FISA Amendments Pass Senate
Hot on the heels of doing the right thing by voting thumbs-up on immunity for the telecoms who provided information to the government in the wake of 9/11, the U.S. Senate took a big step in the wrong direction by passing the FISA Amendments Act of 2007 in overwhelming fashion:
After more than a year of heated political wrangling, the Senate handed the White House a major victory Tuesday by voting to broaden the government’s spy powers after giving legal protection to phone companies that cooperated in President Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program.
The Senate rejected a series of amendments that would have restricted the government’s surveillance powers and eliminated immunity for the phone carriers, and it voted in convincing fashion — 69 to 29 — to end debate and bring the issue to a final vote. That vote on the overall bill was an almost identical 68 to 29.
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Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, who spoke on the Senate floor for more than 20 hours in an unsuccessful effort to stall the wiretapping bill, said the vote would be remembered by future generations as a test of whether the country heeds “the rule of law or the rule of men.”
Hear, here! I consider myself to be pretty conservative and I almost always support Republican positions. However, I don’t believe for a moment that our national security would be at risk if NSA, et al, had to obtain warrants for surveillance. It simply isn’t necessary to create these grotesque compromises in the law. Who watches the watchers? That’s the question. The answer seems to be, “No one.”
Meanwhile, Curt over at Flopping Aces is gloating big-time and has some fun with Christopher Dodd, one of the few senators to oppose the bill in a meaningful way:
First, we are NOT giving up any liberties. I doubt Sen. Dodd raises much of a fuss when he goes through customs upon entering and leaving this country. Or when his luggage and personal property is subject to a warrantless search through that same customs line. No, he doesn’t raise a fuss because he understands it is patently legal and justified.
Customs searches may be legal but are they justified? Highly debatable. The fact that Americans submit to a requirement of the law because it’s not worth the trouble to complain and/or they lack the resources to do so effectively has nothing to do with whether the law is justified. Rather, it is merely a fait accompli that we tolerate. Our children will have to learn to regard the absence of privacy in electronic communications the same way, it seems.
As Curt predicts, the House will stop whining about the Senate’s bill and bow to the inevitable soon enough. Why? Because the actual threat of terrorism is high enough that the Democrats have been frightened into following the president’s lead on this issue, up to and past the point of good sense. There is no fight left in them, it seems, even when they have to chance to do something good for the future of the nation.
