American Patriot
James Otis inveighed that such writs, “the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty, and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law book.” According to Otis, such writs placed “the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.” John Adams later declared
Otis’s statement to be the “first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of
Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born.” [Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 625 (1886) (quoting THOMAS COOLEY, A TREATISE ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATIONS WHICH REST UPON THE LEGISLATIVE POWER OF THE STATES OF THE AMERICAN UNION 368 (The
Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ed., 1998) (1883)].
Because of the abuses by the British, the First Congress stipulated in the 1792 Postal Act that Federal were banned from opening mail, unless they could not be delivered, or with a warrant during times of war. [Postal Act, Feb. 20, 1792.] As one can clearly see the requisite standards for such intrusions into the mail was exceedingly higher than anything being suggested by the current Administration. In 1878 the US Supreme Court established, “[l]etters and sealed packages…in the mail are as fully guarded from examination and
inspection, except as to their outward form and weight, as if they were retained by the parties forwarding them in their own domiciles. The constitutional guaranty of the right of the people to be secure in their papers against unreasonable searches and seizures extends to their papers, thus closed against inspection, wherever they may be. [Ex parte Jackson, 96 U.S. 727, 733 (1878)].
Subsequent law has supported the governments need to obtain warrants for domestic electronic communications. All telecommunications corporations should be aware of this basic principal…that warrantless searches of electronic communications are a criminal violation. THEY are the gatekeeper to preventing such illegal acts by government officers, for no one would ever know if materials were obtained for illicit purposes without their opposition. Without a warrant there is no accountability. The Government can easily conceal what information and who was probed. The current Administration has constantly prevented oversight, both to the Courts and to Congress be invoking the need for secrecy…even when such invocations were actually covering up acts of abuse and malfeasance. The Constitutional Constraints were NOT written by men that trusted an Executive Power to “do the right thing”. They had experience abuse. They did not trust the placing of these powers in the hands of a Washington, Jefferson, Adams, or Madison.
These basic principals of law were known in the past and continue to this moment, and thus the idea of granting immunity from investigation and judicial review to those that have violated the law on such basic Constitutional standards is beyond disgust.
In a famous experiment the psychologist Stanley Milgram examined the effects of authority on individuals asked to do reprehensible acts. He had students place a series of progressive shocks to other volunteers. In fact the other volunteer was an actor and was not receiving a shock at all. Milgram discovered that even when the recipients of the shocks were screaming in agony and (supposedly) fell unconcious due to the pain the volunteer giving the shock, although begging for permission to stop, would continue if they were ordered to by someone in authority running the experiment. They would especially continue if the authority figure said that anything that occurred would be the investigators responsibility.
This is precisely why the Telecommunications Industry cannot be absolved of responsibility for their actions and that there cannot be amnesty or a shift of responsibility to the Government. If there were illegalities both should be held responsible, and it is up to the Courts to decide what damages occurred. The Framers would not have absolved the Postal Workers who spied NOR the Federal officers who violated the 4th Amendment. Why would they have created such limitations on the power of Government if they had meant to do otherwise?
Dear Senator Dodd,
Thank you so much for standing up for the right of privacy for Americans who are doing nothing more than talking on the telephone or using the Internet.
My husband used to work for a software company owned by the British. He spent a lot of time in London on business as a result. Of course he’d call home to see how things were going, see how I was, and visit a little. Our phone conversations were most likely boring to anyone else but the two of us, but the thought of someone else listening in on them horrifies me. We weren’t breaking the law. We weren’t doing anything wrong, but our conversation was most likely monitored for no good reason. I’m sure those doing the monitoring had a great time listening to my husband visit with our cats over the phone, for instance.
When I actively censor myself on the telephone with a friend, there is something wrong. Even more wrong is the idea that it would even cross my mind at all! We’re just chatting. At the same time, if we express our unhappiness with the current administration, our disgust at policies that violate the civil rights of all Americans, or our hopes that someone may finally stand up on our behalf, I am worried. Is someone else listening?
The very thought that telecom companies would obtain immunity for these violations of privacy is also outrageous. When the average American breaks the law, they must face the consequences. Why are large corporations being offered a “pass” as part of the existing legislation?
Again, Senator Dodd, thank you so much for your willingness to serve the American people — all of the people, not just those in your district — and to stand up for the right to have a simple phone conversation with a spouse, a family member or a friend in privacy.
Thank you.
p.s. I’ve heard that hot tea with lemon and honey is good for a dry throat. I’m hoping that your staff will have plenty on hand for you.
Lieberman endorsing McCain. Mr. Lieberman you really are a nasty piece of work. Your endorsement of Mr. McCain tells me all I need to know about both of you.
This proposed legislation goes against two of the most cherished principles of our system of government. The right to privacy and equal justice. As citizens of the United States we expect this. But this legislation violates both principles which are so important to all of us.
My sincere thoughts are as follows:
Planning the use of the nation’s communications infrastructure beginning 7 months before the terrorist attacks on 9/11, this administration began a systematic violation of our citizens privacy. By circumventing the courts, by failing to show cause, and keeping it secret from the Congress, the courts, and the American people, these programs of domestic surveillance have shown this administration to be untrustworthy in overseeing and protecting rights which were entrusted to them. Now they are asking for more, and more power to intrude into the daily lives of all of us.
This bill tells the American people to forget about any means of redress from those telecom companies which chose to break our laws and cooperate without judicial oversight. Some companies told this government that they would not do so without that oversight. Now we are asked to forgive and forget. One of problems with this legislation is we do not know what we are forgiving. Immunity may be appropriate, but not before the Congress and the public know what was done by this administration and these cooperating companies.
Is it fair to those companies who chose to follow the law, that those who ignored laws protecting the privacy of our citizens walk away without even disclosing what they did? Is it fair to our citizens that their basic rights were violated without their knowledge and possibly for no reason? This is a basic issue of fairness. The arguments of national security for a program that began in 02/01 ring hollow.
Showing the need for these programs is easily proven by the administration to the Congress. By refusing to do so, additional questions are raised. Until Congress can answer these questions, the granting of immunity is not in the best interest of our citizens.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com…..20115.aspx
Lieberman to endorse McCain ??
Dear Senator Dodd;
Thank you for showing the kind of principle and purpose that is long overdue on both floors of congress.
When I reflect on the ways the idea of America has been sullied and corrupted the past seven years,
it’s hard to feel very optimistic about our prospects for reclaiming our republic. Your actions regarding this FISA vote are a step in the right direction. The depressing truth is that American, in some capacity, does continue to lead for good or ill, and as we wreck our own democratic principles, we provide exactly the wrong kind of model for other countries. No good can come from the reformation of America according to the lights of Bush, Cheney, and the Neocons. As if that wasn’t already hideously apparent.
Of course, once others have begun to glean the historic dead end to which they are being led by the forces of greed and authoritarianism, they will, eventually cease to follow. Who will lead then? Yesterday, at the International Conference for Climate Change in Bali, the answer was Papua, New Guinea. Is this what we’ve come to?
So keep up the good work, Senator Dodd. You, and all of us, have a hell of a lot more of it to do.
Regards,
J
First they came for the Arabic-looking men
and I did not speak out – because I was not an Arabic-looking man.
Then they came for the immigrant and the unbeliever
and I did not speak out – because I was not an immigrant or an unbeliever.
Then they came for the outspoken and the trade unionists
and I did not speak out – because I was not outspoken or a trade unionist.
Then they came for my neighbors
and I did not speak out – because my neighbors can take care of themselves and I did not want to cause trouble.
Then they came for me -
and by then there was no one left to speak out for me.
- Adapted from Pastor Martin Niemöller
Senator Dodd:
I appreciate your courage and resolve in moving this filibuster forward and will do what I can to support it.
Time and time again this administration has used fear to co-opt precious American freedoms. That the telecoms cooperated in this effort in “good faith” and are therefore deserving of immunity is a false argument. Were we to truly understand the extent of the lawbreaking it might mitigate the complicity of the the telecoms. The basic fact is that the administration is trying to hide its lawlessness behind legal immunity for the companies that made the lawbreaking possible. We must not give this lawless administration such cover. That any Democrat could support such a maneuver, after all the lawless acts this administration has taken, after all the fear mongering, after all the politicization of essential government functions, is beyond reprehensible. It is the act of a true coward.
Be strong Senator Dodd-we are with you.
OLMSTEAD V. UNITED STATES, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)
MR. JUSTICE BRANDEIS, dissenting. The protection guaranteed by the Amendments is much broader in scope. The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone — the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. To protect that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment. And the use, as evidence in a criminal proceeding, of facts ascertained by such intrusion must be deemed a violation of the Fifth.
Applying to the Fourth and Fifth Amendments the established rule of construction, the defendants’ objections to the evidence obtained by wire-tapping must, in my opinion, be sustained. It is, of course, immaterial where the physical connection with the telephone wires leading into the defendants’ premises was made. And it is also immaterial that the intrusion was in aid of law enforcement. Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. …
Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperilled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means — to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal — would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this Court should resolutely set its face.
Senator Dadd: As a pharmacist, my concern is that prescriptions that are faxed or phoned in from physician’s offices to pharmacies may be intercepted which could result in loss of confidential patient information.
Ask the Republicans how they will like it when a Democratic Executive has unfettered access to all of their “private” conversations as use it to pressure their compliance.
Where does this end? Have we forgotten the reasons for balance of power? Does any here think power no longer corrupts?
Question – when I phone senate offices tomorrow, is there specific language to use other than ’support Senator Dodd’s filibuster’? I don’t want to simply hear them say ‘I support what Sen. Dodd is doing’; I want to encourage them to actively participate.
Thanks.
The very first thing you should do is call Harry Reid out for not honoring your hold, but honoring Republican holds. That is beyond reprehensible. Holds are either enforced or they are not. It is that black & white and beyond shameful to only honor the oppositions hold.
Senator Dodd,
I remember coming home from school in the ’50’s, my mother listening to the radio… the McCarthy hearings. I remember air raid drills at school, crouching under the desk, fearful that enemy bombs might drop. I remember being told how in Russia there were spies on every block. And people had no freedom. No free press. They lived in fear of their government. I remember the nuns lining us up and telling us how one day we might have to stand up for what we believe, even if people would threaten to shoot us.
All of these things happened in the ’50’s. When I was in elementary school. Communism was equated with state control, fear, the state spying on everyone, the threat of countries being invaded and people being subjected to the same totalitarian methods.
And here we are in ‘07. Probably 50 years later, debating things like torture, having invaded another country without any provocation, spying on our own citizens, the press often bowing to the direction of our government, the Constitution disregarded by a president who gets his way with a Congress, sworn to uphold that very Constitution.
What happened to the country I grew up in? The country that forswore the tactics of McCarthy, the country that fought against totalitarian regimes? Why is it that the very things that frightened me as a child have come to pass, here in America, without bombs dropping or communists taking over?
Senator Dodd, we look to you as our last hope in the year 2007. We look to you to persuade your colleagues for us – to stand up for the Constitution – to honor their oath of office, to give us back the country of my childhood, where we knew we were different from totalitarian regimes and we rejected witch hunts and torture and no imprisonment without habeas corpus.
I remember when we lined up to get polio shots. To keep us from becoming paralyzed. Please do not allow the government paralysis that keeps us from our Constitutional rights being upheld. We need three independent branches of government. We need legislators who do not wave goodbye to a Constitution we want upheld and honored and carried out in every respect.
OK a little editing is in order I see.
Ask the Republicans how they will like it when a Democratic Executive has unfettered access to all of their “private” conversations and use it to pressure their compliance.
Where does this end? Have we forgotten the reasons for balance of power? Does anyone here think power no longer corrupts?
Here are some words to filibuster by. Please note I am involved in the case against AT&T so have some bias here.
Why not grant amnesty for phone companies who broke the law and allowed the executive
branch to engage in surveillance without going through the courts and getting proper
authorization from them? We’re told they were helping root out terrorists and
should be thanked, not punished. We should offer them a “get out of jail free”
card for what they did.
We must not. Not just for what they did, but the precedent it sets. This
government is built on a fundamental system of checks and balances. You read
about this in civics class but here it is writ large. One branch of government
must not engage in activities that could infringe the rights of the people without
those actions being overseen by the other branches. Never should the word of
one branch be enough.
When FISA was passed in the 70s, we had good reason to be reminded of that. President
Nixon had used his executive power to spy on people he shouldn’t have, and the
private sector cooperated. We knew that the executive might do this again, and
might attempt to bypass the courts. The courts are the normal first-line check
and balance on surveillance actions by the executive branch. They must convince
a judge, not beholden to them, that a wiretap is legal and necessary. In the rare
cases where they are in a true hurry, they can even temporarily go ahead
without that judge as long as they come in within a few days to get the
legal authorization. They can do what needs to be done to protect America and
enforce the law, but they must be overseen by the judicial branch, under rules
laid out by the legislative branch.
But, as I said, sometimes they might want to bypass the courts. Who will then be
there to provide the checks and balances? Who can say no when they go too far?
The lawyers inside the administration can’t do it, they are part of the
administration. Only one party is left who can say no — the private sector
parties like the phone companies who are asked to assist with these actions.
So congress told those phone companies they have a duty to say no to illegal
wiretaps which come without a judge’s signature. “Come back with a warrant”
we told them to say. We told them with teeth. If they don’t carry out their
duty to be a check and balance, there are strong penalties. Liabilities
to the customers whose privacy they allowed to be invaded. Phone companies
are paid by their customers, and are responsible to them. Congress made that
duty clear.
In spite of that, the executive branch came to them and ask them to spy on
Americans without warrants. In a scene perhaps similar to the one in
Star Wars, The Phantom Menace, they may have asked, “is that legal?” and perhaps the agents
doing the wiretaps said, “I will *make* it legal.”
“I will make it legal.” That’s what Congress is being asked to do. If
we provide retroactive amnesty, we do more than undo what was done to
provide checks and balances. We provide much credence to that claim of
“I will make it legal.” We show that it’s possible. We make the claim
easily believable. We make it so that the next time the executive branch
comes and asks for illegal things, they can demonstrate their power to fix
things up — a power they must never have. The next time may be about wiretaps
or it may be about something else. And we may indeed never find out about it,
as we almost didn’t find out about this. Instead of the private sector
being afraid of breaking the law, they will obey. Because congress abrogated
its duty and removed the checks and balances it hoped for.
We’re not just granting a “get out of jail free” card if we provide amnesty.
