IT WOULD SEEM, at 1:05 today that those among us who have fax capabilities -esp those who are represented by these Senators – might wish to concentrate MOST efforts to sway these Dem Senators. Geez, even Sen Reid [belatedly] found a spine.

Point being that even those who saw the rulings didn’t see the legal rationales advanced by the administration. And the Senators who saw the rulings tend to conclude (Bond is one who suggests otherwise, by saying a court shut down the TSP) that the FISC got it right as a matter of law.

If the Senate was honest, it’d simply remove all of the civil and criminal penalties that it’s put into privacy law. Make it like torture … illegal, but not criminally punishable and no civil remedy in court for a violation.

That’s an important point. It would certainly be enlightening to have the government’s briefs defending overtly criminal behavior in direcect violation of existing code/case law public as well as the documents Bates’ ruling protected. I’d like to see them used not only in the civil suits, but as ammunition on the Senate floor.

Hillary, who voted for the illegal spying, has announced that she is rushing to D.C. to vote against the Bill. The thing that is becoming increasingly clear is that you don’t want to vote for any of the candidates who are currently being supported by the media and their investment banker owners.

It is one thing to be personally against retroactive immunity for the telecom companies. Good for you. But so far, you and Senator Jay “Rich Man, Rollover Man” Rockefeller have been played like patsies by Mitch McConnell and the Bush Administration.

For God’s sake and for the sake of the American people, please stand up to these civil liberties barbarians of the Right, who would gut the Constitution before breakfast, if they get their way.

If you are a true leader of the Democrats in Congress, you will get or force the recalcitrant, reactionary members of your caucus, like Bayh and Carper and Inouye and Johnson and Mikulski and McCaskill and Pryor and Salazar and both Nelsons to vote “NO” on cloture and “NO” to retroactive immunity for the telecoms. Otherwise, give up your leadership. Let someone like Senator Dodd, who has shown real courage, take over. If you’re not going to lead, step aside for the sake of your Party, for the sake of our Country.

Please show us that you have some steel in your spine. Otherwise, you will be forever known as “Give ‘em your cojones,” Harry Reid. And surrendering to Miss McConnell? All the worse. Sad to be known as the Senator without balls or principles, isn’t it, Harry?

Please prove me and the American people wrong.

Thank you.

David Wyles

P.S. I was Joe Lieberman’s roommate at Yale, so I truly and personally know about betrayal of the real interests of the regular people of America. We the people never voted for a War that would drain more than 3 trillion dollars from our National Treasury, money that could have been used for education, universal health care, the infrastructure of our country.

Please don’t “wuss out” on me and the rest of America. Please show some balls against the Liebermans and Bushes and Cheneys and McConnells of this world.

You claim to be a “fighter.” Now’s the time to prove it.

That was an interesting article. One I hadn’t seen until I started to research the timing of the first demand for civil immunity in spite of federal law that gives a remedy for government privacy violations.

Not in that article, but “between the lines” in Senate debate, the FISA rulings may be short on legal rationale. Feingold is attempting to pry the pleadings out of the FISC, but there is strenuous objection to this.

Point being that even those who saw the rulings didn’t see the legal rationales advanced by the administration. And the Senators who saw the rulings tend to conclude (Bond is one who suggests otherwise, by saying a court shut down the TSP) that the FISC got it right as a matter of law.

If the Senate was honest, it’d simply remove all of the civil and criminal penalties that it’s put into privacy law. Make it like torture … illegal, but not criminally punishable and no civil remedy in court for a violation.