"At this moment, Harry Reid, the DEMOCRATIC Senate majority leader, is trying to push the Senate FISA amendment bill through congress which grants retroactive immunity to certain telecom companies for allowing unlimited and unfettered access to EVERYONE's electronic transmissions without a warrant as required under FISA.

It seems to me that this issue exemplifies what John is fighting: corporate interests that shamelessly subvert our government and the rule of law.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a small nonprofit, has filed suit against these companies and has compelling evidence against them. But the telecom lobby seeks to eliminate any chance of making these companies accountable under the law through a legislative pardon via retroactive immunity.

Chris Dodd has vowed to filibuster the bill, but desperately needs help to bring this unconscionable act to the attention of the American people. Like John, this issue has gotten no serious coverage by the media.

John Edwards should make this a prime example of why he is running for President. He should call out all Democratic senators, including Sen.s Clinton and Obama, and demand that they immediately take action to eliminate any provision for retroactive immunity in the Senate FISA bill.

This is not an issue that can wait until January of 2009. This needs a show of leadership RIGHT NOW.

I can think of no better way for John Edwards to show that he is the leader this country needs than by taking action against the telecom companies who are using Harry Reid as their proxy to avoid accountability under the rule of law.

The next debate is in Los Angeles on January 31st. Between now and then, everyone should urge John to make this a campaign issue. People should also urge The Politico, who is sponsoring the debate, to include a question on telecom retroactive immunity by posting a question at [a link to http://dyn.politico.com/debate/).

I truly believe that through this issue, he can show voters that he is the leader who can reverse the tide of corporate power that rules this country today."

I think Dodd is in a pretty strong position - he can run out the clock. 8 days is not a long time in the Senate, and there are lots of opportunities to delay things. (For example, the reading of bills is generally waived by unanimous consent. I would expect to see a lot of reading of bills.) The realistic goal should probably be a 1 year extension as is - i.e., into the next Congress. Since it will expire soon if nothing is done, that gives Dodd and company a lot of leverage.

Belief in their Fear of Bush and his Mighty Wurlitzer is comforting. But...

There really is no evidence that they are "afraid" of Bush or any of the Busheviks these days; it's not certain they've ever been "afraid" of them. But it's one of dozens of convenient excuses for their craven behavior. The other very tiresome excuse is "We don't have the Votes!" Yes, yes, yes. We know. Yadda, yadda.

Glenn says it's "complex" and Fear isn't the only driving motivation for the Democrats' constant cavage, but any other motivation -- such as complicity, agreeance, stupidity, that sort of thing -- is always given short shrift amongst most of the Lefty Blogosphere. Until relatively recently, complicity wasn't even mentionable.

But more and more, there is simply no way around it.

And please note, all the yowling about how weak and craven they are by Caving to Bush All The Time has produced no change in behavior at all, except, perhaps, a more thorogoing contempt for the netroots. No progress has been made at all in getting them to Stand Up for the Constitution and the Rule of Law -- among so many other items of interest.

Oh, but Dodd...!!! Oh, but Ned Lamont, too. Something goes on, true enough, but it makes little or no difference in the end. Lieberman is still in the Senate, chairing a powerful committee, caucusing with the Democrats, being a fifth columnist, thwarting investigations right and left, laughing the while. Dodd gets pro forma "help" that amounts to nothing at all, and the Leadership is openly trying to thwart and suppress the very idea of Constitutional protection. Candidates say sweet things, do nothing.

At some point, you've got to say it's not "fear" at all.

It's desire.

The Republican (and Vichy Democrat) framing is oh-so-familiar (courtesy Karl Rove):

"Do they or do they not want our intelligence agencies to be listening in on conversations between terrorists in the Middle East who may be plotting to hurt America?" Rove asked.

As usual, there is no effective counter-spin coming from the loyal opposition. But the right framing should be pretty damned obvious.

We don't need new laws to allow the CIA and FBI to listen when al Qaeda is on the phone. In 2001 they legally intercepted plenty of al Qaeda messages. What we need is a law requiring George Bush to listen when the intelligence community tries to tell him about those messages -- remember "bin Laden determined to attack in U.S."?

As I understand it, John Edwards came out publicly to oppose either warrantless surveillance, or immunity, or both, last fall sometime [his current stump speech includes a line about ending "illegal" spying on Americans]. I don't remember the details, and it's hard to tell how much the campaign has been following the intricate ins and outs of the FISA debate.

So to try to help counteract the latest White House PR push for immunity for their well-heeled secret corporate surveillance partners, here're a few reminders and links about the core provisions of the amendments to FISA (beyond the brazen immunity provisions) that will be on the floor of the Senate this Thursday, in spite of Chris Dodd's hold on the Intelligence Committee bill, courtesy of "Majority Leader" Harry Reid:

These two bills (the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committee FISA bills) are about (in addition to immunity in the Intelligence bill's Title II) "Link Analysis" and the "largest database ever assembled in the world" - as indirectly confirmed by the House Judiciary Committee's report on its FISA bill "RESTORE," which cited the following two news articles as describing activity that the RESTORE Act (and thus obviously the two Senate bills) would permit:

...The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

[snip]

The usefulness of the NSA's domestic phone-call database as a counterterrorism tool is unclear. Also unclear is whether the database has been used for other purposes.

[snip]

For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events. - Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY, May 11, 2006

Http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

...Matt Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania and a former researcher for AT&T, said the telecommunications companies could have easily provided the F.B.I. with the type of network analysis data it was seeking because they themselves had developed it over many years, often using sophisticated software like a program called Analyst's Notebook.

"This sort of analysis of calling patterns and who the communities of interests are is the sort of things telephone companies are doing anyway because it's central to their businesses for marketing or optimizing the network or detecting fraud," said Professor Blaze, who has worked with the F.B.I. on technology issues.

Such "analysis is extremely powerful and very revealing because you get these linkages between people that wouldn't be otherwise clear, sometimes even more important than the content itself" of phone calls and e-mail messages, he said. "But it's also very invasive. There's always going to be a certain amount of noise," with data collected on people who have no real links to suspicious activity, he said.

[snip]

But critics assert that the further the links are taken, the less valuable the information proves to be. - Eric Lichtblau, the New York Times, September 9, 2007

Http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/washington/09fbi.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Both articles were cited in Footnote #27 of the House Judiciary Committee report on RESTORE, released October 12, 2007:

Http://www.rules.house.gov/110/text/110_hr3773rpt_judiciary.pdf

This is not about the 'foreign to foreign on a U.S. wire' problem that has been used as justification for these revisions/eviscerations of FISA - that issue is separately addressed and resolved in these bills. This is a brand new world of spying being authorized by Congress against innocent Americans (under Title I of the Senate bills) without any meaningful Judicial Branch check. New corporate and government spying authority which is being accompanied by a simultaneous effort to hold immune from lawsuits the cooperating corporations, that would block off Judicial Branch review to prevent the Supreme Court from having an opportunity to rule that these spying authorities openly violate the Fourth Amendment.

http://intelligence.senate.gov/071025/report.pdf

This is collusion between the Executive and Legislative Branches of government to end-run the Constitution, and to try to avoid any check from the Judicial Branch which would stop and reverse this deliberate invasion of our privacy and knowing violation of our Constitution. If Members of Congress could be impeached, on this issue the American people would easily convict those complicit in this collusion, and would throw them out of office with the contempt they have so thoroughly earned.

Both Chris Dodd's Congressional Record floor comments in December and Russ Feingold's website contain excellent summaries, arguments, and details about this issue - they have all the information Edwards would need to get up to speed on this matter.

The course our nation is on will not self-correct if left to its own devices.