Bush Presses Congress to Give Immunity to Telecom Companies and Make Permanent Domestic Surveillance Without a Warrant. *UPDATED

by Mountaineer | January 29, 2008 at 11:48 pm
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Premier Bush Presses Congress to Give Immunity to Telecom Companies and Make Permanent Domestic Surveillance Without a Warrant.

Premier Bush Presses Congress to Give Immunity to Telecom Companies and Make Permanent Domestic Surveillance Without a Warrant.

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***UPDATE***

Congress extends surveillance law another 15 days

Keep the pressure on people. WE, THE PEOPLE must speak!! 

 ********************************************************************************

What is being done to STOP this!

It looks like Jay "Ham and
Cheese Face" Rockefeller is leading a gang of democrats to join the ne-con
republicans to pass this intrusive piece of sh$t. So what’s the deal with this?
After much research, and several glasses of wine to calm my nerves after
reading about these violations, I believe I need to make you all even more
aware than you might already be.

Let’s have a look at surveillance
law, which is due to expire midnight Thursday. Currently the Senate is split
over a bill that would grant immunity to major telecom corporations that took
part in warrantless spying on U.S. citizens. President Bush has been urging
lawmakers to approve the immunity measure. Here is what Bush said in the State
of the Union address concerning this atrocity. Here are his enlightening words
of wisdom:

“One of
the most important tools we can give them is the ability to monitor terrorist
communications. To protect America, we need to know who the terrorists are
talking to, what they are saying, and what they are planning. Last year, the
Congress passed legislation to help us do that. Unfortunately, Congress set the legislations to expire on February
the 1st. That means if you don’t act by Friday, our ability to track terrorist
threats (and your grandmothers) would be weakened and our citizens will be in
greater danger. Congress must ensure the flow of vital intelligence is not
disrupted. Congress must pass liability protection for companies believed to
have assisted in the efforts to (take away another one of your liberties) defend
America. We have had ample time for debate. The time to act is now,” (so that I
can finish the job and set the stage for the first American dicktator).

 

So where do we stand with this. Democrats blocked a Neo-Conservative Republican led effort
to end debate on the bill, but lost a measure that would have granted a
thirty-day extension to continue discussion. So what do our Pelosi/Reid led
Democrats do?…a dozen Democrats have joined Neo-Con Republicans in backing the
telecom immunity. This makes it pretty clear that in the Senate enough
Democrats are going to join all the Neo-Con Republicans to support the bill
that the White House wants, which is a bill that will give full immunity to all
the telecoms who broke the law by
allowing warrantless spying on Americans and will also give the President an
amazing array of new powers to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants.

That’s the bill that seems likely to
pass the Senate with votes from all the Republicans and ten to twelve
Democrats. All while
we are lulled to sleep at the Florida Primary, this goes on in Washington! In
other words, if you get a cell phone from Chad at Alltel, Alltel at the behest
of Homeland “Scarethe sh*toutofya” Security, Alltel will turn over your phone
records…including the data packets.

Now what the Neo-Con Republicans
tried to do yesterday is pull a fast one and force a vote on that bill without allowing any of the amendments
that certain Democrats are trying to offer to at least improve the bill a
little bit, and Democrats stuck together and prevented a vote on that bill so
that these amendments can be considered. However, that is a scam as well,
because it does not change the essential elements of the bill as pointed out
above. Also, the reality is that most of these amendments that could be
considered significant are likely to get canned.

Therefore, the Senate will pass a bill that is the exact
bill that Premier Bush wants.
I
get a little carried away, but when will the insanity stop coming out of
Washington.

To give them credit the House, six weeks ago, passed a much
better bill that does not provide immunity to telecoms and that does not
provide warrantless eavesdropping.

So what will our bought and paid for “elected” officials do? Will the House
stand behind its bill? UNLIKELY!

So at this point let me give you
even more back story. We have four or five different federal laws that make it
a felony for telecommunications companies to allow spying on their customers by
the government without warrants. The Laws prevent telecommunications companies from
turning over to the government records reflecting the communications (telephone
calls, etc.) of their customers without the warrants required by law. Those companies,
including the largest, AT&T and Verizon, were asked by Bush to violate
those laws, to allow spying, by turning over records without warrants, and many
of them did so
. To make matters worse, they didn’t
do it for a short time in 2001; they have done so for many years. As a result,
there are now numerous lawsuits filed by customers of these telecommunications
companies and by privacy groups, seeking damages for their having broken the
law for ALL THOSE YEARS.

Here’s where it gets bad.

Premier Bush has been demanding that
these very same telecoms be provided with retroactive immunity. That means, Congress would pass a law to say that telecoms
cannot be held accountable in a court of law for having broken the law over the course of the past six years.

Now, you see, the real purpose of
this is NOT to protect the telecoms from these lawsuits. They have plenty of
dough to pay the monetary damage. BUT, these lawsuits are the last remaining
hope in finding out, then exposing and revealing, how our government has been
spying on us illegally for the past seven years. That’s why the Premier Bush is
so anxious to get rid of these lawsuits. It is to make sure that those
activities remain concealed.

As I stated above there are enough
Democrats to join with the Neo-Con Republicans, led by Jay Rockefeller, the
Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, who’s a Democrat, and who supports
telecom immunity, to get this passed. So it looks, unless WE TAKE ACTION,  like it is going to pass the Senate.

The House also as I pointed out
above, passed a bill that does not have it. So, will the House abandon their
own bill and join the Neo-Con Republicans in order to pass this intrusive piece
of garbage? Based on how the Pelosi/Reid led Democrats have behaved over the
past year, we can bet they will bend-over for the President and give him what
he demands.  However! But, and it’s a BIG
but,  if enough Americans continue to
express outrage over this, then perhaps the House Democrats will NOT cave in
and stand with their bill.

All of this does NOT change the fact
that the
telecom companies are still spying on us Americans!! We MUST
get this stopped.

Thank you for reading…

 

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recommend This comment thread is now closed
Caoimhin1
Caoimhin1
flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 22:18 on January 30th, 2008

Mountaineer, I like this story. It's good stuff.

This story was created over 3 months ago, the comment thread is now closed.

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