FISA reform, finally: “The bill is passed,” 293-129
The House is now voting on the FISA reform deal. Moonbat callers on C-SPAN are going nuts over Democrat capitulation. I’ll post the tally and roll call vote as soon as the yeas and nays are all counted. (Update: 12:51pm Eastern. “The bill is passed.” Vote was 293-129.) Now, on to the Senate. The 9/10 Democrats succumb to reality.
Andrew McCarthy gives the compromise deal thumbs up:
Here is the bottom line: Our intelligence agencies will once again have authority to conduct aggressive monitoring of foreign powers, including terrorist organizations, which threaten the United States. In particular, this will be the case overseas — that is, when foreigners located outside our borders communicate with each other. The Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency will essentially be able to collect foreign intelligence without interference from the courts, the status quo ante that was U.S. law for decades before being upset by a secret court ruling last year.
Moreover, the telecommunications companies which patriotically complied with administration requests for assistance in the emergency conditions that obtained after nearly 3,000 Americans were mass-murdered in the 9/11 attacks will receive retroactive immunity. That is, they will be relieved of the potential billions in liability they (and their shareholders and customers) faced in scores of lawsuits.
The telecoms were sued by the ACLU and other privacy eccentrics because they cooperated in the NSA’s warrantless surveillance of suspected international terrorist communications that crossed U.S. borders — a program the legality of which is richly supported by precedent. Consequently, the American people will be relieved of the vulnerability they would face if industry’s top information technology experts were disincentivized from assisting in our security. (While I have long been a critic of our surveillance laws, I note once again, in the interest of full disclosure, that my wife works for Verizon.)
Contrary to the sky-is-falling hysteria we are likely to hear in the coming days, this immunity is not “blanket.” It benefits only private actors. That is as it should be. This controversy involves the executive and legislative branches of government fighting over ultimate control of surveillance authority. Private actors who merely complied with ostensibly lawful requests should never have been pawns in that political battle. And only those private actors who can show, by “substantial evidence” that they were complying with a written request from government will be afforded immunity.
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- FISA Bill Passes Overwhelmingly : The American Pundit
- Congressional Leaders Strike Deal on Telecom Surveillance | OpenMarket.org
- House Passes Bill to Kill Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuits Against Phone Companies | OpenMarket.org
- House Passes Bill to Kill Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuits Against Phone Companies | OpenMarket.org
- Hot Air » Blog Archive » FISA reform passes the House
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- FISA Bill Passed Handly, The Nutroots Looses Its Mind « Beltway Snark
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“One step over the line sweet Jesus, one step over the line…”
Time to suit up and go trudge the sewers of DU, Kos and Huffington…it’s always pleasant to see Moonbats in meltdown.
Finally some very good news from a very frustrating couple of weeks of bad news, emanating from our do nothing Congress and out of control thugs in black robes now if we can asses the damage done due to over months of leaving our intelligence community blinded by the Democrats refusal to protect the citizens of this nation. Now if we could get someone to act like an adult and take the lead to put an end to the high cost of fuel by taking real action in allowing us to drill here, drill now, and pay less!
I bet Obama will not vote on it
“Democrats succumb to reality”. Very nicely put. I hope they see more reality & we see more succumbing.
Finally, some good news. This was way overdue. But I’ll save the criticism and just be thankful that the bill has passed.
That’s good.
But, why does it take a special bill from Congress to allow our intelligence agencys to actually spy on our enemies?
About time! These morons in Con (opposite of pro) gress need to get their collective act in gear.
tre,
I would guess it has something to do with loading a bill with PORK.
Well that was dismissively swept under the rug with little examination. What lawsuits, pray tell? Hey, anything in the name of security!
one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind….
Amazing … once again the President has won one with the Dem Congress … not that he will get credit for it … but facts are facts … GWOT funding and now this …
Maybe there is a change in the winds … as in people waking up to reality on these issues …
It’s always nice to start the weekend with good news.
Now maybe I’ll go to Kos and have a giggle.
Regardless of what we have all heard about President Bush for 8 years,stupid,idiot,cowboy etc.When it comes to protecting the country the man has grit.Even if it means they get their pork he stands firm.He won’t be there to kick around much longer and he will be missed.
