PHONE ACTIVISM ALERT!! CALL THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVE!!

We’re not done yet. FireDogLake has a petition to pressure the House to stand firm behind the RESTORE act.

Dear Virginia,

What is wrong with our Senate leadership?

Three times now, DFA members like you and me have made phone calls demanding Senators stand up to the Bush administration and pass a FISA bill without granting immunity to telecommunication companies who spied on innocent Americans.

Each time, Washington insiders predicted that we would fail to stop it. And because of you, each time the insiders were wrong.

But President Bush is determined to get telecom immunity passed before he leaves office because he knows the lawsuits against AT&T and Verizon are America's last chance to hold the Bush administration accountable for spying on you. He's even promised to veto any FISA reform bill that doesn't let his cronies off the hook.

How many Americans will die in Iraq while the Senate spends another worthless day fighting over a flawed bill that only the President and his friends want passed? How many children will continue to go without health insurance because the Senate is too busy helping AT&T instead of fighting to expand S-CHIP or provide health care for all?

Why is a "get out of jail free" card for Verizon more important than stopping global warming?

It's time to take FISA reform off the table until America elects a new President next November. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could end this once and for all -- today.

Call Senator Reid right now and demand: No new FISA reforms while President Bush is still in office.

Democratic Majority Leader
Senator Harry Reid
(202) 224-3542

Suggested Script:
"Take telecom immunity off the table. Pull the FISA reform bill and extend current law until President Bush leaves office. The U.S. Senate has more important work to get done than figure out how to let AT&T get away with spying on Americans."

Please report your call here:
www.DemocracyforAmerica.com/reportfisacalls

Wait! Don't stop there. Contact your senators too! They need to know where you stand. Senator Reid is more likely to stand strong if your senator stands with him. Please call your senators now:

Senate Switchboard
(202) 224-3121

Don't forget to report how your calls went here:
www.DemocracyforAmerica.com/reportfisacalls

Washington insiders say we can't stop this bill. Maybe they are right, but we've heard it before. Let's see what they are saying after you and I and our progressive community make thousands of calls today.

We will stand up to President Bush today. Together, we'll demand the Senate follows our lead.

Voting with the Republicans were the following eighteen Democrats (again, rough count):

Bayh, Inouye, Johnson, Landrieu, McCaskill, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Stabenow, Feinstein, Kohl, Pryor, Rockefeller, Salazar, Carper, Mikulski, Conrad, Webb, and Lincoln. Joe Lieberman also voted against stripping retroactive immunity.

Nays TRAITORS TO THE US CONSTITUTION

Alexander (R-TN) Allard (R-CO) Barrasso (R-WY) Bayh (D-IN) Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Carper (D-DE)
Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Coleman (R-MN)
Collins (R-ME) Conrad (D-ND) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Dole (R-NC) Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Feinstein (D-CA) Grassley (R-IA) Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE) Hatch (R-UT) Hutchison (R-TX) Inhofe (R-OK)
Inouye (D-HI) Isakson (R-GA) Johnson (D-SD) Kohl (D-WI) Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA) Lieberman (ID-CT) Lincoln (D-AR) Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL) McCain (R-AZ) McCaskill (D-MO) McConnell (R-KY)
Mikulski (D-MD) Murkowski (R-AK) Nelson (D-FL) Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR) Roberts (R-KS) Rockefeller (D-WV) Salazar (D-CO)
Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Smith (R-OR) Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA) Stabenow (D-MI) Stevens (R-AK) Sununu (R-NH)
Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Voinovich (R-OH) Warner (R-VA)
Webb (D-VA) Wicker (R-MS)

American readers, if your senator is on this list, would you please let them know how you intend to vote when they are up for re-election? Thank you.

Senate Protects Telecom Immunity in Spy Bill

Who's Blogging » Links to this article

By William Branigin and Paul Kane

Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, February 12, 2008; 2:53 PM

The Senate voted today to preserve retroactive immunity from lawsuits for telecommunications companies that cooperated with a government eavesdropping program, decisively rejecting an amendment that would have stripped the provision from a bill to modernize an electronic surveillance law.

Senators voted 67 to 31 to shelve the amendment offered by Sens. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). A filibuster-proof 60 votes had been needed for the amendment to move forward.

