The Political Establishment and Telecom Immunity — Why It Matters, by Glenn Greenwald

[Echo In Light]

The Political Establishment and Telecom Immunity — Why It Matters
by Glenn Greenwald

Nancy Soderberg was deputy national security advisor and an ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration. Today, she has an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times defending the FISA bill and telecom amnesty. The entire Op-Ed is just a regurgitation of the same trite, vague talking points which the political elite are using to justify this bill, accompanied by the standard invocations of “National Security” which our Foreign Policy elite condescendingly toss around to justify whatever policy they’re claiming is necessary to protect us. But it’s the language that she uses — and the brazenness of the lying (and that’s what it is) to justify this bill — that’s notable here.

It’s notable because the political establishment is not only about to pass a patently corrupt bill, but worse, are spouting — on a very bipartisan basis — completely deceitful claims to obscure what they’re really doing. This is what Soderberg says is what happened:

The Senate is dragging its feet because the compromise bill’s opponents — mostly Democrats — want also to punish the telecommunications companies that answered President Bush’s order for help with his illegal, warrantless wiretapping program. That is the wrong target. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the White House directed telecommunications carriers to cooperate with its efforts to bolster intelligence gathering and surveillance — the administration’s effort to do a better job of “connecting the dots” to prevent terrorist attacks. In its review of the effort, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the administration’s written requests and directives indicated that such assistance “had been authorized by the president” and that the “activities had been determined to be lawful.”

We now know that they were not lawful. But the companies that followed those directives are not the ones to blame for that abuse of presidential power.

I would really like to know where people like Soderberg get the idea that the U.S. President has the power to “order” private citizens to do anything, let alone to break the law, as even she admits happened here. I’m asking this literally: how did this warped and distinctly un-American mentality get implanted into our public discourse — that the President can give “orders” to private citizens that must be complied with? Soderberg views the President as a monarch — someone who can issue “orders” that must be obeyed, even when, as she acknowledges, the “orders” are illegal.

Continued;
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/06/10154/

[Echo In Light]

1. Bump

[JDPriestly]

2. Thanks. The FISA Amendment provision granting telecom immunity

will probably be spewed out and declared unconstitutional by our courts in about the time it takes to say "habeas corpus."

Congress has the authority to establish the inferior courts but cannot deprive those courts of jurisdiction in specific pending cases. It also does not have the power to deprive parties to a pending lawsuit of their due process rights to a hearing.

The courts are likely to protect their jurisdiction jealously. It's their bread and butter, their raison d'etre, guys. The judges have precious little say anyway. So when they get a case that gives them the opportunity to smack down Congress -- well they are human, aren't they?

Please note also, as an aside, that judges are truly independent from Congress once they are appointed. Congress does not reduce their salaries, and judges don't have to fear pink slips -- unless they are impeached. The only leverage Congress has is the ability to increase judicial salaries. I hope that the wish for higher pay is not the explanation for the votes of Roberts (who is constantly pleading for more pay) and his right-wing buddies on the habeas corpus matter.

The whole FISA bill is a waste of time and money. It is either just a propaganda/political stunt on the part of the Bush administration or the lawyers in the Bush administration are so terrified of displeasing the little emperor Bush that they dare not tell him that his bill to immunize his buddies in the telecom industry is not worth the paper on which 'tis written.

Oh, well, Rome burns while Nero and his sycophants in Congress fiddle . . . .

Literally, out here in California, the smell of smoke is in the air . . . . It will be a long, hot summer -- and I'm talking about nature, not politics. Congress should be doing something other than passing useless bills like the FISA Amendment, which is obviously doomed to an ugly end in the courts.

[electropop]

3. Nearly the entire Dem party has caved on this - has Cheney threatened more Anthrax?

Or has our party abandoned us for no reason at all?

[rudy23]

4. Oh, there are reasons... nt

[glitch]

5. Or more attacks on US cities.

Otherwise their betrayal is inexplicable. I do not believe they all would do it for personal gain.

[Echo In Light]

6. Well ... either way...