The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 has been passed by the House 293-129.
If the bill also passes the Senate, the 4th amendment would be gutted.
Not surprisingly, Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) voted against the bill. The roll call vote is now available |here|.
I just got off the phone with Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s office in DC, and they can’t tell me the Congressman’s position on H.R. 6304. Maybe if I call back later, said the person who answered the phone.
I have been trying since 7 AM local time–that’s 8 AM DC time–to reach the congressman’s office, but they don’t have any after-hours system for leaving messages. Apparently their email system isn’t working either, as I spent a rather frustrating half hour looking up nine digit zip codes and such before concluding that the system just wasn’t working.
Those who have been able to read H.R. 6304 say it would provide retroactive immunity for telecom companies that engaged in illegal wiretapping without a warrant and would also give the president authority for unlimited search and seizure without a warrant.
Do you trust your government to tap your phone and search your house without a warrant?
I don’t worry about Rep. Jackson’s vote, but I do worry that his office hasn’t even heard of the bill. It isn’t even available to read on Thomas and has been introduced under rules that would permit only one hour of debate.
Is it too late to stop the bill? You definitely won’t stop it if you don’t try. You can find your rep’s info here, then call the house switchboard at 202 224-3121.
The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote today on a bill that would provide retroactive immunity to telecom companies that spied on American citizens with illegal wiretaps.
The vote is so secret and rushed that it’s not even online at Thomas. The Library of Congress has not even been given a copy of the bill so that people can read the bill and discuss it before voting on it.
Why the secrecy? Why the rush?
The Electronic Freedom Foundation has obtained a copy of the bill which you can find |here.|
Call your Representative in Washington. Now. This morning. Quickly. Tell them to vote against this bill, H.R. 6304, that gives retroactive immunity for illegal wiretapping. You can find your rep’s contact info |here|, or call the switchboard at 202 224-3121 and ask for your rep by name.
Maya Nand was a legal immigrant who had been living in the U.S. for seven years, when a routine check triggered by his application for citizenship turned up an old misdemeanor. Suddenly Nand was taken from his home in California and put in an Arizona detention center in Eloy, Arizona, twelve hours away. Nand, a diabetic, started having pains in his heart, and would stand up all night because he couldn’t breathe. His guards told him to stop faking, says Nand’s family. In his last collect call home, Nand told his family, “If you don’t get me out of here today, I’m going to die.” The next day he was found unconscious and later died. He was one of five detainees to die at Eloy within a 26-month period.
At any given time, some 31,000 people in the U.S. are being held in custody waiting for the government to decide whether to deport them. Information about these detainees is difficult to find–where they are being held—even how many of them die in custody.
Through the Freedom Of Information Act, the New York Times so far has obtained the names of 66 individuals who have died in custody. They are maintaining an index of articles on the subject as they try to obtain more information.
California’s Rep. Lofgren has introduced legislation–H.R. 5950 to provide oversight for immigration detainees.
Mike Gravel announced today he has left the Democratic Party and will run for president on the Libertarian Party.
The government may not be perfect but it does accomplish a few things. Safe drinking water. Highways. The National Park system. Sorry, but I just can’t take the Libertarians seriously.
The Mike Gravel for President buttons, magnets and bumper sticker link in the sidebar has been deleted.
The Obama campaign has been telling people judgment is more important than experience. They point to Obama’s role as a professor of constitutional law. What could be better preparation for the presidency, they ask, than that. With Obama at the top of the pyramid, all that peachy judgment stuff will just filter all the way through the government organization.
Except for one little thing. The Obama campaign is using churches for political rallies. Like this one:
This is an official campaign event from the official Obama campaign website. It’s a march from the Shiloh Baptist Church at 720 Mt. Vernon Ave. in Columbus, Ohio to the board of elections to vote early for Barack Obama. Breakfast at 8, march at 9. Free food.
Vote for Obama.
In Jesus name.
*burp*
Does Shiloh Baptist church have tax-exempt status? If they do, and if they are saying to the government that they are not using their special tax-exempt status to get the taxpayers of America to subsidize their partisan support for a political candidate, they are lying.
But so what if a little church in Ohio cheats on its taxes, or lies, or claims to know who God wants to be president. What about the Obama campaign? What do they understand about separation of church and state? What do they understand about the establishment of religion clause? Where can they find a constitutional law professor to explain it to them? When is that Obama Judgment we keep hearing about going to trickle down into the Obama campaign organization, which if you stop to think about it, it a whole lot smaller than the executive branch of the federal government.
If the Obama campaign can’t get this right, what can we expect from an Obama administration?