We’re providing the next “get out of jail free” card. For something we don’t
even know about. Until we reverse this, that will be the way the wind
blows.
The American Conservative tends to have an anti-neo-conservative stance…they don’t approve of what the neo-cons and Bush have done to the country-club.Goldwater GOP, i.e. trashed it.
never mind the (D) or the (R)’s, it is important not to support candidates who express neo-con talking points like the need to attack Iran.
This rules out Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and all of the GOP except the courageous Ron Paul.
howstupi are you;
Yes by all means include HR333 in full text.
1) Where is the ACLU on this the judiciary version without retroactive imunity is good to go and legally supportable. Won’t this precipitate lawsuits?
2)Dodd needs to read what CALEA does: it enables by hard ware and software at the local telecom hubs and every bit of computer generated, phone or cellphone generate data can be saved in a data base (library) available to “SECRET” intelligence organizatiions that can classify sender and recipient as to their assumed threat to that organizations purposes. If you are on someones list tough luck you are in the loop.Who has that oversight and it seems oversight is being nuetralized
2) All patents , business secrets and plans, all family trust data and personal tax data were fair game in the illegal data mining schemes to be given immunity. The list is endless. To give blanket immunuty for potential criminal acts that have civil penalties is to also remove the rights of those harmed from redress and DUE PROCESS. Not acceptable. In fact the nature of the immunity argument is enabling of crimianl activities opening up a whole new paradigm for parsing all of our liberties.
3)Where is all the data kept? How is the data secured? Who has access? We need a lot more answers before this is even considered. Once the information is taken there really is no way to be assurred it will not be passed on. Remember the computer with all the Bitish government files on social services client that was lost. ALl that data can be resold to lists. The liability and the personal damage issue is taken off of the legal table. Enabling criminals to steal from the citizens is anarchy.
Just curious – you sound like the same Mary that tells that wonderful Eleanor Roosevelt story from your college days, is this true?
Dear Senator Dodd: You are a true patriot. Please do not cave. I would like you to read:
I am an attorney but that doesn’t matter. It just means that I’ve had two semesters of Constitutional Law and two of Criminal Procedure and assorted other classes. I am, however, shocked and astonished at the pure lawlessness of the current Administration. Bucket warrants violate the 4th Amendment. Period. There is no particularized finding of probable cause. How can there be with a bucket warrant?
This is stuff that if a Democratic president did, the conservatives, the Republicans WOULD GO CRAZY. Could you imagine the coverage?
Telco immunity? This is absolutely absurd. First, we need to find out, what did they do? We have recently learned that this Administration was listening in to Americans’ calls in early of 2001. This is long before 9/11.
Second, how can you immunize someone when you don’t know what they did? No prosecutor would do this so why should Congress? We have not yet learned what was done so immunity is premature. Let them “come clean” about what they’ve done and then immunity can be considered.
Third, could it be that Bush is trying to immunize himself and those who work for him and knew this was unconstitutional? Spying on your own citizens, absent a warrant, is a felony. Congress should not immunize anyone until all the facts are disclosed.
Thank you and it’s about time for someone to stand up for the Constitution. This is not a partisan issue. The liberty of the nation is at stake. We are only as strong as the men and women who enforce or fail to enforce, or live up to, or honor their oath to the Constitution. This country has never been so close to a dictatorship.
Thank you Senator Dodd.
I wish my own Senators, especially Feinstein would grow a spine but I doubt that will happen. I’m wish more of them took the Constitution and their oaths of office to defend it as seriously as Senator Dodd.
Hope we win this one.
Good afternoon Senator Dodd,
I am just now reading the first book, The 42nd Parallel, of John Dos Pasos’ trilogy USA, and while reading through it I am finding myself reminded of the promise of America. Now today, many of our most fundamental and basic constitutional rights are under scrutiny and debate is being maintained to modify those rights, as an prescription for protecting ourselves from those who might harm us. It is said by some that we need to be realistic in the age of terrorism and adapt our rights accordingly. Yet I would say that that fear and that rejection of Constitutional mandate is misguided and inapropriate, and ultimately the very contradiction of the realistic nature of American creativity.
The constant movement of American life, uncontrollable and vibrant, is it’s promise and it’s strength, as Dos Passos seeks to imitate in his art, and while there are those who would trade our active vibrancy of expansive thought and creative innovation for an electronic fortress whose walls are wired for survelliance and whose towers are manned by robotic disembodied snitches and unconscious searching filters, there are still hundreds of millions of Americans whose adventurous spirit and unbridled sense of wonder contradicts the very spirit of the FISA. The unaccountable courts set up to facilitate this desecration of our Bill of Rights have no place in the American landscape. The sensiblity that Americans contacting and engaging other peoples around the world, sharing information and understanding differences, breaking bread and creating solutions, stands in glaring and unforgivable contrast to the xenophobic slant evident in FISA.
In the end one must ask who, or what, FISA is actually designed to protect. Is is designed to protect me? Is it designed to protect my international friends who build intellectual creative projects that are mutually beneficial and benefit others as well with me? Is it designed to protect me here at home as I seek to build just, healthy and whole communities where working people are not abused by corporations of poorly administered police forces? Who is FISA for? I reject the notion that FISA will make me safer or my life happier or more full. I reject the notion that FISA will allow me to pursue my dreams unhindered by big government overseers. And finally, I reject the notion that FISA is comaptible, by any stretching of legal code or lingusitic manipulation, with the US Constitution which is my birthright as an American citizen. FISA is designed only to bridle my ingenuity and strengthen the forces of intolerance at a time when ingenuity and international cooperation are needed more than ever in the history of our republic.
I urge you to reject this unAmerican tirade against freedom of conscience and deed. We are not a nation of snitches. We must not become a nation of frightened scaredy-cats. We have a judicial-system based on the jury-system which has weathered many a storm and which will weather the current and future ones quite well on it’s own. Please reject this insult to what America is supposed to be.
I still can’t believe that the Democratic party, which has caved to the Republican minority at every opportunity, is forcing one of its own Presidential candidates to be the first to actually filibuster a bill.
Dear Senator Dodd:
The following is the text of a letter I faxed to Senator Reed’s office the other day after learning of his false reasoning on choosing the Intelligence Committee version of the bill over the Judical Committee version:
Senator Harry Reid
Hart Senate Office Bldg
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-3542
Fax: 202-224-7327
Dear Senator Reid:
As Leader of the Senate and a Democrat, you represent me. Though I am not a resident of Nevada, I am a registered Democrat and have an interest,
as I would hope you have, in protecting the constitution against domestic enemies.
It was with dismay that I read in the news today of your decision to introduce the Intelligence Committee’s FISA bill rather than the Judiciary Committee bill, and thereby make it much easier for the Bush Administration to grant immunity to phone companies for their support of the administration’s illegal activities. As Senator Feingold wrote to you, “The Judiciary Committee FISA bill fixes many of the flaws of the surveillance law we enacted in August and the new bill approved by the Intelligence Committee. Everyone agrees that we should give our intelligence officials the tools they need to go after suspected terrorists. There’s no reason we can’t do that while still protecting the privacy of innocent Americans and ensuring adequate oversight of these broad new surveillance authorities — and without setting the dangerous precedent of granting retroactive immunity to companies that allegedly participated in an unlawful program.”
When is enough enough? You have consistently accommodated the anti-Constitutional actions of this administration. Stop this charade and start paying attention to your duty as a Democrat and as a citizen, and most of all as a Senator sworn to uphold the Constitution.
Sincerely yours,
Tony Litwinko
Glendale, CA
I also refer to some passages in the inspiring book about your father’s work after World War II as part of the prosecuting staff at Nuremberg. I am one of those patriotic Americans who is very concerned about the drift that this country has taken towards undermining the rights of Americans under the rationale that we must give up our freedom in order to be more secure, and remember the that those who give up their freedom security deserve neither. I am also very concerned that those colleagues of yours in the Senate, particularly those running with you for the Democratic nomination for President, are failing to express their support for your filibuster even though they had previously promised to do so.
Good luck in your opposition to this terrible threat to the Constitution.
Paracutec:
Thank you for the excellent explanation if our concerns. It is so well written I am sure Senator Dodd could read it withconfidence that no senator could support SIC versioan of FISA without spending a lot of political capital for that vote come next elections. You and looseheadprop give firedoglake some real backbone. So your comment gets A for awesome! Cheers.
As an American residing outside of the USA, I have resigned myself to the idea that all my communications are subject to interception by the US Government. It’s an uncomfortable feeling. It certainly does have a chilling effect on everything I say on the phone or in an e-mail- just as the Supreme Court, in many of its decisions, supposed it would. It’s simply heartbreaking to realize that even in the US, everyone has to fear that their every word will be listened to and very possibly misunderstood as causing some sort of threat. The legal wiretapping is bad enough, but to think the US Senate now wants to grant immunity to telecoms who knowingly and intentionally violated the law goes beyond heartbreaking. Words fail me. I pray that they won’t fail you, Senator Dodd, at this crucial moment in our country’s history. God bless you.
Senator Dodd, thank you so much for standing up for our beloved Constitution.
My question is this. What is it costing us to have ourselves spied upon? Couldn’t an arrangement be made so that those citizens who wish to be spied upon could send in a little extra with their taxes, and the rest of us not be charged and not be spied upon? That way, if someone does not wish to be spied upon, but needs to be spied upon for national security reasons, the FISA court would have to be used.
Is spying upon all of us a good use of taxpayer money?
Excellent, ES. Reading Hugh’s list of scandals would be wonderful. Hugh’s list again.
Sen. Dodd, thank you so much for taking up this fight for our basic freedom. It is time for genuine Democrats to make them selves heard. At some point a leader must stand up and push back the intrusion and surveillance upon our everyday life this arrogant administration has brought down upon all citizens. I am also writing to the current Democratic candidates to ask their support of your filibuster. Let me make it quite clear: there can be no amnesty for any telecommunication company involved in this illegal activity.
Cordially,
Petra Lynn Hofmann
I am angry that we even have to debate this. People take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, but the only way they can see to do it is by destroying it?! I honestly think that these people who are working to destroy the Constitution never had any intention of protecting it. Their oath’s were false from the start. Isn’t that a crime? Was that just some ceremonial crap that never really meant anything? The only “excuse” I can see for them is that they just aren’t smart enough to do their job with the tools that competent people have been doing quite well with for centuries. Nobody needs to spy on me to protect me. That’s ridiculous. They want to do it to protect themselves and their grip on power. If any of the people who fought to establish this country were around today they’d be reaching for their guns.
If George III had the powers these guys want, our founding fathers would have probably found themselves imprisoned well before the Declaration of Independence came into being. I have to think that had the people who want to subject us all to constant surveillance lived at the time of our revolution, they would have all been on the side of the King (not fighting, standing behind him). I can’t see any of them risking their positions and possessions for something they’re so quick to toss away. Their idea of The United States is nothing but possessions and property.
Thank You Senator Dodd! Please read the following to the Senate during your filibuster:
The telecommunications companies possess vast resources to respond to lawsuits. They neither need nor deserve retroactive, or even future, immunity from civil or criminal actions. The justice system of the United States if fully capable of deciding if the telecommunications companies violated laws or caused actionable civil injuries.
Dear Senator Dodd –
Aside from the oath of office, followed by the Constitution of the United States, I can recommend no finer piece to read on the floor of the United States Senate, than the article written by Robert Harris that appeared in the New York Times on September 30, 2006. This article draws disturbing parallels between the transition of Ancient Rome from a Republic to an Empire and the circumstances which confront us today. We the people must not cede the rights granted to us by the Constitution, for we risk never regaining them, just as the citizens of Rome lost their rights.
The article may be found here. Read it on the floor. Share it with everyone you meet.
With deepest gratitude and best hopes for your success.
Thank you Senator Dodd, for your sacrifice, inspiration and leadership.
I’d like to ask the Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats to remember two times in their lives:
1. As schoolchildren learning history and civil responsibility, how proud they must have been to be citizens of the US which stood for equal rights, habeus corpus, a government of laws accountable to the people, no torture, etc. How far they’ve come to abandon those principles and what future schoolchildren will think of them.
2. When they first decided to run for public office, the excitement of planning to make a difference in everyone’s lives, getting on the ground running, concern for the people instead of the special interests. When did they lose their idealism and sense of representing the people that elected them, not the companies paying them off.
I ask Senator Dodd to ask these Congresspersons what they think the giants of our founding fathers, from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to Patrick Henry and later on, Abraham Lincoln, would think of their cowardice, lack of leadership and fear — how low we’ve sunk and abandoned our core values which really was the only thing that separated us from other countries.
Good luck in your efforts! -Gary Goldberg, Bowie, MD
193 – That must be a different Mary. Sorry. Makes me wish I did have an interesting story to tell.
In April 2006 I wrote a blog post called Coming to America – The Chinese Internet model. I’d like to repost an excerpt here for Senator Dodd.
“[The monitoring equipment] can almost certainly be updated remotely, and depending on the actual placement, could also include active filtering and censorship capability. If so, then all that is lacking now for near totalitarian government control of the U.S. portion of Internet is the will to do so…You may be prevented from seeing this blog after that… We the people must check the imperious behavior of George W. Bush.”
The unconstitutional warrantless spying (not just for terrorism but now for the War on Drugs too) is simply the usurpation of those rights we deem to be self-evident, endowed by our Creator and not derived from government. This one area of illegal activity has the effect of voiding the 1st and 4th Amendments, at least. I applaud Senator Dodd’s actions in blocking retroactive immunity for those who helped our government break the law. We must be able to let the courts play their role in adjudicating the extent of government’s reach. I call on all Democratic Senators to support Chris Dodd.
I’d suggest that the Senator read, and attribute, citizen comments that are on the blogs. It will bring in other voices, and demonstrate (as the jammed phone lines and out of ink faxes will) that there are a lot of people upset about this.
What I would ask to be said in my name is this:
There is one thing the founders knew for certain–that if a government was given untrammeled abilities to use a security apparatus to spy on citizens, then those abilities would be abused. They always are. They always have been. This is not a partisan issue. Johnson and Kennedy tapped phones. And JE Hoover made a career from abusing wiretaps. What irked Nixon most of all was that he was getting nailed for normal political behaviour.
Frank Church led the commission that largely fixed this–that brought the law on electronic communication in line with the intent of the Founders. And this system had worked successfully since then. You can be sure that if the wiretaps are opened back up, that they will be abused by those in power. That’s what happens. Every time.
