This is not, nor has it ever been, about telcoms wanting to avoid incuring vast legal fees, fines or other punishments, or the bad publicity that would come from this. Not primarily, at least. What this is and always has been about, I believe, is the administration's urgent desire to not give these telcoms any reason or ability to testify against it on this matter, because it knows what the legal and political consequences of that would likely be.

My understanding of this is right in line with yours. Even without blanket immunity, the telecoms could probably avoid any serious consequences of their lawbreaking. The real risk is to the Bush Administration when all these facts come out.

So that begs one major question: Why is it that the telecom industry is funding this push for immunity? Why don't they just save their money, secure in the notion that they will get off regardless? Also, if Bush has the most to lose in this deal, why is it that Democratic support for telecom immunity is most often expressed in terms of how much money the telecom industry has given to each particular Democrat? For example, people say Feinstein is supporting telecom immunity simply because the telecoms have paid her to do so. (Same with Reid and the others.) That doesn't make sense. It would make more sense if Feinstein's support for telecom immunity were the result of some horse-trading or bribery from the Bush Administration.

In short, it appears that the telecom industry is acting as a proxy for the Bush Admin, out there on the front lines fighting a battle that doesn't appear to be theirs. Does that not seem bizarre?

I found the post by Glenn where he discusses specific laws regarding the telecom industry safeguarding private data:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/10/27/litigation_costs/index.html

Here's the important bit:

We brought the case only against AT&T because AT&T has an independent duty to you, its customers, to protect your privacy. This is a very old duty, and if you know the history of the FISA law, you'll know that it was adopted as a result of some very deep work done by the Church Committee in Congress, that revealed that Western Union and the telegraph companies were making a copy of all telegraphs going into and outside the U.S. and delivering them to the Government.

So this was one of the big outrages uncovered by the Church Committee -- in addition to the rampant surveillance of people like Martin Luther King.

As a result of this, Congress very wisely decided that it wasn't sufficient to simply prevent the Government from listening in on your calls - they had to create an independent duty for the telecom carries not to participate in illegal surveillance.

So they are strictly forbidden from handing over your communications and communications records to the Government without proper legal process.

- Cindy Cohn, lead counsel in the case against AT&T

So there it is. The telecom industry knew that it was breaking the law when Bush asked them to spy on Americans. To understand their degree of responsibility requires a court hearing. Perhaps they'll be found not guilty. Perhaps not. However, it's not the job of Congress to decide this now.

Who could have possibly predicted that an independent Kurdistan in Iraq would upset the geopolitics in the region, particularly regarding our ally Turkey? Seriously, what do you guys expect, that our leaders have a crystal ball or something?

I mean, this is about as impossible to predict as the New Orleans levies breaking, or terrorists flying planes into buildings. And Bush told us that those things were completely impossible to predict.

It shows that the problems facing the Iraqis are temporary, and could go away when our troops leave. That's surely better than the notion that we've ignited ancient tensions that will never be resolved until everyone is dead and the entire country one big killing field. Right?

For Bush and the 29%ers, however, this is bad news. It means that no matter how you slice it, the Iraq adventure has been a failure. The best thing you can say about is we've united the people we "liberated" against us. Heckuva job, Georgie!

From what I can see, Rudy is the most beatable of all 3 main GOP contenders. With that in mind, they should retain all this stuff for his eventual swift-boating, no?

We as card carrying fully paid up liberals in good standing support, embrace, welcome and love our genocidal Jew killing overlords. For Peace, for the children, for the environment.

I was wondering how long it would take for some idiot to write something like this. It's as inevitable as the sun rising in the east.

Since the rabid pro-Zionist policies of Bush and the 29%ers are in the process of being rejected by a majority of Americans and humans in general, the hapless defenders of this policy are left with only one alternative: call their opponents anti-semites.

According to this absolutely bankrupt worldview, if you don't want to launch an unnecessary war against a non-threatening country that will cost trillions, kill millions, and further harm the US' position in the world, then it's obviously because you support genocide against the jews. And, funny enough, the person left to spout this tripe rarely feels comfortable signing his name to his idiocy, generally preferring to be anonymous.

What a surprise.

There is an interesting trend on these pages, that the most insipid comments end with the word Anonymous.