The vote represented a victory for the Bush administration and a number of telecommunications companies -- including AT&T and Sprint Nextel -- that face dozens of lawsuits from customers seeking billions of dollars in damages.

Approval of the amendment would have exposed the companies to privacy lawsuits for helping the administration monitor the calls of suspected terrorists without warrants from a special court following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The amendment was one of a series the Senate is considering today to modify legislation that would extend the government's authority to carry out electronic surveillance against targets outside the United States.

President Bush has called on Congress to rapidly renew the surveillance authority granted to the federal government in the Protect America Act approved last year. But he has vowed to veto any bill that does not shield the companies that helped the government carry out the warrantless wiretapping program he ordered after the Sept. 11 attacks.

About 40 lawsuits have been filed against U.S. telecommunications companies by plaintiffs who alleged that the firms' actions violated wiretapping and privacy laws.

Immunity from such lawsuits must also be approved by the House, which does not provide such protection in its version of the bill.

The Senate bill is aimed at modernizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The Protect America Act last year gave the government expanded authority to carry out surveillance, but its provisions expired Feb. 1. Congress and Bush agreed to an extension that runs out Friday.

In debate on the Senate floor before the vote, Dodd said it was a bad precedent to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies, and he urged senators to "allow the courts to do their job."

Arguing against the amendment, Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.) said that permitting lawsuits against the companies would lead to public disclosure of vital intelligence-gathering methods and would discourage the private sector from cooperating with the government in the future. He said the companies facing lawsuits had acted "in good faith," and he called the immunity provision "an essential part of this bill."

Seventeen Democrats and one independent joined 49 Republicans in voting against the Dodd-Feingold amendment. Among those voting with the majority was Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the leading candidate for the GOP presidential nomination. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who is battling for the Democratic nomination, voted in favor of the amendment. His chief rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), did not vote.

Civil liberties groups denounced the Senate's action.

"When companies break the law, they should be held accountable by our government -- not given a multimillion-dollar favor," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington Legislative Office. "The millions of Americans who are telecom customers deserve to know that their phone conversations are private."

In a statement, she charged that telecommunications companies "illegally turned over private customer call information to the government." But instead of "having faith in the U.S. court system to fairly handle these cases," she said, the Senate opted to "give the telecom providers a get-out-of-jail-free card."

The Senate today also rejected two other amendments aimed at diluting the immunity provision. One would have allowed the lawsuits to go forward but would have made the federal government--not the telecommunications companies--the defendant in those cases. The measure, co-sponsored by Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), was rejected 68 to 30.

The other rejected amendment, sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), would have authorized the secret FISA court, which oversees federal surveillance of foreign intelligence and terrorism suspects inside the United States, to decide whether a company could be sued for providing customers' records to the government.

It was defeated by a vote of 57 to 41.

Kathy's US Politics Blog

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Should Congress Provide Blanket Immunity For Wiretaps?

About Poll

Should Congress Give TeleCom Firms Immunity From Lawsuits Resulting From Bush White House Warrantless Wiretaps? Yes, of course No, absolutely not Maybe

Current Results

Telecom Immunity: It's Up To The House Now

If you believe in the Constitution ... if you believe that White House actions require more than "make it so" commands to be judged legal under the Constitution ... then you need to contact your US Representative. Now. (Note: most of the readers of USP oppose telecom immunity -- see the poll.)

Political expediency is the name of the day; President Bush threatens to veto any FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) legislation that does not contain immunity for telecommunications firms that performed warantless wiretaps at Administration behest.

So Democrats in the Senate capitulate: today 18 Democrats joined the 49 Senate Republicans to keep the telecom immunity provision in FISA . Who were they? Bayh, Carper, Conrad, Feinstein, Inouye, Johnson, Kohl, Landrieu, Lincoln, McCaskill, Mikulski, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Pryor, Rockefeller, Salazar, Stabenow and Webb. Clinton did not vote; Obama voted against amnesty. (See details on 12 key senators.)