Please read some of Keith Olbermann’s Special Commentaries – They say it like it is. And thank you!!
Fifty years ago, when I was growing up in smalltown America, the enemy we fought was Communism. They were the ones who spied on their citizens without provocation. They were the ones who took away their rights, who imprisoned them without charge, who tortured them to get them to rat on their neighbors. They were the ones who pushed their propaganda in Pravda.
Fifty years have passed, and now I wake up to find that we have become that enemy. We are now under the thumb of the vast, all-encompassing, repugnant government we read about in “1984.” We have watched while habeus corpus has been compromised. We have watched while our government has systematically tortured people in Guantanamo, Abu Graib, and other hidden CIA torture chambers – many proven to be innocent of any wrongdoing. We have watched as our government has begun to spy on vast numbers of us, not because we have done anything wrong, but simply because they can. And we have watched us our news media has descended to the level of Pravda.
How could this possibly have happened to a country whose very Constitution is supposed to protect us from all those things? Whose forefathers fought against them to their dying breath? How can it be that the very people we have elected to protect our Constitution have systematically neutered it?
Like so many Americans, these past 7 years have brought with them ever deepening levels of depression and grief. We didn’t ask for this. We don’t agree with it. This is not what we want. And yet, in so many ways, we are powerless to stop it. I can’t even begin to express the level of my despair that this will ever be turned around.
But I do thank you, Senator Dodd, for being one of the very few to stand up and say “no more.” If we get through this as a nation, history will show that you are one of the few lights in ever-growing darkness.
If You Knew What We Know…
It’s a perfect fall-back phrase, used constantly by the President and members of the administration to gain acquiescence and passivity from the public, Congress, and the Courts without providing a substantive reason for any measure they proclaim is “absolutely vital”:
“If you knew what we know…”
If Congress saw the intelligence about WMDs, they would understand why it was “absolutely vital” to invade a country that weapons inspectors said most likely had none. If the inspectors only knew what the administration knew, they would change their minds. That being so, why not fill the inspectors in? What could possibly be gained from not proving to the inspectors how wrong they were?
If the Courts only knew all the evidence against the evil terrorists we keep in cages down in Cuba, they would understand why we can’t let them have access to the justice system that has always been perfectly capable of conducting terror trials in the past, but is now woefully inadequate – we just can’t tell you why, ’cause it’s a secret. Just trust us. Even when large numbers of those people we once assured you were “the worst of the worst” are quietly released, now inexplicably designated as “no longer enemy combatants”.
If all you common folk knew what we know, you’d understand why we have to spy on your phone calls and e-mails, library records and internet activity, watch your every move with satellites, and keep records of your travel information, hotel stays, letters to the editor, political and social affiliations, which churches you attend, products you buy, and how much money is in your checking account.
Well, dammit, I want to know what you know.
If you want to send our sons and daughters to invade a country that hasn’t attacked us, on the basis that they have WMDs and pose an imminent threat, don’t just tell me to trust you – show me. I want facts: credible testimony backed by hard evidence, proof that you have exhausted all diplomatic avenues, that you have a sound plan of attack, a plan to win the peace, and a plan to get the hell out when we’re done. You don’t have to give away all the tactical and strategic details, but you owe me more than vague talk of “mushroom clouds” and fabricated stories of “yellow-cake” and “aluminum tubes”. Don’t play on our emotions and appeal to our fears. Give us the information we need to make intelligent, reasoned decisions – and then trust us to make them.
If you need more authority to conduct surveillance, ask for it before breaking whatever law you choose only because you doubt you can get the authority you need. If you thought you couldn’t get it, you probably shouldn’t have it. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that if you were afraid to get permission from the American People, you knew what you were doing was illegal.
Because if you knew what we know, you’d know that a huge majority of American citizens despise you for the damage you have done to the country that we love more than any other. You’d know that we are appalled at the arrogance and incompetence you have displayed, and the precious honor and prestige, and lives you have squandered by your stubborn refusal to admit and correct your mistakes. You’d know that Americans place great value in our reputation as a champion of the Rule of Law and a defender of human rights – a long-held reputation which you have single-handedly destroyed in six short years.
If you knew what we know, you would realize that the American People don’t want “protection” at any price. What good is physical protection from terrorists if people are afraid of their own Government? You’d know that in America, there are no such things as “free speech zones”, and that every square-foot of this nation is a place where First-Amendment rights are protected.
You’d know that Americans don’t like giving passes to private companies who break our laws to help you spy on us – something that you set in motion long before 9/11.
You’d know, like your favorite predecessor, “Honest Abe” Lincoln knew, that public sentiment is everything, and without the Will of the People, nothing can be accomplished. Opinion polls, despite your frequent proclamations to the contrary, really do matter. Abe said so himself. If Americans wanted a leader who didn’t care what they wanted, we would elect Dick Cheney as all-powerful King and Dicktator, and transfer ownership of all public property and government programs to Halliburton, and assign all law enforcement functions to Blackwater.
If you knew what we know, you’d know that it is unforgivably shameful to demand hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for your colossal blunder of a war, and refuse comparatively miniscule funds to make sure our children can see a doctor when they get sick.
Once, you had the chance to be remembered as one of the greatest Presidents ever to lead the nation. If you knew what we know, you would understand that you are undoubtedly destined to be remembered as the worst.
Because if you knew what we know, Mr. President, you would be awfully disappointed in yourself.
JC Garrett
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers [except our own].”
“Nay, that I mean to do.”
“And silence the bloggers, the pundits, the parliamentarians, the citizens except all those loyal to the regent.”
“First, we bestow amnesty upon our own selves so that nought that we do may haunt us like Rosemary Wood’s ghost.”
“Is it not a lamentable thing that the innocent telephone call should be recorded? That played back o’er again, it should undo a man? Some say e-mail lays bare our opponents: I say ‘tis the server: for I did but send once to the thing, and I was never mine own man since.”
Parody of Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, scene ii
Thank you, Senator Dodd, for continuing to stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law. I’m appalled that it has come to this and that Sen. Reid is bringing this version of the bill to the floor. I’m also appalled that so few senators are standing with you. Kudos to Senator Feingold and Senator Kennedy. Where is everyone else? And also to Rep. Conyers, who stands with you from the House on this. No way should the Telecoms get immunity. They are every bit as cuplable as the administration is.
Sincerely,
Sharon Baseman
Huntington Woods, MI
Dear Senator Dodd,
Deepest thanks for taking seriously your oath to defend the Constitution, and the job that your constituents elected you to do.
I’m old enough to have seen the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, and to have learned from them that even in the United States it can take courage to oppose would-be tyrants.
We have some would-be tyrants right now. They are frighteningly close to becoming actual ones.
Last Friday I called both of my (Massachusetts) Senators, urging them to support your filibuster, and called Senator Reid, urging his staffer to urge his boss to read the Constitution.
I am proud that at least one of my Senators is vindicating his oath to uphold the Constitution. To the other, I just emailed the following:
Dear Senator Kerry,
Like you, I am a former prosecutor. Like you, I took an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution.
Tomorrow Senator Chris Dodd will fight to uphold the 4th Amendment to that Constitution by filibustering the blatantly unconstitutional FISA bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has unaccountably brought forward.
Senator Reid is even disregarding the hold that Senator Dodd, also a Democrat, placed on this bill. This is remarkably uncollegial of Senator Reid.
Our senior Senator from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, will as I understand it support Senator Dodd by asking at least one 20-minute question, to give Senator Dodd a break.
I ask you therefore to vindicate your own oath to uphold the Constitution by joining Senator Kennedy; by joining the filibuster and speaking as long as Senate rules permit; and by voting against cloture.
Possibly nothing in your Senate career has been as important. This includes the BCCI investigation. I myself investigated and prosecuted S & L malefactors, and read the whole of your lucid, compelling BCCI report with deep appreciation.
What we have here is intellectually simpler than BCCI. But it may be more difficult: the Bush administration may well maintain secret wiretap dossiers on most if not all members of the Senate.
If this FISA bill becomes law, though, it will grant amnesty to those who have perpetrated federal felonies on a possibly unprecedented scale.
This refers of course to the warrantless-wiretap conspiracy of whose scope we know only that it is vast; that the Bush administration sought to institute it the month after this President first took office (more than half a year before 9/11); and that it may record permanently, and searchably, practically all phone conversations and emails in the United States.
To establish this bill’s “total surveillance state” would be to abandon the Rule of Law.
In direct contravention of the 4th Amendment, the FISA bill would also allow the government to use “basket” search warrants, instead of the individualized warrants that the Constitution and the original Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act require.
I ask you therefore to do whatever it takes to support Senator Dodd’s filibuster, and to vote against cloture.
It sounds a bit corny, Senator Kerry, to say that history is calling you tomorrow. And, it is true.
Senator Dodd…we will be filibustering right behind you! You can count on us tomorrow to be backing you as you do the right thing for the American people! We’ll even do a ‘w00t w00t’ too just to show how “in the know” we are. ;-)
earlofhuntington, Niemoller’s statement is one of the most powerful influences on my life. Ranks with I Have a Dream. Thank you for the historic version, and your contemporary adaptation.
I hope Senator Dodd will use both as ongoing choruses through his filibuster. And I support Senator Dodd’s stand for democracy.
Senator Dodd, if you run out of things to say this may help:
More than two hundred years ago my forefather, Christopher Keller, volunteered and served in the army of General George Washington. He was willing to leave his home and his farm, perhaps never to return, to fight to create a country that would insure that he and his children and their children and their children’s children would live in freedom.
Free from tyranny and fear. Free to be ”secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, (and) shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
But it was not enough that he and his family would enjoy this freedom. No, he fought, like all American Patriots, for this, and many other, freedoms for all Americans.
Today we live in a country my many times Great-Grandfather never could have imagined, a vast country that stretches the length and breadth of a continent. Using a technology that would have been magic to him, it is possible for me to pick up a telephone in California and speak to my father in Massachusetts as easily and as privately as if we were in the same room. I can send an email to my best friend in New York as securely as if it were a paper letter delivered by the US Postal Service. The freedom that he fought for is his personal gift, down through the centuries, to me, to you, to all Americans.
Today, sadly, we must fight again to insure that this freedom is not striped away from us. I ask all Senators to think how they may have acted had they been a Senator in the early days of our country. Would you have stood and voted to insure that Americans may be free from the tyranny and fear of the warrant-less violation of their private communication? Would you, today, grant immunity to Corporations that willingly, eagerly, break the law and engage in this violation?
I ask that all Senators stand with Senator Dodd, and with all American Patriots past, present and future to insure that our hard won freedom not be stripped from us today.
Dear Senator Dodd,
I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but as a child growing up I was always taught that the United States was a country of laws,
and that these laws given by our founders, set our great country head and shoulders against all others.
I and I have no doubt millions of others fear for our birthright. What we have all witnessed over the last seven years was the gutting of the very heart of our country and yet I am dumbfounded as to why our elected leaders on both sides of the political spectrum would look the other way, rather than doing what is right.
There is a cancer in our country Senator Dodd and whatever its source, it requires the surgical precision that only a true patriot could hope to administer. Please Senator Dodd, save our country and our way of life. The world will be watching and so will we the American people. I will repeat the words of a great man as they hold true today with just as much passion as they did when they were first spoken.
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty”….Thomas Jefferson
Sen. Dodd should, of course, read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He should also read our preferred FISA statute and Reid’s perversion of it – it may be the first time most of our Senators read those four documents.
Dear Senator Dodd,
I would be honoured if the following were to be spoken in the defense of all that the Western tradition holds dear.
Thank you Senator Dodd for refusing to make the 4th ammendment meaningless.
The telecommunication industry knew it was illegal to agree to warrantless
surveillance.
Both of my senators have been notified with my request to vote “NO” on cloture.
For Senator Dodd,
We have rights to privacy as set forth in the Constitution (TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 83 > § 1703) and in the Fourth Amendment.
Further, there are the FISA provisions against wiretapping with grave penalties. The people via Congress manifestly do not wish to be tapped, and wish those who counter the law to be punished. We are a government by the people, and for the people.
I was a witness in a CoIntelPro case. In that case, data was collected illegally, and the data was then massaged to make the government’s stand appear stronger. From that experience I learned that the collection, retention, interpretation, destruction, and archiving of data should always be done under warrants, to preserve the people’s privacy, and to make sure that the data is handled correctly and with the presumption of innocence.
Some current legal savants believe that we have no expectation of privacy beyond the four walls of our houses. I would argue the exact opposite, looking at the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment. If the President can not open one’s mail without a warrant, even though one has lost control of that piece of paper to that of the Postal Service, then the President has no right to open any communications without a warrant.
With the disappearance of the telephone party lines (remember when people shared lines, and sometimes had operators to give assistance with a call?) one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in one’s communications. The government, according to the Constitution, must not be in the business of illegally spying without a warrant upon all Americans. The People have already spoken about whether they want the spying privatized: the telcoms are to be fined $5000 for each and every illegal wiretap. That is the law.
Since the Executive Branch has failed, no, flouts enforcing this law, Congress must not only enforce the law, but also make it clear to both the Executive Branch and to the telcoms that warrantless spying is not now and has never been condoned by Congress or by the American people. There must be no immunity for the telcoms for spying without warrants.
It is said that Sen. Dodd keeps a copy of the Constitution in his pocket. He should simply read it and the Bill of Rights over and over and over…
Chris Dodd is my Senator. When I respond to polls, and am asked what issue I believe is most important to America in this Presidential Election, I do not respond “Iraq War” “Economy” “Global Warming” “Immigration” “Education” or “Social Security”… I respond OTHER. And then I fill in the blank with “Restoring our Constitutional Democracy”. Senator Dodd is singularly prepared to lead our Federal Government out of the present dark ages and back to the principles on which it was founded, back to the Bill of Rights, back to the Consitution, back to the Rule of Law, back to the Balance of Power and Separation of Powers. By filibustering on the FISA issue, when clearly his time could be spent elsewhere, Senator Dodd demonstrates that the laws and rights with which we move forward as a nation are more important to him that personal aspirations. I applaud and support my Senator’s stand.
Dear Senator Dodd,
I hope that you will take the opportunity during his filibuster to give the Senate and the American people a line by line reading of the U.S. Constitution. All too many people, especially those holding public office today, either have never read our founding document or deliberately choose to ignore it.
