Just saw this at CQ Politics.
Apparently the Four Whoresmen of the AT&Tpocalypse (Kit Bond, Roy Blunt, Jay Rockefeller, and our boy Steny) have finished their 'negotiations' with Dick Cheney and, surprise, surprise, are ready to throw in the towel.
The details are still unclear. The story doesn't say what the final compromise is or will be. But does it really matter? If the White House is going along with it, it's a white-wash, plain and simple.
That the Dem leadership in Congress wouldn't or won't stand up and AT LEAST demand all the pertinent documents, testimony, and legal reasonings from the DoJ, NSA, White House, and especially the FISC is down right stunning to me at this juncture.
According to the article:
Sources said the major change is that a federal district court, not the secret FISA court itself, would make an assessment about whether to provide retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies being sued for their alleged role in the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program.
It was not immediately clear, however, what standard the court would use to determine whether retroactive legal immunity was justified. If that standard is too low, civil liberties advocates maintain, the law will have been written so that companies are almost assured of being granted immunity, and any claim of court scrutiny is a mirage. One source said the court would review whether there was "substantial evidence" that the companies had received assurances from the government that the administration’s program was legal.
Remember, this is the Congress acting in a judicial capacity to prevent Americans from exercising their rights to due process under the 14th Amendment to ensure that their civil liberties haven't been violated. This is about the concept of fair justice, or of a justice bought and sold by campaign contributions and then litigated in a legislature instead of in front of an impartial magistrate. This is tyranny, pure and simple.
2008 may be the beginning of the change we need, but the road will be long, and we'll have lost much more than we ever thought possible.
If and when this passes, we need to name the names of the people that allowed this to happen, and ensure that each and every one of them is eventually defeated at the ballot box if we want the 4th Amendment to actually mean something in this country. Aside from habeas corpus and judicial review, the 4th Amendment is probably the single greatest guarantor of our liberties of any right enshrined in the Constitution, and the Democratic leadership is willing to gut it at the end of the most unpopular and criminal administration in history just to avoid being smeared as appeasers by the lunatic fringe.
Every single legislator needs to be put on notice that we, the People, are watching them, and they WILL be held accountable for this vote.