Coupled with last week's admission by the Department of Justice that there will be no investigation of the waterboarding of Gitmo prisoners because the DOJ had ruled the practice "legal" at the time, Americans who believe in the rule of law should be up in arms. Glenn Greenwald details the damage:

What's Really in the RESTORE Act: Rep. Rush Holt

What's Really in the RESTORE Act

Posted November 27, 2007 | 12:33 PM (EST)
Read More: Fisa, FISA Bill, Fourth Amendment, Joe Klein, Joe Klein FISA, Joe Klein RESTORE Act, Nancy Pelosi, RESTORE Act, Breaking Politics News

stumbleupon :What's Really in the RESTORE Act digg: What's Really in the RESTORE Act reddit: What's Really in the RESTORE Act del.icio.us: What's Really in the RESTORE Act

I was pleased to see Time Magazine columnist Joe Klein acknowledge that he "may have made a mistake" in his column attacking the House Majority ("The Tone Deaf Democrats") and misrepresenting the RESTORE Act. Unfortunately, Mr. Klein still professes confusion toward the bill's contents and continues to question whether the House should have passed it in the first place.

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As one of the bill's authors, I want to set the record straight about what's in the RESTORE Act, why it's needed to safeguard Americans from unwarranted surveillance, and ultimately, why it will lead to better intelligence gathering.

In his original column, Mr. Klein incorrectly wrote, "Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi quashed the House Intelligence Committee's bipartisan effort and supported a Democratic bill that - Limbaugh is salivating - would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court, an institution founded to protect the rights of U.S. citizens only." It contains no such provision.

(Also, as someone closely involved in trying to produce a good bill, I cannot figure out what bipartisan House Intelligence Committee effort Speaker Pelosi "quashed" that Mr. Klein could possibly be talking about. Several Republicans proposed something close to last August's Protect America Act, but that never got anywhere.)

Let me repeat: our bill gives the intelligence community the tools and flexibility it needs to listen to the conversations between those who wish to do us harm. This bill provides exactly what the Director of National Intelligence asked for earlier this year: it explicitly states that no court order is required to listen to the conversations of foreigners that happen to pass through the U.S. telecommunications system. It does not grant Constitutional rights to foreign terrorists.

What we have not agreed to do is give this or any other President a permanent blank check to spy on you, your family, the members of your congregation, or any other American citizen without any judicial oversight - a position shared by an overwhelming majority of Americans according to the latest public opinion surveys on the topic.

If federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies want to read the email or listen to the phone call of an American citizen, they have to get - except in emergencies - a judge to issue a warrant allowing them do so, as the Fourth Amendment to our Constitution requires. Such a court order would be easy to get if there is cause to believe that the American's communications are important intelligence for the protection of our security. And in such "emergencies" there would be quick after-the-fact review by the courts. These are not "unimportant, obscure technical details" - this is the heart of the bill.

In an era where the government can conduct searches and seize the contents of communications without even alerting citizens to the government's presence, building in such safeguards is even more important than in James Madison's day, when if the King's men were coming to take you or your papers, you at least saw them walking up to your door before they kicked it in.

This bill is not simply about "defining the 4th Amendment rights of US residents in light of new technologies" - as Mr. Klein wrote in a later posting. As I've previously noted, our bill will only strengthen and improve intelligence collection and analysis. It has been demonstrated that when officials must establish before a court that they have reason to intercept communications - that is, that they know what they are doing - we get better intelligence than through indiscriminate collection and fishing expeditions.

What our bill does is both protect Constitutional norms and require that the government meet some basic evidentiary standards - as evaluated by a judge - before allowing the National Security Agency, the FBI, and the other elements of our federal law enforcement and intelligence communities to conduct surveillance on Americans. Having to meet a standard in the intelligence business isn't simply about protecting American rights, it's about targeting the right people in the first place. We must not let anyone advance the bogus argument - repeated by Mr. Klein - that protecting American's against unwarranted search and seizure necessarily requires a compromise in their security. The opposite is true.

It is interesting that the principles Mr. Klein proposes and claims a bipartisan bill should include are included in the bill as written and passed by the House: the use of new surveillance technologies against foreign targets is appropriate; if a suspicious pattern is found between a foreigner and a US person, a warrant would be needed to monitor those communications; and the identities of US persons caught up in those intercepts would be minimized so the identities would not be known or used.

Mr. Klein is correct that Republicans will try to misrepresent the RESTORE Act as "civil rights for terrorists." They have already used these scare tactics and will continue to make false, hyperbolic statements about the bill. However, protecting Americans is too important for Democrats to allow such scurrilous attacks to lead them to sacrifice legislation that adheres to the principles that are necessary to protect Americans.