The Bush-Cheney administration clearly holds the view that the Constitution is “just a piece of paper” which they can ignore with impunity. It is the duty of Congress to enforce our Constitution, not to aid and abet the Bush-Cheney administration’s attempts to demolish it.
By seeking immunity for the telcom companies participation in illegal spying on millions of American citizens and residents, the administration intends to prevent our courts from inquiring into the government’s own illegalities. This bill is, in effect, itself a criminal act — that of obstruction of justice. Court cases are now pending which address the telecom’s involvement in illegal spying. This bill seeks to obstruct those judicial proceedings. For this reason alone, telecom immunity should be rejected.
The Bush-Cheney administration is seeking to enlist the U.S. Congress to aid it in cloaking governmental illegality, to join in a conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Recently, it has come to light that the government has destroyed the torture tapes while under orders from several courts and congressional committees to preserve this evidence. Many in Congress have reacted with shock and outrage to this destruction of evidence, calling for hearings into who destoryed it and who approved the destruction.
It is pure hypocrisy to express shock and dismay over the destruction of these tapes while voting to destroy the key process for exposing the government’s unconstitutional and illegal surveillance methods: law suits against the telecom companies who were co-conspirators with the Bush-Cheney government in violating our laws.
The Bush-Cheney administration is intent on subverting the U.S. Constitution, this telecom immunity provision is just one more aspect of that subversion.
Please remind the Senate that, on paper at least, we have a tri-partite form of government, and neither the executive nor the Congress should undermine the capacity of the judiciary to carry out its Constitutional functions.
Thank you for all you are doing to defend our Constitution, let us hope that a sufficient number of other Senators will have the courage to join you.
Senator Dodd,
Thanks for having the guts to stand up for what is right instead of caving (as so many of your colleagues and Senate leadership have done)in to those who would enslave us by constantly spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
History will remember kindly those who go out on a limb and who stand up against those in power and say “Enough”. History will judge harshly those who took the easy path and simply acquiesed.
Best of Luck to you tomorrow and Godspeed!
Senator Dodd,
Thank You for standing up for America and the Constitution. It may be a great reminder to all others in the Senate as to why they are there, and what it is they were elected to do.
As Americans, we have endured much over the past few years. The Administration has trampled on our rights and freedoms, and Congress has allowed them to do so.
This would be a wonderful time for you to read the Constitution to all those present and explain what it means, to remind them of those things they should be doing to protect it and us.
Best of luck to you in your efforts to preserve what little is left of this great country.
I think it is traditional in filibustering to read famous words from our political history. I like the Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address:
Would it be considered crass to read “My Pet Goat” on the Senate floor tomorrow?
Anyway, my hats off to you Mr Senator. Its nice to have someone actually standing up for truth, justice and the American way.
Suggestion: start by reading the Constitution, so that everyone (all maybe a dozen of them) present knows what it says about search warrants being required – hint: not an option for ‘when you think you might need them’. Then read Hugh’s List of Scandals, handing off if necessary.
Go, Senator Dodd! (I wish mine had as good an understanding of what their job is; one is the awfully bad DiFi, which is why I haven’t tried writing her.)
Thank you, Senator Dodd, We need more people like you in government. Please read the Patriot Act. It was read by few of those who voted for it, and now would be a good time to acquaint everyone with that.
This was a letter that I sent to Mr. Reid over this whole fiasco. Since it was an email due to the brevity of our warning, I’m sure it will never be read, but perhaps you could express my sentiments on the floor, Mr. Dodd?
Senator Reid,
Who are you working for? Certainly not the Democratic party, since you do everything to lick the feet of the Administration, by ignoring Dodd’s hold on the Telecommunications bill while honoring every Republican hold thus far. Not to mention the fact that you are introducing a version of the bill onto the floor that is very unpopular with your party, in favor of Dick Cheney’s (Mr. single digit) version. And certainly not the American people, as that version of the bill practically insures that our phone companies will get away with getting paid to spy on us, all against the best legal advice any competent lawyer. But, then again, look at what happened to Quest’s CEO when he refused to break the law. Are you afraid of something similar happening to you if you don’t break the law and your oath of office for this trash?
Why are you behaving this way? I used to be a Republican before these fools starting running roughshod over everything that it means to be an American, did you switch allegiances because you like such behavior? Or do they have some dirt on you that is keeping you from acting in the interest of your party and to the clear desires of the American people? Read the polls, at least politicians used to be trusted to at least do that! And for God’s sake, Mr. Reid, grow yourself a spine and do something useful to actually uphold your oath of office. If you can’t do that, then please step aside so that a Democrat can take your position, and go cry in your beer down at the Capitol Grill with Lieberman and all the other two faced double-agents in your fractured, pitifully weak ‘party.’
A concerned citizen,
_____
Senator Dodd,
Thanks you for reminding the people of the United states of America that we are a country of laws that apply to ALL people. If you run out of stuff to read the 911 Report should give folks something to think about, especially the recommendations!
Senator Dodd,
All I have thought about since I read about your fillibuster is “all that it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” You are giving voice for so many of us. Thank you for your commitment and courage. Thank you for doing something.
How about Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address?
Good evening, my fellow Americans.
First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunities they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening.
Three days from now, after half century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor. This evening, I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other — Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation. My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and finally to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years. In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the nation good, rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling — on my part — of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts, America is today the strongest, the most influential, and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches, and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
Throughout America’s adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace, to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity, and integrity among peoples and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension, or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insiduous [insidious] in method. Unhappily, the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research — these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress. Lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration. The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of threat and stress.
But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. Of these, I mention two only.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military organization today bears little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peacetime, or, indeed, by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States cooperations — corporations.
Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
During the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many fast frustrations — past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of disarmament — of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war, as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years, I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.
So, in this, my last good night to you as your President, I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and in peace. I trust in that — in that — in that service you find some things worthy. As for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.
You and I, my fellow citizens, need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nations’ great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America’s prayerful and continuing aspiration: We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its few spiritual blessings. Those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibility; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; and that the sources — scourges of poverty, disease, and ignorance will be made [to] disappear from the earth; and that in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it.
Thank you, and good night.
This would be perfect….http://sfy.ru/sfy.html?script=mr_smith_goes_to_washington_1939
Senator Dodd you have our complete support and believe me, we will be watching! By “we” I refer to me and my group of local friends, but also many family members. We’ve all been waiting since January of 2006 for a congressperson or persons to take this kind of stand, to actually REPRESENT us.
Thank you for speaking for us, and know that you are backed by legion.
God be with you Sir. And more personally, I thank you for letting me see a glimpse of the country wherein I was raised. I sorely miss my home, The United States of America, where I was born and raised and though I still reside in my homestate of Colorado. Your actions here are like an old but cherished snapshot of my entire childhood and 30years of adulthood.
siri@legitgov.org
http://www.legitgov.org
Wouldn’t it be fantastic if Senator Dodd read some of the comments here on this thread (in addition to the inaugural speeches & farewell speeches), you know, give a voice to the American people on the floor of the Senate? I think so.
Senator Dodd:
Read and explain the Oath of Office. Tell the Senate that it is their sacred duty, having once taken that oath, to put the Constitution above every other duty they have. Tell them it comes before the president. Before the special interests. Before anything else. It is a sacred oath that they took. It is an oath to uphold a sacred contract with We the People – called the Constitution. And that you are now going to read the Constitution to which they owe this sacred duty… based on their Oath of Office.
You know, Bush has been known to rant about ”human-animal hybrids” — usually just before he vetoes another stemcell research bill.
But, once again, Bush has everyone terrified of phantoms, and oblivious to the real dangers: Governmentelecom hybirds. Corporate-governmental domestic spying forces, answerable to no one.
This monstrous mongrel is an abomination before Thomas Paine. And we need to strangle it in its crib.
Dear Senator Dodd,
Thank you to making this heroic effort, and for speaking for us, the majority of America voters.
Time and time again, so many of our Senators and Representatives have failed us, by turning blind eye and deaf ear to the wishes and will of their constituents. Thank you for speaking for the will of the people.
Below are quotes from a survey done in October of this year, specifically addressing the issue of amnesty of the telecom industry.
Thank you,
One of the majority.
——————————–
National FISA Poll by the Mellman Group; Voters Vigorously Oppose Warrantless Wiretaps, Blanket Warrants and Telecom Amnesty
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/g…..71016.html
Interviews were conducted by telephone October 11 to October 14, 2007.
A LARGE MAJORITY OPPOSE AMNESTY FOR THE TELECOM INDUSTRY
Do you think Congress should give the phone companies amnesty from legal action against the companies?
Or
Should citizens who believe their rights have been violated be free to take legal action against those phone companies and let the courts decide the outcome?
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of voters reject amnesty for phone companies that may have violated the law by selling customers’ private information to the government, preferring to let courts decide the outcome. Again intensity favors opponents of amnesty, with 48% “strongly” opposed. Fewer than 1-in-3 (31%) support amnesty for the phone companies, with just 1-in-5 (22%) strongly supporting amnesty.
Opposition to amnesty is also widespread, cutting across ideology and geography. Majorities of liberals, moderates, and conservatives agree that courts should decide the outcomes of these legal actions (liberals:67% let courts decide, 28% give amnesty; moderates: 59% let courts decide, 28% give amnesty; conservatives: 52% let courts decide, 37% give amnesty). Large majorities in every part of the country also reject amnesty: 60% in the West (29% give amnesty), 61% in the Northeast (32% give amnesty), 59% in the Midwest (33% give amnesty), and 57% in the South (30% give amnesty).
Seventy percent (70%) of Democrats and 61% of independents say let the courts decide. Republicans are evenly split (45% give amnesty, 44% let the courts decide) with equal intensity on both sides of the divide.
———————
I would love it if Senator Dodd read some of Keith Olbermann’s Special Comments tomorrow on the Senate floor! Now that would be wonderful. ;-)
We have to draw the line right here and refuse to set a precedent that Congress can enact an ex post facto law to relieve telecoms of their responsibility for breaking the law. Ex post facto laws prohibited by the constitution usually refer to criminalizing an act after the fact, but I see no reason why it could not refer to relieving someone of responsibility for their already illegal act. Ex post facto really only means “from a thing done afterward.”
Thank you, Senator Dodd, for displaying some leadership and decency at a time when it seems both are not just lacking, but actually vanished.
I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that I simply don’t recognize my country anymore. After 9/11, when the United States so badly needed to remember and display its essential greatness, we have watched this country display itself at its absolute worst. That we can sit here today and watch a bipartisan effort to forgive and forget massive lawbreaking on the part of the telecom industry is heartbreaking. It makes two facts painfully evident: that the majority of our politicians and lawmakers see no problem in instituting and supporting a tryrannical national security state and shredding the protections built into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; and that corporate interests trump, in every case, the needs, rights and interests of American citizens. Why, after this astonishing act of hubris on the part of the administration, their bipartisan allies in Congress, the telecoms and the media that either ignore the story or shill for the telecoms, anyone would expect any American citizen to ever again believe that there is an actual “rule of law” in this country is beyond me.
There is a frightening, science-fiction, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” feel to our current political situation. Ideas like torture and blanket amnesty for lawbreaking are treated as if there was nothing remarkable about them in the United States. But there is something very remarkable about them, and I thank you again , Senator Dodd, and all who support you. You are a true patriot. How many of us are left?
Sen. Dodd:
Thanks and best of luck.
I think Gustav Emil “Martin” Niemöller’s poem First They Came would be excellent material for a filibuster. Opponents may claim that you are filibustering for terrorists and drug dealers, which is of course a ridiculous argument. But Niemoller’s poem is an excellent refutation of that view:
First They Came
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
Niemoller was a Lutheran pastor and anti-Nazi theologian who was improsioined in Dachau from 1937 to 1945. For more background, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Niem%C3%B6ller
Other excellent ideas would be Jefferson’s statement that “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism,” and Franklin’s bromide that “those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.”
Finally, I would recommend that your staff get a copy of Geoffrey Stone’s book Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from The Sedition Act of 1798 to The War on Terrorism. Quite a bit of good material in there.
Again, best of luck.
Mike C. Miller
Marshall, TX
Reminding the Senators of the oath they swore on entering office sounds good.
I have this thought that the more people who have taken an oath, the stronger it becomes, and the more sure (if not quicker) the consequences for those who break it.
The oaths prescribed by and in the Constitution ought to be fairly powerful by now. It would be well if members remembered that.
Senator Dodd,
Thank you for actually showing genuine leadership while all the other Presidential candidates merely talk about it. My hope is that you can convince other Democrats (and possibly even a few reasonable Republicans) that on this (and many other issues) that what is right, what is popular, and what is in their best intrests are all aligned. It *should* go without saying that telecom amnesty is an affront to the rule of law itself, and hence opposing it is right. And on issues ranging from health care to Iraq to protecting civil liberties, no matter what the Borderist pundits think, the reality is that substantial majorities of Americans (not just the “netroots” or “lefty fringe”) agree with the progressive position. And finally, show them how contributions to your campaign surged (and deservedly so!) after you announced your principled opposition to immunity.
As a progressive Democrat and proud American, it is so frustrating to observe the behaviors of Congressional Democrats who continue to enable this Administration. Please, please, keep up your efforts as a positive example of leadership and try to make them understand!
The administration has always had a responsibilty to either uphold the law or push for a change in the law. To have them defy the law and then push for a change only after they have been in violation for years puts the entire notion of lawfullness at risk. If they can simply make it up as they go, then what can they NOT do?
Not entirely on point, but partially so. A good long read, however.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa…..erDownload
Read George Orwell’s 1984 into the record!
Hooray and Hallelujah! Finally the defenses are being manned. Maybe the continual erosion of accountability and competency in government shall yet be stemmed.
As I understand it, the issue pared to the core is whether companies should be liable for doing something illegal, or whether they should be protected from accountability due to having broken the law on instructions from someone else who then shared the proceeds of the illegal act. Normally this is easy and both are found guilty. The complicating factor here seems to be that government has taken on the role of Dicken’s Fagin. So that then leads to the question of how the limits of such a policy, once approved, would be defined.
For instance, if I were to run a locksmith business and was instructed to steal money from the safes of my customers at night so that I could turn it in to the government to help with the budget deficit, would that be okay?
About the only real flaw with that analogy is that it is merely dealing with money and the issue at hand regards things much more precious like Freedom, Justice, and Accountability.
So thank you, Sen. Dodd for taking a stand. I only hope you do not have to stand alone or man the defenses of liberty with scant allies.
