If I understand things correctly, Sen. Kennedy has proposed an amendment that would give immunity to the telecoms by not identifying any of them and identify all the WH actors allowing action against them.

"Kennedy wants to go after WH and leave telecoms alone

If I understand things correctly, Sen. Kennedy has proposed an amendment that would give immunity to the telecoms by not identifying any of them and identify all the WH actors allowing action against them."

Now, the rubber will meet the road.

They remind me (all of them) of the critical care cancer patient 'critters' gasping for air, hoping, and praying to a Theft--God. They beg they get some reprieve for their collective oversight of blatant criminality. Shame. Yes.

It's foolish to me to say it but,

Maybe the Air Force choir will sing,

@ the world-series and the cubs finally,

beat the good ole West Virginia wild cats?

Actually, the telecom privacy laws restrict what even the telecoms can do internally with user call information. If they reveal without authorisation or misuse subscriber information, not just to the gummint, but at all, they can be liable.

Excellent point.

http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/phoneaboutyou.html

As an example, (I'm a telecom person, btw), a telco cannot use your call patterns (e.g., you call Ireland a lot) to try to sell you a international calling plan. That is, you can call the telco and say, I make a lot of calls to Ireland, is there some way I can save money? and with that permission, the telco can look at your records and market you something.

But the telco cannot look into their records, say, hmm, we see X makes a lot of calls to Ireland, let's call X and try to sell him this plan. It is forbidden by the law.

(Nothing here represents the views of my employer, these are my views alone.)

When a big fat neocon who has a waste girth @ 65 inches,

that 500 pounder b-52 bomb needs a extra large size black rubber body bag?

I believe in, reconciliation, atonement, and a individual

redemption. A big rubber body bag will not cover the criminal activity I see...

The whole group @ Capital Hill?

I believe in reprobation? I do.

I hear not a word about restitution.

The Repugs want no amendments to be offered and no extension. So Kennedy, and others, has only talked about what amendment he wants to offer. Sounds like Obama and Clinton votes would be important on a cloture vote. Are they flying in?

If cloture is invoked, the vote on the bill would be NLT 1pm on Monday. Reid now wants a vote on the House bill and McConnell keeps objecting. The Repugs only want the Rockefeller and Bond bill to be voted on because that is the only bill the president will approve. So 17 senators have now forced a cloture vote.

Here's Todd Putnam's hilarious recounting of his dealings with NBC re the GE Boycott back, in 1990-1991. Note the NBC producers' reluctance to report on boycotts of any major advertisers, let alone that of their parent company, GE. (All quotation marks in what follows are Putnam's).

The GE Boycott: A Story NBC Wouldn't Buy

By Todd Putnam

Extra! January/February 1991

When I got a call from NBC's Today show in June 1990, telling me they were interested in airing a story on consumer boycotts, naturally, as the editor of National Boycott News, I was enthusiastic. But I suspected there might be a problem when Amy Rosenberg from Today asked me for "the biggest boycott going on right now."

I already had a good idea, but I wanted to do a little more research before I gave her my answer. When I looked at major boycotts in terms of visibility, effectiveness, scope and public support, one stood out: the boycott of GE products led by the group INFACT, prompted by GE's leading role in the production and promotion of nuclear weapons.

The only trouble was, GE has owned NBC since 1986, when the company bought RCA. Would NBC News be willing to discuss a boycott against its own corporate parent?

When I next talked to Rosenberg, I broke the news to her: "The biggest boycott in the county is against General Electric."

"We can't do that one," she responded immediately. "Well, we could do that one, but we won't."

She asked for some other major boycotts, but she didn't seem too interested in any of them -- most of which were against major corporations with large TV advertising budgets. She thanked me and said goodbye.

Three weeks later, in July, she called again, saying that the show was now interested in doing something about "small" boycotts. We had a couple of conversations, the upshot of which was that Today might do something about the boycott against shrimp producers provoked by the killing of sea turtles.

In September, Today told me that I was scheduled to be on the air Oct. 5 and that a plane ticket would be sent. When I called on Oct. 4 to say that I hadn't gotten a ticket, I was told that it had been rescheduled for Oct. 15. When I hadn't received anything by Oct. 12, I called again, and learned the segment had been canceled.

I had a few more conversations with Amy Rosenberg, where I learned that Today was looking for a boycott that was "small," "local" and "sexy." By this point I seriously doubted NBC would ever do a segment on any sort of boycott.

But on Friday, Nov. 23, Roland Woerner, a Today show producer, called me and told me that "the bottom fell out" of the next Monday's show, and that I should immediately book a flight -- NBC would reimburse me. He told me the idea was to have a table with some of the products that were targets of major boycotts, and he wanted to know what they should feature.

When GE came up as one of the most important boycotts, he sighed audibly. "You guys," he said.

"I had to say it, it's a major boycott," I said.

"OK, tell me about it," he said.

I gave him a brief description of the INFACT boycott, which is promoted by a grassroots network involving hundreds of organizations nationwide, and is supported by an estimated 1 percent of U.S. consumers (my emphasis). I added that I had heard that David Letterman's producer got in trouble after comic-book writer Harvey Pekar was brought on as a guest and said some unflattering things about GE on the show.

"Yeah, I'll be looking for a new job on Tuesday," he said.

As it turned out, his job was in no jeopardy. The boycotted products that Today selected were Marlboros and Miller beer from Philip Morris, which supports homophobic Sen. Jesse Helms; Spam and Dinty Moore stew from Hormel, involved in a bitter labor dispute; tennis shoes by Nike, criticized for not supporting the African-American community; California grapes, which are boycotted for both labor and environmental reasons; and canned tuna, some producers of which continue to kill dolphins. There was not a GE lightbulb to be found.

Finally, after months of waiting, I was interviewed live by Deborah Norville. She asked me briefly about the featured products, not dwelling on the reasons for any of the boycotts. My interview lasted all of three minutes.

When I left the studio, heading out into the hallway to catch an elevator, I was finally asked about the GE boycott -- by an NBC janitor. "So how is the INFACT boycott of GE doing?" he asked, apparently having seen the segment on a monitor. I told him that GE had reportedly lost $60 million in sales because of the boycott, largely from hospitals refusing to buy their medical equipment. "That's the way to hit 'em," he said (emphasis mine).

That night (11/26/90), the NBC Nightly News had a segment on the Japanese corporation Matsushita buying MCA, which owns Universal Studios and MCA Records . The NBC news correspondent focused on whether the new Japanese owner would "interfere in content." He expressed no concerns about U.S. corporations doing the same.

KR