A late reply to the letter from perris January 26, 2008 11:24 AM which pointed out that if telecoms are immune from all legal consequences for monitoring our communications, they will be free to steal any information that passes through their hands to use for any purpose.

Note that this is very possible and has in fact happened before:

Malaysia recently revamped its communications network. A Japanese company was to do the work, but at the last minute the U.S. giant AT&T suddenly undercut its offer and snatched the deal away. AT&T won the contract thanks to the good offices of the NSA, the National Security Agency, which tracked down and deciphered the Japanese bid.

The NSA, a U.S. spy agency with a budget four times that of the CIA, has the technology to record every word transmitted by telephone, fax, or e-mail in any part of the world. It can intercept up to two million conversations per minute. The NSA's real mission is to maintain U.S. economic and political control over the planet, but national security and the struggle against terrorism are its formal covers. Its eavesdropping systems allow it to track every message that has anything to do with criminal organizations as dangerous as, for example, Greenpeace or Amnesty International.

All these facts came out in March 1998 when the European Parliament published an official report entitled, "Evaluation of the Technologies of Political Control."

From Galeano's “Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World” 1998.

And how much Internet traffic is included in "telecom" immunity?

The vote in the Senate tomorrow is, if you believe the WSJ and the administration, vital to protect us all from murdering terrorists.

The vote in the Senate tomorrow is, if you know what's in the proposed bill and amendments, a shocking violation of the constitution of the United States.

The three leading presidential candidates are all senators. How many of them are going to bother to show up to vote on it, or even admit to noticing the issue at all?

It could be that House Democrats found the spine to oppose Bush on the PAA when they saw Obama's recent results. When they consider his percentage wins in VA, MD, and DC they've got to think that the majority of Democratic voters do not want the party to keep on doing the same things it's been doing all these Bush years. They risk being left behind if they don't mark themselves out as the administration's opposition.

It took them entirely too much time to realize that they are the majority, and that Bush is not only a lame duck but an extremely unpopular lame duck. But I am optimistic that this is the first step in the right direction, not the last one.

In the article, Glenn said "Obama is required to denounce certain people with whom he has no connection while the likes of Bush, McCain, Lieberman and Giuliani are free to associate themselves openly with the most extremist elements around."

But he does have a connection with those other people! They're all black, and every black person is responsible for everything every other black person does or says. That's not true of whites, of course. The white majority is entitled to espouse as many differing opinions as it likes, but every minority is 100% homogeneous, because their primary characteristic is that they're non-white.

You're right to call journalists on this. I'm sure they don't think of themselves as racist, but this sure smells like racism to me.

This is great. I'm sure my e-mails and faxes helped in a small way, and Glenn's and Jane Hamsher's frequent and detailed blogs helped in a large way, to get this result. We need to keep up the pressure to make sure this is the first step in the movement to take back the country, not the last.

A related point: Several commenters have referred to racism as being stronger or more common in the south, as if that was simple fact. It's a frequent and unexamined assumption that does not hold up under investigation. I suggest reading James W Loewen's book 'Sundown Towns' to see a fascinating investigation of an aspect of our racial history that he originally assumed to be southern, but found was prevalent almost exclusively outside of the south. It also shows why Rev Wright and other American blacks are unlikely to agree with Pat Buchanan about the gratitude they owe to whites. And that the projection of bad qualities onto the Other can be regional as well as racial or religious.

I was stuck by this phrase in this article: "domestic military operations". I had always understood that we have a law that specifically prohibits domestic military operations, that is, it prohibits the regular military (Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force) from being used in any way in any conflict within US borders.

I hope someone here who knows more about the law than I do can dig it up, because it seems to me that "domestic military operations" are simply impossible under that law.

This is good news, but I agree with the people here who said it's not over till it's over. I'm sure they'll try to sneak it back in through a back door somewhere. I am going to send another round of faxes to various senators and representatives about FISA/PAA, including a reminder of their constitutional duty to investigate those teary lies by Mukasey. We can't let them think they can get away with anything um, creative.