FISA, RESTORE, and Those Pesky Oaths

Image credit: National Archives

As you probably know if you're reading Firedoglake, the "RESTORE" Act, a nasty bit of business that basically gives the Bush Administration license to spy on us without a warrant, and a similar measure in the Senate are coming up for a vote soon. Here's what I wrote to my Senators on the matter:

I realize this bill is still in committee at the moment, but the House is voting on a version soon that is completely unacceptable. Please do what you can to make these committees remove the "amnesty" for telecomm industries for their part in the illegal surveillance the Bush Administration has conducted the last few years, and to remove anything like the "blanket warrants" proposed in the RESTORE Act.

There has been a story making the usual rounds when the Bush Administration leaks something, about a soldier from the 10th Mountain Division whose rescue was somehow delayed due to the current FISA law. It is false on several levels. First, the Attorney General has the right under FISA to immediately begin wiretapping, and then has up to 72 hours to obtain a warrant. That process shouldn't take more than an hour or so. Second, that soldier swore the same oath you did, which was to protect the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. What a sad irony it would be if, in the interest of making some illusory improvement in our ability to rescue such a person, our legislature trashed that very Constitution. Yet that is exactly what it appears the Congress is poised to do.

The "RESTORE" Act, as it is currently written, is a sham. It gives the illegal actions of the Bush Administration legal cover. It allows the government to eavesdrop on American citizens without a warrant. As the ACLU has observed, "blanket warrants" aren't warrants at all. They are license for the government to do whatever it wants to listen in on its citizens and to steal their private information.

Giving the telecomm industry amnesty, by the way, really just gives the Bush Administration amnesty. You can bet those telecomm company lawyers have plenty of paper saying that the government declared their actions legal. If they don't have immunity, they'll have to present those documents to protect themselves. With that amnesty, they won't ever have a motivation.

I can't believe that such a bill would be seriously discussed by a legislature in a democracy, particularly when it's controlled by Democrats. If you want to know why people say there's not a bit of real difference between the two parties, you can take this bill, and the fact that it could even reach the House floor, as an example.

Please don't make the same mistake in the Senate.

Feel free to plagiarize while writing or calling your Congressmen and Senators.

UPDATE: While watching the nonsense that was the Mukasey confirmation hearing today, Jane Hamsher summed up the Washington elite in a single sentence:

We’re ruled by moral pygmies.

Succinct, colorful, and depressingly accurate.