Senator Obama has voted consistently against retroactive immunity for the telecoms, against warrantless wiretapping, and against unreasonable search and seizure. He has supported Senator Dodd ’s courageous opposition to the FISA amendment. He opposes torture. He supports the Geneva Convention. That’s part of the reason Illinois keeps voting for him.
But what about separation of church and state?
Chicago has a north side baseball team: the Cubs. The Cubs are known as gentlemen, but they lose.
Chicago also has a south side team: the White Sox. The White Sox motto is “Winning Ugly”. The meaning of the motto is “We are not gentlemen, we do not play by the rules. When the ref is looking the other way, we get away with whatever we can. But we win.” With all those eloquent, Harvard-law-schoolish inspirational speeches, Obama must be from the north side, right?
I don’t think so.
You know that Illinois heath care plan Senator Obama talked about being so proud of in the debate the other night?
Well, I live in Illinois. I don’t have health insurance and I don’t have children either. But even though I can’t get health care myself, my state taxes go to pay for doctors for other people’s children. That is WRONG.
The Foreign Service has been in an uproar since an announcement last month that diplomats will be drafted to assignments in Iraq if enough diplomats do not volunteer.
At the Oct. 31 town hall meeting, hundreds of diplomats applauded when one likened a forced tour in Iraq to a “potential death sentence.” Some at the session questioned the ethics of ordering unarmed civilians into a war zone and expressed concerns about a lack of training and medical care for those who have served….
Three foreign service personnel — two diplomatic security agents and one political officer — have been killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.
The discussion on Dipnote, the official blog, has turned nasty, with those questioning the policy being called “wimps and weenies”.
These are diplomats. You know, the ones we depend on to keep peace in the world by their diplomatic behavior.
Senator Chris Dodd has declared a “stop” on the latest Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) revision. The latest compromise worked out in a secret session of the intelligence committee would make warrantless wiretapping legal and retroactively make the telecommunications companies that participated in it immune from prosecution.
Dodd’s presidential campaign website says:
The Military Commissions Act. Warrantless wiretapping. Shredding of Habeas Corpus. Torture. Extraordinary Rendition. Secret Prisons.
No more.
You go, Senator.
If anyone still has doubts that the FISA act was enacted for reasons that had anything to do with national security, it was recently revealed that communications companies had been asked to turn over customer information to the government in February 2001, seven months before the 9/11 attacks.
Here’s what you can do right now:
1. Call the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at 202-224-3542 and tell him to support Chris Dodd’s hold — Reid’s wavering. Tell them you are against wiretapping without a warrant. [Note: Senator Reid’s Washington office voice mail is full. If you can get through, try to talk to his staff (press1) , they may be keeping a tally. Now call his regional office in Carson City at 775-882-7343 instead. Fill that voice mail too, or tell his staff your concerns about wiretapping without a warrant.]
2. Call your own two Senators and tell them exactly the same thing.
3. Make a contribution to Senator Dodd’s campaign, so he can continue to speak out.
4. Write a message on your own blog. Ask people to take these 4 steps.
Forget the talk about the tenth Illinois casino. Proposed legislation now before the Illinois house would triple Illinois gambling, including the creation of a downtown Chicago casino.
While casinos can be very profitable, they are harmful to economic development. Restaurants are the hardest hit when a new casino opens, although expenditures in other sectors decrease also. Casinos can make more than half of their income from non-gaming revenues, including hotel and restaurant facilities on the premises. According to a study by E L Grinols and J D Omorov reported in the Spring 1996 Illinois Business Review:
Restaurants in many states, including Illinois, have reported that their revenues dropped as much as 50 percent in response to the opening of a nearby casino, and many restaurants have closed.
The social costs from gambling to the surrounding community can also be high. Costs associated with bankruptcy, debt, criminal justice costs, and other consequences of gambling problems can cost the community somewhere between four to eleven times the amount of tax revenue they bring in, depending on which study you look at. Gambling impoverishes whole communities.
And once a gambling enterprise is let into the state, it doesn’t go away. Although the racing business ceased being profitable long ago, the taxpayers of Illinois are still subsidizing that industry to keep it from going out of business.
Gambling is not good for business and it’s not good for Illinois.
The bill is being discussed this week. This is the time to contact your representative. You can find the contact information for your Illinois state representative here. If you don’t know your district you can find it here.
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
--Benjamin Franklin 1755
Out of the race:
(links still active)
(except Mike Gravel as of 3/26/08)
Before we can trust each other we must understand each other. To understand each other...hey, let's just eat.