NOW it is time to see who has the courage to stand and be counted alongside Sen. Dodd. This is St. Crispin’s day for the Democrats. How many will take the field?
“I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that I simply don’t recognize my country anymore.”
No, you are by no means alone! If someone had asked me eight years ago to name the country whose legislature would be voting to grant immunity to companies for lawbreaking, when they didn’t know what the companies had done that was illegal and when the executive pressing for the immunity told them they didn’t even have the RIGHT to know what illegalities they were providing immunity for, I would have looked around for a country ruled by someone who was both a despot and a madman, with a window-dressing faux legislature without an ounce of real power – but never in a million years would I have guessed that nation would be the United States of America!
Dear Senaor Dodd,
Thank you for what you have done, by imposing a hold on this legislation; and what you are about to do, with your fillibuster. Please stay the course and do not allow weak spined members of your own caucus to undermine your resolve.
The best way to lead, is by personal example. You are doing that now. History will vindicate your actions. You are going to have an effect far beyond stopping a single, though odious, bill.
Young people who have no memeory of life before the present climate of “be afraid, be very afraid” will learn the true meaning of the “power of one.”
Take a firm hold of that power, maintain your resolve, and if you find yourself at a loss for something to day, take a deep breath and sing out loud, strong and clear:
No Retroactive Immunity
No Prospective ImmunityNo Basket Warrants
There is NO action which our Execcutive Branch can take, which should be beyond all review and accountability.
May Divine Providence grace you endeavor with all sucess. I will be pulling for you.
Respectfully submitted.
Looseheadprop
Thank you, Senator Dodd, for what I sadly have to call courage at this strange time in American history.
And I too like the idea of reading 1984 into the record.
There are several parts you could emphasize, and draw some analogies.
Eat your Wheaties. There are millions of us behind you.
Dear Members of Congress:
You all took an oath. Please do the job you swore to do. Please defend the Constitution of the United States. Please support Senator Dodd in his filibuster of this bill.
There are few things as suspect and as corrupt as providing retroactive immunity to rich and powerful entities that break the law. Please do not enable this administration to further invade the privacy of millions of citizens in the name of this undeclared war on terror. It wasn’t ok before, it’s still not ok now. Please don’t be just a rubber stamp. You are an equal branch of this government – please start acting like it.
Senator Dodd,
Thank you for standing up for the common man and the ideals of the founders of this great nation. We are faced with serious threats to those ideals, not from without, but from within. It seems that many in the country and in Congress have either forgotten or forsaken those ideals. May I suggest you read to them the following as a refresher course in what this country is about and what happens when those ideals are thrown asunder in pursuit of power and/or wealth.
1. “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine
2. The Declaration of Independence
3. The Constitution
4. “The Federalist Papers”
5. The Gettysburg Address
6. The Farewell Address of President Dwight D Eisenhower in its original
form, i.e., includes the phrase “military, industrial, and congressional complex.”
7. The first 100 pages of William L Shirer’s “Rise and Fall of the Third
Reich”
Again, thank you for having the courage to stand upon principle rather than dogma.
Peace
Richard De Berry
Decorated Viet Nam combat veteran 1963-64, 1967-70
Veterans For Peace
St Pete For Peace
I applaud your courage, Senator, in standing firm when others will not hold the Executive branch responsible for its continuing and outrageous violations of the Constitution, in this particular case the Fourth Amendment. I am ashamed of both my U.S. Senators for rubber-stamping this Administration. You are a beacon in our long, dark night.
I hope I am in time senator to contribute, it is an honor to stand on the same side as you on this issue
retro active immunity gives these corporations the right to keep property they have stolen from me.
the MAIN reason we need privacy is NOT to hide information we are most embarrassed, we need privacy to hide information WE ARE MOST PROUD
I need to protect my business contacts, my sources, I need to protect what I have paid for product, what I am willing to pay, what I will bid, what others have bid for my goods
I need to protect my manuscripts, if I am developing a carburetor that will get 150 miles to the gallon, I want to be able to market that for full value and I DON’T want to compete with people who have STOLEN my information.
these corporations have stolen information and they have allowed officials to steal information
I NEED TO BE COMPENSATED for the the information that has been taken from me
IF a company has acted in good faith, in the interest of national security, then they don’t need immunity
and why on earth would they need “immunity” if they haven’t stolen from us?
I don’t want depraved “officials” making believe they can gather my property and I don’t want private corporations gathering my property with impunity
we MUST protect our privacy so we can protect our property
I ALSO don’t want depraved individuals use the cover of government to spy on my wife, I don’t want them using the cover of government to listen in on my daughters private conversations or looking up her dress
and I DON’T want depraved individuals using the cover of government to see ANYTHING that’s the private information of my son, my daughter, my wife, myself.
RETROACTIVE IMMUNITY GIVES CORPORATIONS LICENSE TO KEEP MY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
and I want to MAKE SURE they did NOT steal from me, and IF THEY DID THEY NEED TO BE BROUGHT TO THE BAR OF JUSTICE
I am astonished at the power of the words I am reading here. This is a high water mark for Firedoglake, and I’ve been here since well before the Lamont campaign.
I’ve just gone to Sen. Dodd’s website to contribute to his presidential campaign. In addition to these powerful ideas, he can use our dollars to get his message out.
Nothing can bring more attention to Senator Dodd’s actions than a conspicuous bump in his campaign fund. I’m sorry it’s that way, but if you believe a commitment like Senator Dodd’s counts, make your commitment count.
If you can’t afford even ten bucks to raise the attention this issue deserves, tell us why not. I’m unemployed and just sent twenty.
https://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1318/t/120/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=1476
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
That says it all. This isn’t about protecting America, it’s about protecting corporate profits.
Defend the Constitution! Vote!
I, too, am very impressed. I’m very much a newby here, although I’ve hung out for a long time on Glenn Greenwald’s blog.
What strikes me is that this could well represent a new and very important step for the blogosphere. Think of the symbolism in the very act of Senator Dodd’s asking the folks here to provide comments that could possibly find their way into his filibuster. I think that this would be an absolutely unprecedented act and would represent a whole new level of citizen input into our government. Postings from bloggers have made their way into Congressional debate before, but I am unaware of solicitation of comments from individual contributors to blog comment sections for possible inclusion in comments made on the floor.
I think that this is a symbolic event that Firedoglake and the progressive blogospere in general should wear as a badge of honor.
Especially with what was revealed in the NYT today, this is the most important fight since Alito. We must know what happened. If immunity is granted, we never will.
CEO’s will obey the law precisely to the extent they believe they will be punished for doing otherwise. The US Government is creating (with this, and the MCA, and Blackwater, and Haliburton, and the widespread IG malfeasance, etc) a culture in which CEO’s are going to conclude that they will be excused for illegal activities on behalf of the president. And as any president has a certain amount of power to reward friendlies, CEO’s will conclude that “shareholder interest” requires them to assist the president in any venture he asks.
Such a culture turns private companies into the president’s agents. As bad as corporate America may be, it is not yet a nation of Black
shirtswaters. But this kind of legislation goes a long way towards closing the gap.I just want to thank my fellow Americans who have contributed to this thread. I am nearly in tears at the outpouring of righteous anger and brilliant words in defense of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I simply do not have words to convey my heartfelt gratitude and sense of solidarity. May this be the start of a renewal we so desperately need and not another shot in the dark leading nowhere.
Dear Senator Dodd,
Thank you so much for standing up for our foundational principles. You are a man of integrity and wisdom; I support you whole-heartedly in your quest to become President. I hope you run for Senate majority leader in 2008 should your quest for the Presidency not succeed.
Here are some comments I would like for you to read into the record:
I, as a citizen of this Republic, apparently take my oath to the Constitution more seriously than any of you that are considering voting for this bill in its current configuration. Senators Reid, Feinstein, and Schumer, you three, particularly, I hold in utter contempt. You should resign your seats in shame; you would help destroy the idea of America and the 4th Amendment to help those that knew they were breaking the law.
Not only will you knowingly be passing legislation that spits on the 4th Amendment, but you will unconstitutionally be acting as judge and jury and spitting upon the doctrine of separation of powers, thereby weakening our judiciary and our republic. You will make it clear that those that break the law need only pay the proper tribute to have their misdeeds washed away — you will be inviting the Pharisees into our constitutional temple. Justice, accountability, fairness, equality — those principles will cease to exist for the connected and the powerful; they will have their own pliable standards, and our liberties will be much smaller as a result.
I condemn you in the strongest possible terms. You are moral cowards. With this vote, you reduce our liberties, decrease our security by making the executive more unbound, and you irrevocably and forever weaken our constitutional order by knowingly enacting unconstitutional legislation. I promise that I will actively work and organize to see that any Senator or Representative that votes for this legislation that indemnifies this clearly illegal conduct that infringes upon our 4th Amendment liberties is defeated at the polls, until all of you that do so are defeated. No matter how long it takes, we, the people, will be rid of you cowards, so help me God.
Thanks and praise to Senator Chris Dodd for speaking for me.
Sincerely,
Ron Lafond,
Alexandria, VA
Logging on late so I haven’t had time to read everything above and sorry if it’s repetitious but here’s a question I’d love Sen. Dodd to pose to his colleagues:
“Just exactly what part of swearing to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States do you not understand?!! Have you forgotten that this is the job YOU — WE ALL — were elected to do! Wake up!”
“Nothing can bring more attention to Senator Dodd’s actions than a conspicuous bump in his campaign fund. “
Just what I was thinking. I gave $25. The media is addicted to reporting on Process rather than Policy, so let’s give them the process story – “Chris Dodd stood up to the illegal excesses of the Bush administration and overnight his campaign raised X dollars.” Maybe that would encourage the rest of the Democrats in Congress to at least look to their careers even if they don’t care about our freedoms.
I grew up in the aftermath of World War II when we could be proud that our country believed in the rule of law protecting freedom. Senator Dodd’s father made the case in Nuremburg that “I was just following orders” is not a legitimate defense for wrongdoing. I hear the supporters of telecom immunity saying that some telecoms were under the illusion that they were helping a lawbreaking government, so the law shouldn’t apply. That’s a dangerous path to start down.
So much to say about this. But I’ll stick to the one simple point – no immunity for telecoms.
Dear Senator Dodd,
Thank you so much for providing the citizens of our country an opportunity to be heard on the matter of the FISA bill, warrantless wiretaps, and the run-around-the-law that has been used to spy on citizens willy-nilly in the name of national security.
We are out here begging for an end to retroactive immunity for the telecoms. Some of these companies recognized the treachery involved and refused to give the government access without warrants. Good for them.
And good for you for asking for a hold on this terrible bill until the issue of the law-breaking has been resolved to the benefit of the citizens.
Our Constitution should stand for something. Thank you for standing for us against all odds. No retroactive immunity, no warrantless wiretaps, and no basket warrants.
Sincerely,
B. Grothus
There has never been a more urgent need to preserve fundamental privacy protections and our system of checks and balances than we face today, as illegal government spying, provisions of the Patriot Act, and government-sponsored torture programs transcend the bounds of law and our most treasured values in the name of national security.
What this bill should do is
• Provide no amnesty for breaking the law: Remove the provision giving the Attorney General the sole discretion to provide retroactive and prospective immunity to any telecommunication or other companies that spy on their customers. Consumers need the right to bring suit in either state or federal court to hold the telecoms accountable for illegally handing our information over to the government and our states’ utility commission need to be able to investigate or file suits that seek to stop the companies from spying on us in the future.
• Restore court review of orders for surveillance when not all participants in the conversation are foreign as a check on governmental access to our information.
• Require surveillance orders to specify who is going to be listened to or what facilities the government is going to tap into, in order to prevent authorizing dragnets that can sweep up Americans’ communications just as long as a specific, known US person isn’t the “target.”
• Place restrictions on how and how long the government may keep, use and disseminate any US person’s information collected under this new warrantless dragnet. The data should be destroyed after it is used only for its intended purpose and datamining should be forbidden.
• The law should sunset on December 31, 2009, requiring a complete review under the next US government, hopefully one which will be more committed to upholding the Constitution than the current one.
JoyceLH
You nailed it.
Given two choices for a network t.v. news story, which would they pick?
“Chris Dodd stood up to the illegal excesses of the Bush administration…”
or
“…overnight his campaign raised X dollars.”
No way Harry Reid wants this on the nightly news.
Donate, people!
https://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1318/t/120/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=1476
Are there any limits on what gets monitored if one party is on foreign soil? So any and all international business transactions will be monitored by the government? Does this contravene any international trade deals? Does it void any contracts that the government might be party to? How have foreign governments reacted to this proposed legislation?
Does the citizenry have recourse if any information collected under this proposed legislation is divulged inappropriately?
The questions should be his response to each document in the book on Abraham Lincoln. The title is “The Words of Abraham Lincoln” Edited by Martin Lubin.
Each has a very important message and each is from our greatest President.
All of these letters are related to the current events of today.
Senator Dodd, I congratulate you. This is the first time in seven years a Democrat has exhibited conviction. It is not enough to vote against something that you don’t believe in, one has to do everything in one’s power to stop it. Good luck.
And understand this – if Clinton, Obama and Biden are campaigning in Iowa tomorrow rather than supporting their colleague on the Senate floor, this is what they’re saying to every citizen – “MY ambitions are more important than YOUR rights.”
Thank you for taking a stand – and then sticking to it. Your colleagues need to take a hint from you and show the same courage. It’s all about accountability, isn’t it? Corporations need to accept their accountability in this debacle. If they had stood up to this administration in the first place, we wouldn’t be having this problem right now. Once you are successful in this endeavor, it is only a matter of time before we can start holding the Executive Branch accountable for all their misdeeds and wrongdoings and lies.
Keep up the excellent work you are doing and hang in there Senator Dodd. I’m sure you will pass this test. You’re the one making the most sense at the moment. Our other “leaders” have failed us. We’re all counting on you!
Thank you, Senator Dodd. The idea of passing a law that retroactively declares possible criminal behavior to be beyond the reach of the law is an infuriating reminder of just how far afield this administration has driven our country. It is time to become again a nation of laws, of responsibility, of consequences. Your willingness to take this courageous stand is a good first step. May God bless you and your endeavor.
