Harry Reid is once again showing the leadership that gave us a year of bickering and frustration over getting out of Iraq with nothing to show for it.
Today, as Chris Dodd fights retroactive immunity for telecoms on illegal wiretapping and threatens a filibuster, the Senate Majority leader is taking the bold step of offering versions of a bill with and without it.
“I have determined that in this situation," it would be wrong of me to simply choose one committee’s bill over the other," Reid said, referring to the conflicting versions presented by the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees.
To accomplish this, Reid took the unusual step of overriding Dodd's "hold" on the bill with immunity to keep it from coming to a vote.
"Providing retroactive immunity to companies that may have violated the law will set a dangerous precedent,” said Dodd. “Companies who violated the trust of thousands of their customers will be immune to prosecution and the details of their actions will stay hidden.
"The President, and his Administration, has consistently used scare tactics in an attempt to force Congress to pass FISA legislation that provides retroactive immunity."
The Democratic Senate leader is acting as his helper on the issue.
Showing posts with label illegal wiretapping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label illegal wiretapping. Show all posts
Monday, December 17, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
Listening to the People
The man who gave a voice to unheard Americans is speaking up today against illegal listening in on them.
In a New York Times Op Ed, 95-year-old Studs Terkel recounts the history of illegal wiretapping during the Red Scare day of the 1920s, McCarthyism in the 1950s and now the Bush Administration's dismantling of the protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment.
A Pulitzer Prize winner, Terkel became famous for taping and airing conversations that, in his words, "celebrated the lives of the uncelebrated among us, for lending voice to the face in the crowd."
In a new memoir, the once-blacklisted liberal compares himself jokingly to Richard Nixon, saying both "could be aptly described as neo-Cartesians: I tape, therefore I am," or in his own case, "I tape, therefore they are." Terkel's oral histories brought so-called ordinary Americans into history.
Now he is enraged at an executive branch that listens to them too much against their will and at a Congress "moving in a haphazard fashion to provide a 'get out of jail free card' to the telephone companies that violated the rights of their subscribers.
"Some in Congress argue that this law-breaking is forgivable because it was done to help the government in a time of crisis. But it’s impossible for Congress to know the motivations of these companies or to know how the government will use the private information it received from them."
The man who taught us how to listen to America deserves to be heard on a subject he knows well.
In a New York Times Op Ed, 95-year-old Studs Terkel recounts the history of illegal wiretapping during the Red Scare day of the 1920s, McCarthyism in the 1950s and now the Bush Administration's dismantling of the protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment.
A Pulitzer Prize winner, Terkel became famous for taping and airing conversations that, in his words, "celebrated the lives of the uncelebrated among us, for lending voice to the face in the crowd."
In a new memoir, the once-blacklisted liberal compares himself jokingly to Richard Nixon, saying both "could be aptly described as neo-Cartesians: I tape, therefore I am," or in his own case, "I tape, therefore they are." Terkel's oral histories brought so-called ordinary Americans into history.
Now he is enraged at an executive branch that listens to them too much against their will and at a Congress "moving in a haphazard fashion to provide a 'get out of jail free card' to the telephone companies that violated the rights of their subscribers.
"Some in Congress argue that this law-breaking is forgivable because it was done to help the government in a time of crisis. But it’s impossible for Congress to know the motivations of these companies or to know how the government will use the private information it received from them."
The man who taught us how to listen to America deserves to be heard on a subject he knows well.
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