The House should be proud that it passed a bill that would strengthen the intelligence collection facet of our national security efforts and strengthen our Constitutional protections. This is the kind of tough-minded, hard-thinking legislation that is needed in this complicated and dangerous world. I can only try to get the Senate to do as well, and then hope that the President would approve it.
Comments for this post are now closed - but really go to the link and read them.

Most enlightening! Keep them faxes and emails going!!


Rep. Rush Holt

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Rush Holt, 59, is a resident of Hopewell Township, N.J. Born in West Virginia he inherited his interest in politics from his parents. His father was the youngest person ever to be elected to the U.S. Senate, at age 29. His mother served as Secretary of State of West Virginia and was the first woman to have held that position.

Rep. Holt earned his B.A. in Physics from Carleton College in Minnesota and completed his Master’s and Ph.D. at NYU. He has held positions as a teacher, Congressional Science Fellow, and arms control expert at the U.S. State Department where he monitored the nuclear programs of countries such as Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union. From 1989 until he launched his 1998 congressional campaign, Holt was Assistant Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, the largest research facility of Princeton University and the largest center for research in alternative energy in New Jersey. He has conducted extensive research on alternative energy and has his own patent for a solar energy device. Holt was also a five-time winner of the game show “Jeopardy.”

An active Member of Congress and a strong voice for his constituents, Rep. Holt serves on Committee on Education and the Labor, the Committee on Natural Resources, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Holt is the only scientist and only Member from the New Jersey delegation to sit on the Intelligence Committee. Holt is also the Chairman of the newly-created Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, which will strengthen oversight of intelligence by considering intelligence funding and other intelligence issues from the perspectives of both the authorizing and appropriating committees. Members of the new panel are all members of either the Intelligence or Appropriations committees.

Holt has had the honor to serve on the National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century chaired by former Senator and astronaut John Glenn and currently sits on several caucuses, including those on Renewable Energy, Sustainable Development, Alzheimer’s, Diabetes, Biomedical Research, India and Indian-Americans, Hellenic and Greek-American affairs, Farmland Protection, Human Rights, and a Woman’s Right to Choose. Rep. Holt is also a member of the New Democrat Coalition.

Rep. Holt has won several significant victories in Washington. He helped secure more than $700 million in new federal funding for science and technology research. He passed an amendment to the Land and Water Conservation Fund providing millions in funding for protecting open space and he was instrumental in adding the lower Delaware River to the National Wild and Scenic River program. He also initiated a federal study to map the gene sequences of all potential biological weapons to help first-responders and law enforcement react more effectively in the event of biological attack and he commissioned a Congressional investigation into the care at 91 nursing homes in New Jersey following up on reports of negligence.

Rep. Holt has brought significant federal resources to New Jersey. He helped secure $5.6 million for security improvements at the Naval Weapons Station Earle in Monmouth County, $2 million to establish a Land Use Municipal Resource Center to help local communities fight sprawl, and $500,000 for Hunterdon Medical Center to improve its emergency room facilities. Holt has also helped secure more than a hundred million dollars to improve roads, build libraries, and protect historic sites in the five counties he represents.

Throughout New Jersey's 12th district, Rep. Holt has developed a reputation as a tireless advocate for his constituents. He has assisted over five thousand constituents who have contacted his office with inquiries, producing resolutions for problems ranging from Medicare to veterans’ healthcare to immigration. He has also made hundreds of school visits and held dozens of town meetings and forums on topics such as Homeland Security, Alternative Energy, Economic Growth, Prescription Drugs, Student Aid, Privacy, Long-Term Care, and Sprawl.

Rep. Holt has received numerous awards and citations for his work, including the Planned Parenthood Community Service Award, the BIO Legislator of the Year, and the Science Coalition’s Champion of Science award. The magazine Scientific-American has also named Holt one of the 50 national “visionaries” contributing to “a brighter technological future.”

Rep. Holt is married to Margaret Lancefield, a physician and Medical Director of the Princeton charity care clinic. They have three grown children, Michael, Dejan and Rachel, and six grandchildren, Noah, Niala, Boaz, Varun, Cecile, and Rohan.
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