Olbermann and Raw story have MOST of the FISA issue right, BUT ...

As I write this, not ONE of my blogposts about this is showing up on a google search on the topic, not even the blogs - and Verizon, AT&T and Bellsouth are trolling this blog.

That means that on one level at least, the unitary executive theory has found bipartisan acceptance --- the fourth amendment is as quaint as the Geneva Conventions. Every single vote along these lines that ostensibly are done to "protect" us, is a step toward the authoritarian power that lies at the heart of Dick Cheney's wet dream.

~ It's For Our Own Good, by digby

Wouldn't it be JUST GREAT if Olbermann had gone just a bit beyond the "politicial" issues in his long awaited Special Comment.

Another great BuZh bashing moment for "professional" commentators.

Fun for one and all.

However, the Telecoms and their CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES have been going on for a very long time - and not just in San Franciso either. There are plenty more facilities set up under William Jefferson Clinton - and he USED them.

How do I know?

He used some wierd tricks to spy on me on my telephone back in 1994 . and there had been no legitimate reason for the federales to get a warrant to tap my phone!! NONE - and I have an outstanding $3,000 bill with Sprint to prove it.

Keith and Raw Story, let's just take a brief look at the kinds of buck$ we are talking about here if people sue (see below on the blog for the tip of the iceberg), as that is the ONLY thing in America seems to understand these days . it's not quite enough to go after BuZh and his Imperial Bubble; the press, CONgress, even the blogosphere has played right along "playing politics" with this.

Invasion of privacy is just plain wrong.

It matters not one whit whether democrats or republicans are doing it - they've been doing on both sides of the aisle for decades - and yes, in America.

As insignificant as I may be, I find it interesting that Raw Story - posting remarks recently saying "leave Bill Clinton" alone is GATEKEEPING my remarks about government wiretapping and Telecom involvement right off it's comments.

While I enjoyed the BuZh bashing as much as anyone else - I do not think that Keith is still willing to look at the entire mess (where is the oversight that should have stopped this in the first place?) and what does he think the REMEDY is? Just ranting on television?

OBVIOUSLY telecoms need to be watched, OBVIOUSLY no one is above the law (and there are laws on the books to deal with this type of criminality - federal ones, too as the crimes cross state lines.

So why is Mr. Olbermann calling on us all to look at the psychopathy of BuZh&Co .. why not address the US CITIZEN (of which he is one himself) and I say (in exile) ..

TAKE BACK THE GOVERNMENT

O

GET A REAL INVESTIGATION ACCOMPLISHED THROUGH IMPEACHMENT

O

EVERYONE GO OUT AND FILE A CLASS ACTION SUIT AGAINST THE TELECOMS

O

HOW ABOUT A STRIKE UNTIL THEY STOP DOING THIS REPRESSIVE TACTIC

BEING USED AGAINST EVERYONE ??

O

NO INCUMBANTS ELECTED IN 2008

Here are articles on FISA and the Washington establishment as it relates to Chris Dodds 'new" fight.

http://politicsplusstuff.blogspot.com/2008/01/washington-dc-establishment.html
http://politicsplusstuff.blogspot.com/search/label/Establishment
http://politicsplusstuff.blogspot.com/search/label/FISA

Olbermann: Bush push for telco immunity 'textbook example of fascism'

David Edwards and Nick Juliano Published: Friday February 1, 2008 del.icio.us |
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In a blistering condemnation of President Bush's willingness to go to the wall for corporations he relies on to spy on Americans, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann says the president's message in his State of the Union address calling for immunity of telecommunications companies is a "textbook example of fascism."

Bush and Congressional Democrats are in a pitched fight over whether to free telecoms from legal liability as part of an overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The president says the companies should be rewarded for their cooperation in the war on terror; critics say legal immunity would preclude any oversight of Bush's warrantless wiretapping program that ensnared US citizens.

Olbermann accused Bush's threat to veto any bill without immunity of aiding the terrorists, when coupled with his threat that failing to act on a permanent FISA expansion would weaken US national security.

"You told Congress, if you do not act by Friday, our ability to track terrorist threats would be weakened, and our citizens would be in greater danger," Olbermann said. "Yet you you are willing to weaken that ability. You will subject us, your citizens, to that greater danger. This is simple enough for you to understand. If Congress approves a new FISA act without telecom immunity, and sends it to your desk, and you veto it, you, by your own terms and your own definitions, you will have just sided with the terrorists."

The host further excoriated Bush for refusing to even acknowledge corporate assistance, always couching his calls for immunity by describing companies "believed" or "alleged" to have assisted his still-classified program.

"If you, sir, are asking Congress and us to join you in this shameless, breathless, literal textbook example of fascism, the merged efforts of government and corporations who answer to no government, you still don't have the guts to say the telecom companies did assist you in your efforts?" Olbermann asked. "Will you and the equivocators who surround you like a cocoon never go on the record about anything? Even the stuff you claim to believe in?"

Ironically, Olbermann notes, that Vice President Dick Cheney did go on the record about telecom involvement, when he spoke to conservative talker Rush Limbaugh Wednesday.

"The Vice President probably shouldn’t have phoned in to the Rush Limbaugh Propaganda-Festival yesterday. Sixth sentence out of Mr. Cheney’s mouth: The FISA bill is about, quote, 'retroactive liability protection for the companies that have worked with us and helped us prevent further attacks against the United States,'" Olbermann said. "Oops. Mr. Cheney is something of a loose cannon, of course. But he kind of let the wrong cat out of the bag there."

