While we have a revolutionary, history making election in progress, the US Senate just passed a bill Tuesday night, 2/12/08, granting retroactive immunity to telecom companies that helped spy on Americans, without a warrant.
Fun stuff, huh? Congress just sanctioned the single largest invasion of privacy in American history. So much for the Constitution which our officials in Washington were elected to uphold.
But it’s not over, if Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and others in Congress have their way. And if we speak up. The Internet makes it oh, so easy to do, too. Senator Leahy urges citizens to email your home state Senators and Representative and ask them to insist on a House-Senate conference that produces a fair FISA bill.
To get email contact info on your senators and members of congress, I like this link: http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email.html
According to Leahy’s email message Friday, 2/15/08, “We may have lost the first FISA fight on the Senate floor this week, but I’m not backing down — and neither should you.
President Bush and his allies blocked our efforts to improve civil liberties protections and remove telecom immunity from the bill that passed the Senate. Without those fixes, the Bush-Cheney Administration’s FISA bill is unacceptable.
There’s still time to fix FISA and do it the right way — providing the balance we need to protect national security, preserve civil liberties, and refuse retroactive immunity to phone companies who went along with Bush-Cheney Administration lawbreaking. But I need you to join me in speaking out, right now, to make sure we get a fair FISA bill.”
So speak out now or forever hold your peace. No, I mean, really, hold your peace. Your wires and wirelesses just might be tapped.