Roberta Taussig
Senator Dodd’s fillibuster makes me proud to be a resident of Connecticut. I’m beginning to see that the Senator shares my values and my concerns in a way that few other politicians do these days. I was shocked to learn that the Democratic leader in the Senate had chosen to stand for secrecy and cronyism when he had an opportunity to stand for the rule of law and the individual protections that make America great. I’ve long been a dedicated member of the Democratic party. I only hope that Senator Dodd’s colleagues will experience a change of heart and support him in this fillibuster.
Sincerely,
Linda Cuckovich
I’ve added an evening dispatch at my Prairie Sun Rising blog for your effort, Jane. And Kos has your campaign front-paged. The support for Senator Dodd and the restoration of our civil liberties is surging.
Senator Dodd, Please read the lyrics to Bob Seger’s song “No More”
Bob Seger- No More
Are you sorry when the lights begin to fade
Are you sorry for all the promises you made
For the burden of the ones who had to fall
When you didn’t read the writing on the wall
It was 30 years ago when I was young
And the jungle not the desert heard the guns
Someone said they had a secret plan
And the rest of us were told to understand
Well I don’t want this
No I don’t want this
I have had enough – no more
Tomorrow is the price for yesterday
A million waves won’t wash the truth away
Someday you’ll be ordered to explain
No one gets to walk between the rain
And I don’t want this
No I don’t want this
I have had enough – no more
No I don’t want this
No I don’t want this
I have had enough – no more
No more
Sincerely,
Jack44
Did we really win the Cold War?
Say it aloud: My country believes in torture. My president can detain any person in the world for life without charge or trial. We believe in secret prisons that hide our actions from the world. We are accountable to nobody.
The President has the right to spy on American citizens, the Constitution be dammed. As The President said… “It’s nothing but a goddamned piece of paper.”
Does that make your chest swell with pride?
Are these the values that our forefathers and our own flesh and blood fought to protect?
If these are our values, it begs the question: “Did we really win the Cold War?”
I’ve never been prouder that Chris Dodd is my Senator. Thank you, Senator Dodd, for representing the people of the USA and our Constitution against this criminal administration.
Hi all, first time poster and longtime reader. Here is, in case it’s of use to Senator Dodd, a letter I just emailed to Chuck Schumer, my senator. I also sent a version to Hillary Clinton but this one is longer and might be of more use for a filibustering hero who needs something to say that’s on topic. Okay here it is:
Dear Senator Schumer,
I last wrote you about the Mukasey nomination and though I disagree with your vote, I appreciated receiving your explanation.
I hope you will see fit to agree with me about the upcoming FISA update which, as Harry Reid plans to bring it to the floor, immunizes lawbreaking telecom companies from lawsuits. As customer of both AT&T and Verizon during the times where it seems those companies illegally shared private user data with the NSA, I feel I have the right to legal recourse in order to force companies to abide by privacy laws that were in effect for more than a decade.
Far too often this issue of immunity has been argued over in terms of how companies can help the government get information. That is the wrong way to debate the issue. The real issue should be one of law. When I became a customer of Verizon and AT&T there were laws in place protecting my privacy. Those laws were violated. If the congress should like to change those laws now and going forward (and it would be wrong to do so) then that would be a debate we could have. But I should have been able to reasonably expect that Verizon and AT&T should have followed the laws on the books at the time. I should be able to sue for recourse as I believe those laws were broken.
Further, I understand that the domestic spying program has continued despite revelations in the press. Given that the telecommunications privacy laws have not been changed, how can this be?
It’s obvious that members of the government, the intelligence community and the telecom industry should be held liable for breaking the law. Having good intentions about national security is no excuse for lawbreaking. Why is the congress even debating revising the FISA rules when it should be talking about bringing criminal sanctions against lawbreakers?
Finally, and this is of major importance: the “telecommunications” is misspelled in your subject drop-down menu.
Sincerely,
Michael Maiello
I know it might be over the top, but Perhaps Sen. Dodd could read “My Pet Goat” That is after all where it all began.
where it all began? he would have to read a Supreme Court decision… ugh!
We are pulling for you Senator Dodd down here in Houston (well, just north of, The Woodlands, to be exact). I saw a poll on CNN recently and it showed the 5 things that you are in support of as a Presidential candidate and according to those 5 issues, well, apparently, you are my man to vote for. Good luck and thank you for standing up for people like me.
Dear Senator Reid,
Only you know why you‘re dishonoring Sen. Dodd’s hold. Only you know why you’re using your powers to force a bill onto the citizens of this country that guarantees we’ll never know what constitutional violations were committed in the name of national security. Only you know why you’re enabling a Unitary Executive to wield unchecked powers in a war without end who’s decreed the truth a state secret to be hidden from all.
The highest levels of Democratic and Republican leadership have been complicit in laying waste to our Constitution. Through sins of commission and omission you have brought us sanctioned torture, unfettered wiretapping, endless war.
The immunity for telecoms is immunity for you all. If you hadn’t lost the capacity for shame you’d resign en masse.
Tell it to our face, Senator Reid: the rule of law has been sold out to the highest bidder.
Someday I will get angry. Now I’ve only got despair.
How is this my country?
I am an American living in New Zealand, working with a well-read, savvy bunch of new zealanders. For quite a while they jokingly poked fun at me about Bush’s war, then about the Congress rolling over / caving in on issue after issue. It was all good natured, I could take it because it was easy to agree with them. But then came the telecom immunity stuff and suddenly the joking around became dark and sad. Everyone knows that the Bush hijinks were not truly representative of America (see, over here they really do see my country as the ’shining city on the hill’). But this cynical attempt to cover up crime, and for the Senate leadership to be complicit, has at least stopped the cruel jokes at work. My mates are very sad for me now. They understand what I am losing – maybe they’re concerned that if that’s how the leader operates it might happen here too. Thanks Sen Dodd for being so brave. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
In response to TheraP @288
where it all began? he would have to read a monologue about Barbara Bush’s… well, you know what I mean.
Don’t forget the Church commission hearings. They uncovered what happens when you let the country have untrammeled spying powers. It’s sad we have to go through this again 30 years later.
Senator Dodd,
That retroactive immunity for what appear to be per se violations of the Fourth Amendment would even be proposed is stunning to me. As a citizen and a practicing attorney, I am not sure I recognize the country I’m living in.
Thank you for taking a leadership role in trying to get the country to come to its senses.
Tom Lawton
Asheville, NC
Sen. Dodd,
The premise of “amnesty for telecoms” is just so wrong, so basically un-American. Please continue to stand up for America, for the Constitution. The Constitution is what defines us as a country. We cannot allow it to be degraded, downgraded to just another piece of paper. We cannot live in fear of terrorists: we are America the brave. Give me liberty or give me death: do not gut our liberties. Our basic right to privacy, to be free from unreasonable search, is at stake here. We need leaders who lead, not leaders who pander to our fears and use the fear in their own quest for power. I do not trust this Administration — or, indeed, any Administration — to use the powers that Congress would turn over to it in a reasonable manner. I do not understand why the telecoms should be granted amnesty: our laws are our laws, and no man or corporation should be above them. It sets a terrible precedent. It means that the law is the law … except when its not convenient. In this time post 9-11, we have looked to our leaders for strength and conviction, for a way forward that leads to a more secure future without undermining everything our country stands for. What we have gotten instead are leaders afraid of their own skin, who are so cowardly they would give away the store rather than be accused of standing up for anything. The day this country started viewing the Constitution as optional, that was the day the terrorists won. The Constitution is NOT optional: stand up for it. Be leaders: have courage and stand for something — and that something is not telecom immunity, that something is the Constitution and the rule of law. Without it, we might as well be living in a totalitarian state.
I thought this was too long for this site; so, I posted it on Senator Dodd’s site, but Jim White said I should go for it here, too…
Dear Senator Dodd:
Following is a letter originally intended for my own senators and congressman. However, given the vagaries of communication now (emails ignored, snail mail severely delayed, and fax unavailable to me personally), I am hoping that you will read my letter– or any portions that you think suitable– to my senators and their colleagues during your filibuster, should it prove necessary. My letter was intended to cover additional issues, not just the attacks on the Constitution. However, the FISA vote ranks very high among those votes that I predict may be judged very harshly by future historians. How are we, the citizens, expected to trust the federal government ever again, when those who (temporarily) hold the reins of power believe that holding either themselves or their corporate partners accountable to the Constitution and to telling us the truth is somehow quaint or optional.
Best regards,
- Karen M, Pennsylvania
* * *
Dear Senators Casey and Specter and your colleagues:
First, why is it that Senator Dodd is so alone in his campaign to restore the Constitution. I know he’s made some news for his efforts lately, but I’ve been watching his campaign for much longer, since my own “litmus test” for the best candidate in the presidential field has, from the beginning, been who would be committing himself or herself to rolling back George Bush’s constitutional abuses as the highest priority. So far, only Dodd’s campaign fits that description, and I must say that it’s puzzling, since the issues he’s raising (unbelievably, we must all agree) are issues that should be paramount to any elected official, i.e., no-brainers. Of course, there are dynamic reasons that the other candidates might have for not wishing to help Senator Dodd in his campaign, but that should not be true for those of you who are not running now, or at least are not running for the same office. Ultimately, it is not only Senator Dodd who deserves more support from you and your colleagues, but also we, your constituents and the constituents of your colleagues, who expect that you would make supporting his efforts a higher priority.
Second, if only there were a way to communicate effectively to our elected officials just how frustrated we– The People… approximately 70% of us– are, that method of communication could be patented to make someone a fortune, or else sold like war bonds to completely eliminate our national debt. The situation is that serious. Surely, we thought, as we watched the election returns last November, there will have to be some changes made. Surely, we would finally see our members in congress hold George Bush’s feet to the fire for a change. Surely, there would be a change of direction, even if not speedily or on a dime.
Instead, we are sorely disappointed. In George Bush, first and last, because he continues to be so bull-headed and inflexible, but also in the GOP for continuing to enable him, blind (if not stupid), to the effects that such enabling must eventually have on their own political fortunes, and also in the Democratic leadership, for continuing to act as if they have some sort of group version of PTSD. We are not unsympathetic to such trauma, but we expect our elected officials to be getting whatever treatment they need (using that wonderful health plan, at our expense), at the same time that they are going about our business. After all, that is what the rest of us are having to do.
We go about our business, in spite of the bloody evidence that greets us each morning and ends each day. The numbers of explosions, the politically disputed numbers of dead, wounded, civilians, militia members. We watch the criteria continue to shift, along with Mr. Bush’s goal posts, including the limits of our civil liberties, our standing in the world, even the slippery definitions of torture that, frankly, I had thought were already codified into law, but apparently are not quite… yet. If we only knew for sure. We watch the SCHIP go down, and wonder if it might have eventually passed if the Democratic leadership had only continued to send bills that represented our interests to Bush, regardless of his threats to veto them, knowing that even he could not win that PR battle indefinitely. Yet, we had to watch– sideways, since our eyes were averted in embarrassment– as our leadership folded, caved, and demurred, time and again.
Personally, I suspect that the Democratic leadership was not really prepared to lead this term, since very few pundits were predicting that the Democrats would take both houses of congress. But it’s been a year now. Time to buck up and get a grip and start acting like the party in power. The Truth is that George Bush is not entitled to whatever he demands, despite his lineage, SES, upbringing, and the enabling to which he has become accustomed as his due. In fact, he is far overdue for a really, cold splash of Reality, that inconvenient abstraction from which Karl Rove managed to protect him for so long, while he insisted they would be writing their own version, and the rest of us would be merely studying it. That time has long passed.
Instead of continuing to keep your powder dry until 2008, or 2009, why not consider that the very best thing you could do to ensure that we have a Democratic president in 2009 is to lead now, so that the American people will know they can trust Democrats, both in the White House, and on Capitol Hill to do what they do better than the Republicans. Govern. And that means to put our interests first. Not the corporations’, or the military’s, or George Bush’s out-sized sense of pride.
A very good beginning would be to disallow retroactive (AND future) immunity to the telecomms for whatever they have improperly done to American citizens since the Bush administration took office early in 2001. From the reports that are available, our grievances may be considerable. Frankly, I don’t see how the American public could possibly forgive or forget a congressional action that would peremptorily prevent us from having reasonable recourse to the justice system. Such as it is… Especially for abuses to our civil liberties.
After all, isn’t that exactly what Republicans, as well as Democrats, but Republicans and conservatives, in particular, are so fond of touting as what separates us from other less desirable countries? Our inestimable civil liberties?
- Karen M.
PA CD 7
I thank Senator Dodd for the opportunity to participate in this debate. For the Senate’s edification: I’m twenty-three years old and a new voter who isn’t going away any time soon.
The United States of America is founded upon the rule of law. Senators and representatives swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” According to the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution—a document for which centuries’ of blood and tears have been shed—“the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Yet here the Senate stands, poised to grant immunity to telecommunications companies for profiting from the warrantless and lawless spying perpetrated upon the law-abiding citizenry; here the Senate stands, poised to usurp the judiciary, the branch of government responsible for determining whether the laws of the land have been broken and meting out punishment where appropriate; and here the Senate stands, poised to usher in its own irrevelancy—and, worst of all, in exchange for nothing: no promises that this flagrant lawbreaking will cease, no testimony to be offered in the course of real and rigorous investigation.
“Give me liberty or give me death,” said Patrick Henry. “Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither,” said Benjamin Franklin. Now the telecommunications companies lobby the lot of you, saying, “Give us immunity, or we’ll suffer the consequences of our lawbreaking.” Now the President comes before you, saying, “Give my partners in crime immunity, or there’ll be investigations and findings that taint my legacy.”
Never mind the judiciary. Never mind that it’s the job of the courts to ascertain whether any laws have been broken. So Congress rushes in to save the day! Immunity for profit-driven corporations, amnesty for lawbreakers!
I submit to this body that the Founders are rolling in their graves.
Voters could be forgiven for not realizing the Democratic Party won control of both houses of Congress in the 2006 mid-term elections, for there’s so little evidence of any checks being brought against President Bush, whose polling to date is both abysmal and deserved. Yet now Democrats brandish the majority and usher in much of the same: more war, more lives lost, more of our tax dollars pouring into places I’ve never even heard of, and here we’ve got next to nothing to show for it. I hear citizens of other countries get something for paying their taxes; I can’t even imagine what that’s like.
And what are Americans to think, except that they’ve been betrayed by both parties? I congratulate Democrats and Republicans for their breathtaking cynicism, for how well they’ve worked together to engender so much apathy among voters that millions of Americans stay home on election day. What choices we have!