I’m surprised that it took Democrats so long to go along with this bill. In the realm of complete government power to monitor and spy on it’s own citizens, and immunity to whoever they want via secret orders from the attorney general to the courts, I would think liberals would lap that up. What do they love more than big government? Hell, Dodd’s housing bailout bill requires every credit/debit transaction to be reported to the government.
I’ll say it again, I feel like I’m living in Alice and Wonderland here. Let’s all pray at the altar of big government and embrace the devil’s trade of liberty for (perceived)security. Hurrah for America!
I was wondering that too. It has something to do with the fact that conservatives are not classified as enemies…yet. Maybe they wanted to wait for the re-education classes to begin.
Thank God>>> We do not need this:
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/06/will-geert-wilders-be-arrested.html#readfurther
So much for the “rule of law.”
Amnesty for illegal immigrants = bad.
Amnesty for telecom law breakers = good.
Good call Skeptic, however with this GOP let me update this:
Yeah, because much like their messiah, the moonbat definition of “bi-partisanship” means doing what the Democrats want 100% of the time.
Sorry, RSS, but the Telecoms never broke any laws.
Leave the kos talking points somewhere else, thank you.
#21:
Never? You know this for a fact? You know the extent of what, where, when, who, why, and how? Really?
I agree, it is good just to get the program back up and running yet, if you read all of Andy McCarthy’s commentary, the glass is not nearly full. The worst aspect of the bill is it further codifies bad law, namely FISA.
Far greater damage will be done if Congress turns Boumediene v. Bush into statute. Congress should not leave it to the courts to create law, as 5 members of the SCOTUS have directed.
Instead, they should this year revise the Detainee Treatment and Military Commission Acts to limit the review of merits (of each detainee’s detention) to one District Court plus reaffirm the appealate review of the current Circuit Court cited within the latter Act to provide due process.
For the prosecution of war crimes, Military Commissions should not be thrown out with the bath water, despite Guantanamo’s very likely closure. They can be conducted (if Gitmo closes) on military installation in the United States, somewhere isolated where tight all-around security can be maintained. Many secrets were compomised through declassification and the discovery afforded the Landmark bombing and first WTC bombing defendants; we would magnify that mistake many fold if we let the 80 expected prosecutions be ajudicated in federal court.
#22 khan
OK, let’s look at it this way. The telecoms didn’t think they were breaking any laws by complying with federal agency requests to provide information and access to cell phone info. I suppose the federal government could have been embarking on a “sting operation”, asking them for the info, and then planning to arrest them if they provided it, but that’s a little farfetched.
But the reality is, that regardless of whether they broke any laws or not, there are already dozens of civil lawsuits against them by the ACLU and other privacy nazis. The passing of this new FISA law should make most of those lawsuits moot.
#24:
Breaking the law is breaking the law, whether one knowingly does it or is ignorant of it. So now Gitmo detainees get due process, but victims here will not.
“Privacy nazis”. Wow.
Guess you’re too lazy to do homework.
It’s easy to criticize – it’s difficult to get facts.
Sham on FISA lawsuits examined
ACLU Condemns Senate FISA Vote
Statement – James Bamford, NSA Lawsuit Client
Salon article
What victims? Please elucidate.
Bye bye 4th Amendment…nice to know you. You will be sorely missed.
Actually the telecoms were spying on all Americans, and probably still are.
Out of all things coming from the Bush era, I am most stunned by how easily American sheeple give up freedom.
…and we have a winner! The first use of the ‘Other N word’ to describe our government.
Please – enlighten me how the FISA bill is different than Senator Dodd’s wanting all businesses to report all credit card transactions
From FrredomWorks
For the record, I am also against the SCOTUS ruling granting habeas corpus to the Gitmo detainees.
And “privacy nazis” is my original term for another permanent victim class who would rather see Americans incinerated than see terrorists thwarted.
Yes the bill puts FISA back to where it was before – watching out for terrorist activity (and anybody who thinks the lack of attacks on the US since 9/11 is a fluke really needs a lesson in reality – and FISA was part of that effort to stop attacks) and yes it needs to be narrowed so that ‘regular folks’ don’t have to worry about government spying on us.
The 4th Amendment protects citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures. So protecting those same citizens against terrorist lawless behavior is also unreasonable?
#28:
I think you might want to go back and reread the posts. For one, I wasn’t the one who used the word. Second, the word wasn’t used to describe our government.
Unless you were addressing Ragman…
#29:
More strawmen.