Some critics dismissed Olbermann as a hyberbolic ranter who relies on over-the-top rhetoric.

"The MSNBC host, who once scolded public figures who use Nazi references, made his own latest invocation of Nazi Germany, as he compared the telecoms to the Krupp family who were convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg," wrote conservative media critic Brad Wilmouth. "Olbermann: 'It begins to look like the bureaucrats of the Third Reich trying to protect the Krupp family industrial giants by literally rewriting the laws of Germany for their benefit. And we know how that turned out. Alfred Krupp and 11 of his directors were convicted of war crimes at Nuremburg.'"

Unable to reach a final agreement on how to update FISA and whether to give immunity to the telecoms, Congress this week passed a 15-day extension to the Protect America Act, a temporary FISA extension forced through Congress just before its August recess.

On Monday, the Senate will resume debate on the FISA expansion, after Republicans backed off their demands that all proposed amendments be subjected to a 60-vote majority, according to Congressional Quarterly. The subscription-only Capitol Hill journal reports:

Three amendments to be voted on next week will address retroactive immunity for companies being sued for allegedly assisting the National Security Agency in its warrantless surveillance program.

One, by Democrats Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, would simply remove the immunity provisions, which are a priority for the Bush administration.

Another, by Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., would substitute the federal government as the defendant in the lawsuits. Both would only need a simple majority for adoption.

A third, by Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., would require the companies to justify their actions before the secret FISA court, which would then decide whether immunity was warranted. It would require 60 votes to be adopted.

Some critics see the move as just another GOP gambit to block immunity from passing.

"It seems rather clear what happened here. There are certain amendments that are not going to get even 50 votes -- including the Dodd/Feingold amendment to strip telecom immunity out of the bill -- and, for that reason, Republicans were more than willing to agree to a 50-vote threshold, since they know those amendments won't pass even in a simple up-or-down vote," writes Glenn Greenwald, a prominent blogger covering the FISA fight.

"But then, there are other amendments which might be able to get 50 votes, but cannot get 60 votes -- such as Feinstein's amendment to transfer the telecom cases to the FISA court and her other amendment providing that FISA is the "exclusive means" for eavesdropping -- and, thus, those are the amendments for which the GOP insisted upon a 60-vote requirement."

During his comment, Olbermann reiterated the revelation from former AT&T technician Mark Klein, who blew the whistle on his former company's collusion with the National Security Agency, that he connected a "Big Brother machine" to funnel every piece of communication crossing AT&T's wires into an NSA database.

"This isn't about finding that kind of needle in a haystack, this isn't even about finding that haystack" Olbermann said. "This is about scooping up every piece of hay there ever was."

This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast January 31, 2008.

Telecoms facing multi-billion dollar lawsuits

Verizon sued for $50 billion over wiretap program

By Leslie Wines, MarketWatch

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - AT&T Corp., BellSouth Corp and Verizon Telecommunications are facing lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages for the decision to turn over calling records to the government, the New York Times reported Saturday.

A federal lawsuit was filed in Manhattan yesterday seeking as much as $50 billion in civil damages against Verizon on behalf of its subscribers.

Under telecommunications law, the phone companies are at risk for at least $1,000 per person whose records they disclosed without a court order, according to Orin Kerr, a former federal prosecutor and assistant professor at George Washington University The telecommunications companies allegedly complied with an effort by the National Security Agency to build a vast database of calling records, without warrants, to increase its surveillance capabilities after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. have insisted that they were vigilant about their customers' privacy, but did not directly address their cooperation with the government effort, the report said.

Verizon said it gave customer information to a government agency "only where authorized by law for appropriately defined and focused purposes," but declined comment on any relationship with a national security program that was "highly classified."

"Verizon does not, and will not, provide any government agency unfettered access to our customer records or provide information to the government under circumstances that would allow a fishing expedition," the company said in a statement on Friday.

A fourth telecommunications company, Qwest Communications International Inc. (Q:

qwest communications intl in comQ 5.86, -0.03, -0.5%) , rebuffed government requests for the company's calling records after 9/11 because of "a disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process," according to a statement released by an attorney on behalf of the company's former chief executive, Joseph Nacchio.

The legal experts said consumers could sue the phone service providers under communications privacy legislation that dates back to the 1930s. Relevant laws include the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, and a variety of provisions of the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act, including the Stored Communications Act, passed in 1986.

The law governing the release of phone company data has been modified repeatedly to grapple with changing computer and communications technologies that have increasingly bedeviled law enforcement agencies, the report said.

Wiretapping has been tightly regulated by these laws. But in general, the laws have set a lower legal standard required by the government to obtain what has traditionally been called pen register or trap-and-trace information -- calling records obtained when intelligence and police agencies attached a specialized device to subscribers' telephone lines.

The restrictions still hold, said a range of legal scholars, in the face of new computer databases with decades' worth of calling records, according to the newspaper.

Leslie Wines is a reporter for MarketWatch in New York.

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U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 110^th Congress - 1^st Session

as compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate

Vote Summary

Question: On the Cloture Motion (Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Proceed to Consider S. 2248 )
Vote Number:	435	Vote Date:	December 17, 2007, 12:19 PM
Required For Majority:	3/5	Vote Result:	Cloture Motion Agreed to
Measure Number:	S. 2248 (FISA Amendments Act of 2007 )
Measure Title:	An original bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, to modernize and streamline the provisions of that Act, and for other purposes.

Vote Counts:	YEAs	76
	NAYs	10
	Not Voting	14