The legislature abdicates oversight, puts blind faith in the executive, and extends immunity to lawbreaking telecommunications companies. Are those companies to be pitied for going along with the President’s plan in direct contravention of the law and raking in cash? Are they, along with the President, to be congratulated for their foresight, considering that this warrantless spying upon Americans is reported to have gone on well before 9/11? (And mind you how well all of that illegal surveillance served to protect us on that awful day.) Are these companies to be respected more than voters? Are they to be granted immunity for lawbreaking, in return for nothing? Congress doesn’t even appear to be interested in leveraging immunity in return for testimony.
What will I tell my children? It’s fine to break the law if the president says so? It’s fine to break the law if you can lobby Congress to grant you immunity? It’s fine to break the law if you can stuff cash into the coffers of senators and representatives? What country is this? I say again: the Founders are rolling in their graves. For the past fifteen years, I’ve watched the news and felt disgust for the whole sorry lot of you.
You who purport to lead, yet cower like beaten dogs before the President, as if he were king. You who vote upon legislation you likely don’t even read. You who coif your hair into absurd, unmoving helmets and whiten your teeth and don designers suits and appear on TV, daring to tell me you represent my interests. You who pass pointless, meaningless resolutions condemning commercials and congratulating professional sports teams for winning while Americans go hungry, while Americans go without healthcare, while Americans work two jobs to make ends meet, while Americans die in Iraq and Afghanistan. You who swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution and flatter yourselves by conflating your re-election with the interests of your country and constituency. You who fret about keeping your powder dry until the are barracks overrun.
You who tell me to live in a constant state of fear, but to keep on shopping; do keep shopping. How proud my children should be to be born American! They’ll shop in the face of constant fear with fists full of credit cards. And I’ll say to them, “What shall we buy tomorrow, children?” But, of course, I have my own ideas: our very own Senator, our very own Representative, our very own President. I should buy the whole sorry lot of you to be heeded at all.
And so here is the Senate in all its majesty. Where are the Patrick Henrys, the Benjamin Franklins? God save America from her greatest enemy: a pack of pathetic, self-serving cowards.
It is with a tremendous sense of sadness I contemplate the words Senator Dodd might read during his filibuster against the inclusion of telecom immunity in a bill before the senate. The United States Senate has been called the greatest deliberative body in the world. How sincerely and shamefully this body has failed the American people. A bill which excuses telecom lawlessness at the whim of the president, prior to revealing the nature, duration, and type of the offenses committed, should not be eligible for consideration. It is a profound indictment of this august body that such a bill is before it. That a government undertakes to spy on its own citizens, that it warehouses the telecommunications of its citizens, denies citizens their right to privacy, and does this without judicial oversight or judicial protections, is a circumstance which should not be associated with the United States of America. This isn’t a conversation, never mind a debate, I expected to witness in my country, in my lifetime.
Further it is a huge disappointment to consider that Senator Dodd is alone in his efforts to filibuster this bill to a righteous defeat. Where are the Senators who respect the rule of law? Where are the Senators who swore an oath to defend the Constitution? Where are the Senators who respect the fundamental liberties which underpin our democracy? Where are the Senators who stand on the shoulders of the great patriots who went before them? Where are the Senators who understand, and respect, that security traded for liberty is a hollow promise which cannot be fulfilled? Security at the expense of liberty is, at best, a convenient fiction. Where are the stalwart men and women – the descendents of the crafters of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution – the gatekeepers of our democratic ideals? Where are Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, Senator Biden, and Senator McCain? Those who would seek the highest office ought to be in the forefront of this defense of the Constitution. Why does Senator Dodd stand here alone?
I am sickened by the complicity of my country’s elected officials in the executive branches efforts to weaken and undermine the rights and protections granted to my fellow citizens and myself. I am grateful to Senator Dodd for his willingness to do what a good patriot should do at a time like this. History will credit Senator Dodd for his integrity – for his pledge of allegiance to the principles on which this country – his country – my country – was founded. I thank Senator Dodd for his willingness to bring the words of my countrymen and women to you. I support his effort today, and support his campaign for the Presidency as a result. I will remember the choices made by my own Senators leading up to today’s events. I will also remember the choices made by those campaigning Senators who pledged their support for this filibuster, but remained in Iowa. My country deserves more than lofty rhetoric, grand words, and empty promises. My country deserves the men and women who are able to roll up their sleeves and do the work.
Thank you Senator Dodd for reading my thoughts and answering my plea to defend the Constitution and the liberties it affords me, my neighbors, my community, and my countrymen.
How could it possibly be that the Democrats have the majority in the Senate…and yet a Democrat is leading a real filibuster to stop an un-Democratic law like this from being created?
How is that?
Every Senator serving today took an oath to defend and protect the Constitution. But this bill not only rescinds the Fourth Amendment, it gives legal cover to entities that have already broken those laws by spying on Americans without warrant OR probable cause. Every Senator who votes to make this bill a law forfeits any right to represent a constituent under our Constitution. That is what is just, but it may not be what will happen.
senator dodd:
please feel free to show my
three youtube videos on the FISA
amendment pushes — here. . . here
and here.
or — just listen to, and read from, mr. justice powell:
Thank God! A real Democrat with a REAL BACKBONE! Thank you for exercising some muscle that is very out of shape. Maybe your fellow Dems will follow suit!
the citation is US v. USDC. . .
Senator Dodd,
The following is a story on the NSA’s collusion with the telecom companies from The Washington Post. It is worth reading into the record:
A Story of Surveillance
Former Technician ‘Turning In’ AT&T Over NSA Program
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 7, 2007; Page D01
His first inkling that something was amiss came in summer 2002 when he opened the door to admit a visitor from the National Security Agency to an office of AT&T in San Francisco.
“What the heck is the NSA doing here?” Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician, said he asked himself.
A year or so later, he stumbled upon documents that, he said, nearly caused him to fall out of his chair. The documents, he said, show that the NSA gained access to massive amounts of e-mail and search and other Internet records of more than a dozen global and regional telecommunications providers. AT&T allowed the agency to hook into its network at a facility in San Francisco and, according to Klein, many of the other telecom companies probably knew nothing about it.
Klein is in Washington this week to share his story in the hope that it will persuade lawmakers not to grant legal immunity to telecommunications firms that helped the government in its anti-terrorism efforts.
The plain-spoken, bespectacled Klein, 62, said he may be the only person in the country in a position to discuss firsthand knowledge of an important aspect of the Bush administration’s domestic surveillance program. He is retired, so he isn’t worried about losing his job. He did not have security clearance, and the documents in his possession were not classified, he said. He has no qualms about “turning in,” as he put it, the company where he worked for 22 years until he retired in 2004.
“If they’ve done something massively illegal and unconstitutional — well, they should suffer the consequences,” Klein said. “It’s not my place to feel bad for them. They made their bed, they have to lie in it. The ones who did [anything wrong], you can be sure, are high up in the company. Not the average Joes, who I enjoyed working with.”
In an interview yesterday, he alleged that the NSA set up a system that vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary Americans with the cooperation of AT&T . Contrary to the government’s depiction of its surveillance program as aimed at overseas terrorists, Klein said, much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic. Klein said he believes that the NSA was analyzing the records for usage patterns as well as for content.
He said the NSA built a special room to receive data streamed through an AT&T Internet room containing “peering links,” or major connections to other telecom providers. The largest of the links delivered 2.5 gigabits of data — the equivalent of one-quarter of the Encyclopedia Britannica’s text — per second, said Klein, whose documents and eyewitness account form the basis of one of the first lawsuits filed against the telecom giants after the government’s warrantless-surveillance program was reported in the New York Times in December 2005.
Claudia Jones, an AT&T spokeswoman, said she had no comment on Klein’s allegations. “AT&T is fully committed to protecting our customers’ privacy. We do not comment on matters of national security,” she said.
The NSA and the White House also declined comment on Klein’s allegations.
Klein is urging Congress not to block Hepting v. AT&T, a class-action suit pending in federal court in San Francisco, as well as 37 other lawsuits charging carriers with illegally collaborating with the NSA. He was accompanied yesterday by lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed Hepting v. AT&T in 2006. Together, they are urging key U.S. senators to oppose a pending White House-endorsed immunity provision that would effectively wipe out the lawsuits. The Judiciary Committee is expected to take up the measure Thursday.
In summer 2002, Klein was working in an office responsible for Internet equipment when an NSA representative arrived to interview a management-level technician for a special job whose details were secret.
“That’s when my antennas started to go up,” he said. He knew that the NSA was supposed to work on overseas signals intelligence.
The job entailed building a “secret room” in an AT&T office 10 blocks away, he said. By coincidence, in October 2003, Klein was transferred to that office and assigned to the Internet room. He asked a technician there about the secret room on the 6th floor, and the technician told him it was connected to the Internet room a floor above. The technician, who was about to retire, handed him some wiring diagrams.
“That was my ‘aha!’ moment,” Klein said. “They’re sending the entire Internet to the secret room.”
The diagram showed splitters, glass prisms that split signals from each network into two identical copies. One fed into the secret room, the other proceeded to its destination, he said.
“This splitter was sweeping up everything, vacuum-cleaner-style,” he said. “The NSA is getting everything. These are major pipes that carry not just AT&T’s customers but everybody’s.”
One of Klein’s documents listed links to 16 entities, including Global Crossing, a large provider of voice and data services in the United States and abroad; UUNet, a large Internet provider in Northern Virginia now owned by Verizon; Level 3 Communications, which provides local, long-distance and data transmission in the United States and overseas; and more familiar names such as Sprint and Qwest. It also included data exchanges MAE-West and PAIX, or Palo Alto Internet Exchange, facilities where telecom carriers hand off Internet traffic to each other.
“I flipped out,” he said. “They’re copying the whole Internet. There’s no selection going on here. Maybe they select out later, but at the point of handoff to the government, they get everything.”
Qwest has not been sued because of media reports last year that said the company declined to participate in an NSA program to build a database of domestic phone-call records out of concern about its legality. What the documents show, Klein contends, is that the NSA apparently was collecting several carriers’ communications, probably without their consent.
Another document showed that the NSA installed in the room a semantic traffic analyzer made by Narus, which Klein said indicated that the NSA was doing content analysis.
Steve Bannerman, Narus’s marketing vice president, said in an interview that the NarusInsight system is “the world’s most powerful Internet traffic processing engine.” He said it is used to detect worms, as well as to capture information to help authorities stop criminal activity. He said it can track a communication’s origin and destination, as well as its content. He declined to comment on AT&T’s use of the system.
Klein said he decided to go public after President Bush defended the NSA’s surveillance program as limited to collecting phone calls between suspected terrorists overseas and people in the United States. Klein said the documents show that the scope was much broader.
Klein was last in Washington in 1969, to take part in an antiwar protest. Now, he said with a chuckle, he’s here in a gray suit as a lobbyist.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..00006.html
Thank you for standing up for the rule of law, sir. Many of us will remember your actions here today, and the shameful example of Senator Reid which it stand in such sharp contrast to.
Lots of folks allied with the Bush Administration seem very taken with certain World War II parallels. Basically anyone who suggests that starting another war in the Middle East, this one with Iran, is said to be just like Neville Chamberlin, “appeasing” some Fascist force. While this, in and of itself, is a false analogy, these same pundits miss some very pertinent WWII analogies.
The ones relevant to the situation with FISA and Telecom amnesty are found in the way in which the Third Reich came to power in Germany in the first place. Individual freedoms were taken away one-by-one, so subtly at first that no one noticed until it was too late. International laws were broken or ignored, and no one acted until the brown shirts came for them — and that was too late.
Allowing the government to spy on innocent citizens with no oversight or worse, with the connivance and consent of Congress is another of these first steps toward authoritarianism, just as surely as were the initial crackdowns in Germany.
Please vote to help preserve our freedom before it is too late.
hollygo @297
damn, that’s good.
If anyone missed it, go back and read.
Should be compulsory for reading into the Senate record.
I hope someday you will find your way to one of those senate seats.
I agree. I think I saw that some of the comments would get front page billing. I vote hollygo’s comment front and center.
Senator Dodd,
Thank you for your courage in taking this on. Please read the Constitution, The Declaration of Indpendence, Federalist Paper 69 and this enlightening article http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00.html"> from a highly regarded American Rhodes Scholar.
It is really a shame when a party in power in Congress has to filibuster legislation of such importance.
And this should have been a no-brainer for the Democratic party. Standing up against a highly unpopular President, upholding the rule of the law,standing up for the Constitution and for civil liberties, and standing up to the wishes of their base.
Three cheers for Senators like Dodd, Kennedy and Feingold. And shame to Senators Rockefeller, Feinstein, and Reid for conspiring with Republicans on this issue.
Senator Dodd:
My best wishes tomorrow as you write an honorable page in this nation’s history.
It would be nice to believe that Senator Dodd will be able to head this thing off but I might as well send Santa Claus a wish list. This is all about control. It has been building to this for a long time, accelerated greatly by the strange events of 9/11/2001. Neither party deserves any respect whatsoever. Maybe these crazy people who have been saying that there is no political solution to preventing our becoming a dictatorship have been right all along.
If you are reading this Senator Dodd and you actually care about this issue, watch your back and hire some good bodyguards. And best of luck to you in this effort. Stopping this deplorable and dangerous legislation could be the rallying point we all need to get the citizenry enraged and finally inspired to overturn the Bush Administration’s assault on the Constitution.
Nellie at 307
Whoops link not working so I’ll type it in here:
Fascist America, in 10 easy steps at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/…..57,00.html
by Naomi Wolf, author of “The End of America”
Dear Senator Dodd:
Thank you for respecting our Constitution. In considering whether telecoms should be granted immunity for illegal acts done at the government’s bidding, I haven’t seen discussed the slippery slope to which this leads. The government wants to torture certain United States citizens in the United States, but is afraid of potential liability. It asks government contractors, e.g., Blackwater, to do the dirty work. Blackwater does it, and someone sues. The government cries foul and demands immunity for the patriotic souls doing its bidding and allegedly saving all of us from lord knows what. Immunity for telecoms would set a dangerous precedent we don’t need and don’t want. More importantly, creating immunity for constitutional violations is an abomination that should not be tolerated. Again, infinite thanks for not tolerating it.
Senator Dodd,
Thank you so much for protecting our fundamental rights. Somebody had to do it. You are the man who rose to the occasion, and I respect you for that trememdously.
