Telecom Immunity Issue Can Only Be Decided By Those Safe From Blackmail:Federal Judges,Not Congress

[McCamy Taylor]

I have said this a number of time. The only good reason for Dick Cheney to set up his wiretap operation in January 2001, the very minute he and Bush moved into the White House was because he planned to commit crimes in office, and he wanted to gather information which he could use for blackmail on politicians, reporters and other VIPs to protect his job, so that he would not suffer the fate of Richard Nixon. In January 2001, the biggest thing on Cheney's mind was his energy task force, specifically facilitating the price gouging of California by instructing the FERC to look the other way at the obvious abuses that were going on within the wholesale electricity market in the west. This was illegal. He also needed to start negotiating a gas pipeline with the Taliban for Enron, which meant dealing with Al Qaeda, up until then one of America's enemies. And he needed to find a way to get Halliburton out from under the asbestos debt with which he had saddled it. That meant finding a way that his old company could profit from war. Illegal, illegal, illegal.

We now know that every email, fax and phone call in this country has gone through a room where the NSA can examine the information. If Dick Cheney wants to keep his eye on all Congressional Democrats and their family members and their biggest donors and their close friends, he has the records at his fingertips. Does Congressman X have a married son who likes to visit gay porn sites and order bondage toys online? That could useful when a crucial vote comes up in Congress. Recall the lengths to which the DOJ went to prosecute Martha Stewart for the non crime of listening when her stock broker said "Sell"? Because he happened to have another client, the daughter of the company's founder who also sold? Everyone in America who has sold stocks after receiving a call,email or fax from his broker whose stock broker first received an order from someone else to sell that same stock can be indexed in a computer by the NSA. And if the person who received that call and gave the order to sell is a person of interest, their arm can be twisted. Remember what happened to Martha Stewart? That could happen to your husband. He sold stocks after his broker told him that his other clients were selling. That was insider information. The person doing the blackmailing will not mention that the Stewart case was much more complicated than that. Lots of people think it was a simple cut and dried case of insider trading.

Internet gambling, association with prostitutes, alcohol use, medications ordered via mail---there are so many things that can be discovered if you have access to someone's phone records. And it does not have to be the person who votes on laws in Congress or the reporter who investigates stories for the newspaper or reports on them on television. It can be a favorite niece or nephew or a parent. Once the Bush administration has the dirt it wants, it is easy to get the votes it wants. What is telecom immunity compared to the life which could be destroyed if secrets are revealed? What is a few more months of war funding?

Can people here even conceive of the amount of information that is at the fingertips of Dick Cheney? This is the man who shot James Baker III's brother-in-law and acted like it was the other guy's fault for being there. He exposed a CIA agent and all of her associates and contacts to danger and death, because he was pissed that someone dared to challenge him. Anyone who doubts that he would order his people to comb through those records in search for evidence of potentially criminal (or compromising ) activity is naive to the extreme.

There is only one way to achieve justice in a country in which the executive branch has a blackmail operation which can threaten the legislative branch which is supposed to serve as its check and balance.

Congress needs to give up the charade that it has any right or business deciding whether or not the courts can determine the legality of Cheney's domestic spying program. Congress has no right or business deciding whether or not the courts can determine the legality of the Cheney's domestic spying, because domestic spying puts the elected Congress at risk of blackmail which makes them incapable of forming an honest and independent decision in the matter.

Only the federal courts, where judges serve for life, without need for election or donor support have the independence and the integrity to rule on this matter. This is why Cheney and the telecoms are so desperate to keep the question from reaching the federal judges. They will not be able to blackmail the judicial system with threats of loss of jobs through leaks of information gleaned from the very wiretaps that are under investigation the way that they can threaten Congress.

If defendants in a trial held a loaded gun to the heads of a jury, would we consider the verdict which they reached in the case a fair one? Lots of people think that Democrats have been bribed by the telecoms. I am not so sure. Once you bribe a politician, he usually stays bribed. The Democrats are acting scared. Every month or so, they work up the courage to defy their Democratic base, because they are scared of something else----the White House and what it has threatened to do if they do not deliver telecom immunity? And then the Democratic base pitches a big fit, and Congress gets even more scared of us , and they let the matter drop for another few weeks. Or they pass it like a hot potato to the other House of Congress. That is not the behavior of politicians wallowing in cash. That is the way that scared people act when they are between a rock and a hard place and they do not know which will hurt their re-election chances more, bucking the voters or bucking Dick Cheney. This is the way that battered wives act when they are biding their time, waiting for something to happen...

It has not been easy being a Democrat these last two decades. Republican molest strange men in bathrooms and get away with it. Democrats have consensual sex in private and get hounded out of office by members of their own party. We Democrats need to work on our own attitude problem and start learning how to do something besides bitch, nag and whine. Maybe if we were a little bit supportive, our own politicians would not be so afraid.

[Junkdrawer]

1. The current FISA bill is a Cover-Up bill....and now we have an organized push...

to minimize the odious nature of the bill:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=6423384&mesg_id=6423384

And

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3535813&mesg_id=3535813

[formercia]

2. Hoover's files on everybody who was anybody and some that weren't

were supposedly destroyed, but were they really? Most of the people in those files are long gone but there a number of people who might still be vulnerable.

What if Rove had been the inheritor of that information? It might explain a lot of his power base.

[KharmaTrain]

3. You Want To Trust A Right Wing Judiciary?

The fact this country is hanging onto Habeus Corpus thanks to the benevolence of Anthony Kennedy is not a very good thought. Nor the thought of how many lower and appelate court judges this regime and previous GOOP administrations have put out there that always put party ahead of principal...power ahead of what's right. We're not talking about jury trials here, but the decission of a politically appointed judge who knows this is his/her payback to whomever put them there and their meal ticket to a future job.

The problem is not as much that politicians are "compromised"...they're compromised constantly...it's their concerns about "electability"...or that's what many who supported this sell-out cite as their reason to support. Not all who voted for it are complicit in the details or covering up this mess but are scared shit of being labeled as "weak on security". They're afraid of 527s and the corporate media more than they are of their own electorate...and their donors.

The best answer to preventing this mess from going forward is to work to elect better Democrats...put pressure now to kick this can down the road past the election and then "revisit" it with larger Democratic majorities in both houses, a Democratic president and without the pressures of an election.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. Cheney is making J. Edgar Hoover look like a gossip girl by comparison.

[WhiteTara]

5. I didn't know Wittington was Baker's BIL!

"Can people here even conceive of the amount of information that is at the fingertips of Dick Cheney? This is the man who shot James Baker III's brother-in-law and acted like it was the other guy's fault for being there.

But here, I think Cheney was more diabolical than annoyed. He exposed Plame and crew because the were close to AQ Khan who he was selling nukes with to other countries.
rather than...He exposed a CIA agent and all of her associates and contacts to danger and death, because he was pissed that someone dared to challenge him. Anyone who doubts that he would order his people to comb through those records in search for evidence of potentially criminal (or compromising ) activity is naive to the extreme...of course, this is jhmo and has no links to back it up.