You have had plenty of advice about what to say and what to read during your filibuster. I want you to shame your fellow senators who might be contemplating support for telecom immunity. Read them the riot act. Subject them to genuine, righteous rage. Do not allow them the luxury of feeling that it is OK for them to betray our Constitution.
When this is all over and done, if you do not succeed in becoming our next President, I hope you will consider running for Senate Majority Leader and providing the kind of leadership in Congress that the sane majority in this country deserves. Thank you.
Senator Dodd,
Hopefully your staff is reading this. I’d suggest reading various statements made by President Bush when he signed the Patriot Act (which amended FISA) into law in October 2001. For example, in his radio address the next day he said:
The bill I signed yesterday [the Patriot Act]gives intelligence and law enforcement officials additional tools they need to hunt and capture and punish terrorists. Our enemies operate by highly sophisticated methods and technologies, using the latest means of communication and the new weapon of bioterrorism. When earlier laws were written [FISA], some of these methods did not even exist. The new law [which amends FISA] recognizes the realities and dangers posed by the modern terrorist. It will help us to prosecute terrorist organizations–and also to detect them before they strike. . . .
Surveillance of communications is another essential method of law enforcement. But for a long time, we have been working under laws
[FISA] written in the era of rotary telephones. Under the new law [which amends FISA], officials may conduct court-ordered surveillance of all modern forms of communication used by terrorists. . . .
These measures were enacted with broad support in both parties. They reflect a firm resolve to uphold and respect the civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution, while dealing swiftly and severely with terrorists.
Now comes the duty of carrying them out. And I can assure all Americans that these important new statutes will be enforced to the full. Thank you for listening.
As we know now, within days of saying this, the President authorized the NSA to bypass FISA altogether. When this illegal activity was reported 4 years later, Bush claimed it was necessary because FISA was an obsolete relic from the era of rotary telephones.
I messed up the italics on that last comment. For the full Bush quote from his October 2001 radio address, click here.
The 20-minute “questions” provide for bathroom and quick snack breaks.
During the last Congress, the Democrats were forced to hold “unofficial” hearings when the majority GOP would not allow them to use our public halls for hearings. I believe the testimony taken at that time was considered unofficial as well. Why not read into the Congressional record some of the more interesting of the testimony received at that time?
I forgot to add in my earlier comment that, yes, donations help, since money seems to be what the press focuses on.
I kicked in another $25 to the Dodd Presidential campaign. If you can afford it at this time of year (I know it’s hard), maybe we could kick the lazy ‘journalists’ into paying attention to something important for a change, even if they do it for the wrong reason.
Dear Senator Dodd:
It’s because of the shenanigans of the Democrats supporting telecommunications immunity that I did NOT donate to the DSCC when they called for my contribution the other day. I will support you (and have sent money to your campaign) and will support Democrats who support the Constitution and behave like Democrats. I will no longer support Democrats who behave like Republicans, and I will not support party organizations that, by supporting false Democrats, have allowed this country to sink into a dictatorship. Once we lose this fight, we have lost it forever. I have never been so outraged.
I support your filibuster, Senator Dodd! Thank you so much for your courage! (I called Senators Biden, Clinton and Obama this weekend to ask that they stand with you. I left voicemail with Biden, but Clinton and Obama had “full mailboxes”. I’ll do it all over again in the morning!)
With gratitude,
Gloria (aka someone else, whose name is registered with your campaign contributors)
Some have Lost Faith in America
America lies on the operating table again this week.
Its chest cut open, its beating heart exposed.
Bloodied once again at the hands of its errant children.
The administration longs to do surgery.
It claims there is something wrong with America;
It claims that one after another of our very foundations of law
Are somehow flawed.
They claim that the right of every American to be safe from abusive government
Is an enemy to our safety… How ironic. How very wrong.
To listen to the administration, we are to believe
That America is broken;
That the Constitution won’t let the administration do its job
By keeping it from spying on Americans without proper oversight.
The administration and their Congressional accomplices also claim that
Undermining the rule of law is necessary.
That in order to save America we must first lose our soul:
By granting law-breakers… Constitution underminers, safe haven.
That we must turn our backs on holding
Law breakers to account for their deeds
America lays bloodied again this week
At the hands of her children.
Rushed to the emergency room, laid bare on the operating table.
The administration claims that in order to save America
It must first rip the heart from her.
But no surgery is needed, America is not broken…
A principle was not forgotten, a was not left behind.
No, there is nothing wrong with America.
America would be as fit or fitter than ever
If it only had an administration and a Congress
That had not lost faith in America.
America, more than ever needs Americans to stand tall;
To stand up to those who have lost faith in America;
Who think there is refuge in lawlessness
Who want us to believe that in order to save us
They must first destroy America.
America aches for the faithful to reveal themselves.
.
What If They Broke Every Law With Impunity?
If elected officials have broken their oath of office to preserve and protect the Constitution. If they have broken US (FISA) and International Laws they are Constitutionally obliged to enforce, then shouldn’t they be tried and impeached? And if they have broken international laws that has resulted in the death of several people, shouldn’t they be tried for that also, and punished if guilty? And if we, as American citizens don’t insist on this, are we not complicit?
“One of the largest lessons from the massive debacles of the Bush administration will be that there is no mechanism for putting a leash on a cabal with extreme power. The Bush Administration has broken virtually every law and rule in the books with impunity. There is no Constitutional leash left to protect the nation from an abusive Executive Branch. That is a sad lesson to learn, but it did not just happen. It has been a plan long in the making. The question is, is it a plan we can reverse?”
Rowan Wolf “They Knew. Lies to Cover a Rogue Administration” 17-Jun-2007
as seen in Opednews.com
http://www.opednews.com/articl…..hey_knew__
Dear Senator Dodd,
Thank you so much for courageously standing up for our constitution and the American peoples rights.
Please read Federal paper 69 on the Charaacter of the President. I have reprinted it below:
The Federalist No. 69
The Real Character of the Executive
New York Packet
Friday, March 14, 1788
[Alexander Hamilton]
To the People of the State of New York:
I PROCEED now to trace the real characters of the proposed Executive, as they are marked out in the plan of the convention. This will serve to place in a strong light the unfairness of the representations which have been made in regard to it.
The first thing which strikes our attention is, that the executive authority, with few exceptions, is to be vested in a single magistrate. This will scarcely, however, be considered as a point upon which any comparison can be grounded; for if, in this particular, there be a resemblance to the king of Great Britain, there is not less a resemblance to the Grand Seignior, to the khan of Tartary, to the Man of the Seven Mountains, or to the governor of New York.
That magistrate is to be elected for four years; and is to be re-eligible as often as the people of the United States shall think him worthy of their confidence. In these circumstances there is a total dissimilitude between him and a king of Great Britain, who is an hereditary monarch, possessing the crown as a patrimony descendible to his heirs forever; but there is a close analogy between him and a governor of New York, who is elected for three years, and is re-eligible without limitation or intermission. If we consider how much less time would be requisite for establishing a dangerous influence in a single State, than for establishing a like influence throughout the United States, we must conclude that a duration of four years for the Chief Magistrate of the Union is a degree of permanency far less to be dreaded in that office, than a duration of three years for a corresponding office in a single State.
The President of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and, upon conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors, removed from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law. The person of the king of Great Britain is sacred and inviolable; there is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable; no punishment to which he can be subjected without involving the crisis of a national revolution. In this delicate and important circumstance of personal responsibility, the President of Confederated America would stand upon no better ground than a governor of New York, and upon worse ground than the governors of Maryland and Delaware.
The President of the United States is to have power to return a bill, which shall have passed the two branches of the legislature, for reconsideration; and the bill so returned is to become a law, if, upon that reconsideration, it be approved by two thirds of both houses. The king of Great Britain, on his part, has an absolute negative upon the acts of the two houses of Parliament. The disuse of that power for a considerable time past does not affect the reality of its existence; and is to be ascribed wholly to the crown’s having found the means of substituting influence to authority, or the art of gaining a majority in one or the other of the two houses, to the necessity of exerting a prerogative which could seldom be exerted without hazarding some degree of national agitation. The qualified negative of the President differs widely from this absolute negative of the British sovereign; and tallies exactly with the revisionary authority of the council of revision of this State, of which the governor is a constituent part. In this respect the power of the President would exceed that of the governor of New York, because the former would possess, singly, what the latter shares with the chancellor and judges; but it would be precisely the same with that of the governor of Massachusetts, whose constitution, as to this article, seems to have been the original from which the convention have copied.
The President is to be the “commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States, when called into the actual service of the United States. He is to have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment; to recommend to the consideration of Congress such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; to convene, on extraordinary occasions, both houses of the legislature, or either of them, and, in case of disagreement between them with respect to the time of adjournment, to adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper; to take care that the laws be faithfully executed; and to commission all officers of the United States.” In most of these particulars, the power of the President will resemble equally that of the king of Great Britain and of the governor of New York. The most material points of difference are these: — First. The President will have only the occasional command of such part of the militia of the nation as by legislative provision may be called into the actual service of the Union. The king of Great Britain and the governor of New York have at all times the entire command of all the militia within their several jurisdictions. In this article, therefore, the power of the President would be inferior to that of either the monarch or the governor. Second. The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first General and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies — all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.1 The governor of New York, on the other hand, is by the constitution of the State vested only with the command of its militia and navy. But the constitutions of several of the States expressly declare their governors to be commanders-in-chief, as well of the army as navy; and it may well be a question, whether those of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, in particular, do not, in this instance, confer larger powers upon their respective governors, than could be claimed by a President of the United States. Third. The power of the President, in respect to pardons, would extend to all cases, except those of impeachment. The governor of New York may pardon in all cases, even in those of impeachment, except for treason and murder. Is not the power of the governor, in this article, on a calculation of political consequences, greater than that of the President? All conspiracies and plots against the government, which have not been matured into actual treason, may be screened from punishment of every kind, by the interposition of the prerogative of pardoning. If a governor of New York, therefore, should be at the head of any such conspiracy, until the design had been ripened into actual hostility he could insure his accomplices and adherents an entire impunity. A President of the Union, on the other hand, though he may even pardon treason, when prosecuted in the ordinary course of law, could shelter no offender, in any degree, from the effects of impeachment and conviction. Would not the prospect of a total indemnity for all the preliminary steps be a greater temptation to undertake and persevere in an enterprise against the public liberty, than the mere prospect of an exemption from death and confiscation, if the final execution of the design, upon an actual appeal to arms, should miscarry? Would this last expectation have any influence at all, when the probability was computed, that the person who was to afford that exemption might himself be involved in the consequences of the measure, and might be incapacitated by his agency in it from affording the desired impunity? The better to judge of this matter, it will be necessary to recollect, that, by the proposed Constitution, the offense of treason is limited “to levying war upon the United States, and adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort”; and that by the laws of New York it is confined within similar bounds. Fourth. The President can only adjourn the national legislature in the single case of disagreement about the time of adjournment. The British monarch may prorogue or even dissolve the Parliament. The governor of New York may also prorogue the legislature of this State for a limited time; a power which, in certain situations, may be employed to very important purposes.
The President is to have power, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the senators present concur. The king of Great Britain is the sole and absolute representative of the nation in all foreign transactions. He can of his own accord make treaties of peace, commerce, alliance, and of every other description. It has been insinuated, that his authority in this respect is not conclusive, and that his conventions with foreign powers are subject to the revision, and stand in need of the ratification, of Parliament. But I believe this doctrine was never heard of, until it was broached upon the present occasion. Every jurist2 of that kingdom, and every other man acquainted with its Constitution, knows, as an established fact, that the prerogative of making treaties exists in the crown in its utomst plentitude; and that the compacts entered into by the royal authority have the most complete legal validity and perfection, independent of any other sanction. The Parliament, it is true, is sometimes seen employing itself in altering the existing laws to conform them to the stipulations in a new treaty; and this may have possibly given birth to the imagination, that its co-operation was necessary to the obligatory efficacy of the treaty. But this parliamentary interposition proceeds from a different cause: from the necessity of adjusting a most artificial and intricate system of revenue and commercial laws, to the changes made in them by the operation of the treaty; and of adapting new provisions and precautions to the new state of things, to keep the machine from running into disorder. In this respect, therefore, there is no comparison between the intended power of the President and the actual power of the British sovereign. The one can perform alone what the other can do only with the concurrence of a branch of the legislature. It must be admitted, that, in this instance, the power of the federal Executive would exceed that of any State Executive. But this arises naturally from the sovereign power which relates to treaties. If the Confederacy were to be dissolved, it would become a question, whether the Executives of the several States were not solely invested with that delicate and important prerogative.
The President is also to be authorized to receive ambassadors and other public ministers. This, though it has been a rich theme of declamation, is more a matter of dignity than of authority. It is a circumstance which will be without consequence in the administration of the government; and it was far more convenient that it should be arranged in this manner, than that there should be a necessity of convening the legislature, or one of its branches, upon every arrival of a foreign minister, though it were merely to take the place of a departed predecessor.
The President is to nominate, and, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint ambassadors and other public ministers, judges of the Supreme Court, and in general all officers of the United States established by law, and whose appointments are not otherwise provided for by the Constitution. The king of Great Britain is emphatically and truly styled the fountain of honor. He not only appoints to all offices, but can create offices. He can confer titles of nobility at pleasure; and has the disposal of an immense number of church preferments. There is evidently a great inferiority in the power of the President, in this particular, to that of the British king; nor is it equal to that of the governor of New York, if we are to interpret the meaning of the constitution of the State by the practice which has obtained under it. The power of appointment is with us lodged in a council, composed of the governor and four members of the Senate, chosen by the Assembly. The governor claims, and has frequently exercised, the right of nomination, and is entitled to a casting vote in the appointment. If he really has the right of nominating, his authority is in this respect equal to that of the President, and exceeds it in the article of the casting vote. In the national government, if the Senate should be divided, no appointment could be made; in the government of New York, if the council should be divided, the governor can turn the scale, and confirm his own nomination.3 If we compare the publicity which must necessarily attend the mode of appointment by the President and an entire branch of the national legislature, with the privacy in the mode of appointment by the governor of New York, closeted in a secret apartment with at most four, and frequently with only two persons; and if we at the same time consider how much more easy it must be to influence the small number of which a council of appointment consists, than the considerable number of which the national Senate would consist, we cannot hesitate to pronounce that the power of the chief magistrate of this State, in the disposition of offices, must, in practice, be greatly superior to that of the Chief Magistrate of the Union.