No offense, but Nazis were to the extreme right and the ACLU is to the extreme left. Myabe you meant to call the ACLU “Self-serving hypocritical socialistic anti-US bigots with delusions of grandeur fully intent upon bringing the US to it’s knees in the shortest amount of time possible”
#31:
Now THAT is comic gold.
“Worry” was all it ever was, generated by both propaganda spewing Leftist and paranoid privacy extremists. Of course, I could be wrong in which case you will list all the cases here of where the regular folks were spied upon by the Bush administration. Please do. Michelle surely will not mind.
The devil’s trade is believing that it is reasonable to allow the government to spy on American’s citizens in the name of protecting them. Reminds me of the line: “Hi, I’m from the government and here to help!”
What history tells us, the greatest enemy to the people is big government. The scarier part of that statement however, is that the opposite is true as well: the greatest threat to big government is the people.
Or worry because like our founding fathers, many distrust government. Allowing the NSA to monitor communications to and from the United States without court oversight is chilling. I doubt there would be any room or opportunity for abuse. Nah.
If they, or anyone, wants to listen in on my calls, go for it… I’m not doing anything wrong….
And the Founding Fathers’ greatest gift.
Why would anyone who is not a criminal care if the government listened in on you anyway, the worst that could happen is that they find out what you think & so what, they tell us every day they don’t care what we think…
personally I would feel sorry for anyone spying on me, wow talk about a boring job.
…yet
Democrats and liberals must be very nervous otherwise they would not have helped pass this bill.
#39:
Any other rights or liberties you’d care to surrender to government since you’re not doing anything wrong (until they say you are)?
AHH – no not yet- EVER!
#35 khan
I’m still waiting to hear who were the”victims” in the whole cell phone records issue.
And please tell me how I’m being comical in wanting to protect American citizens by listening in on phonecalls originating overseas from known or suspected terrorists/sympathizers.
#41:
I would love nothing more than to shake that apathy and complacency out of you.
#45:
Ever? What if they changed the laws or hell, didn’t even bother to do that? You’re abdicating your rights and liberties because you don’t cherish them or think they are worth defending. Give them an inch, you know.
Spot on, JHSII. RSS, TOS and khan want to believe that laws were broken, therefore no laws were broken. The fact that no telecom exec was ever indicted means nothing.
RSS, TOS and khan are clearly deficient in their abilities to distinguish between the criminal and civil court systems.
This statement betrays breathless ignorance of the law. In criminal law, intention is one of the three general classes of mens rea necessary to constitute a conventional as opposed to strict liability crime.
#44- No but I can think of one I wish you would give up…your right to free speech…
They were doing that how? Listening/looking at each of the millions of communications made each day? Nope. They have a means to narrow that way down and then weed out the many communication unrelated to enemy activity. They do not have time for the regular slime.
Correction:
Spot on, JHSII. RSS, TOS and khan want to believe that laws were broken, therefore
nolaws were broken. The fact that no telecom exec was ever indicted means nothing.#46:
In a sense, all of us are the victims. Specifically, I do not know which innocent civilians had their Constitutionally guaranteed rights trampled. Hell, maybe my conversations were listened to or recorded. Maybe yours. We’ll never know will we?
I didn’t say you were comical for wanting Americans to be protected; I was saying your understanding and application of the word “unreasonable” was comical. Sad more than comical, truthfully.
They must be all those Big Uncles. LOL
I’ll bet if McCain votes on it, Obama will be compelled to vote on it. Love to see which way Obama flops.
Re: Khan
Comrade, why must you be skeptical of our all-loving government? They have stated that we are loved and protect by them, like a watchful mother. You must understand, Comrade, that they are here to save you from the evil ones. Why must you fight against these thoughtful and well crafted laws? Do you have something to hide Comrade? Are you participating in any anti-government activity? Are you betraying the Motherland Comrade?
The fact that no on was indicted in the murder of Chandra Levy means no crime was committed. Is this what you are trying to argue? Seriously?
Bwaaaaaaaaaaah!
The only part of this bill that bothers me is the immunity part. Obviously Qwest thought what the government wanted was outside legal norms because Qwest was the only phone company to not comply with the government’s request.
Yet my carrier, AT&T, was more than happy to turn over all of their data without asking a question.
So, no crimes were committed by the Telcoms, yet they want immunity from these non-crimes?
#57:
A right lost by one is a right lost by all.
C’mon Wile E Coyote, no one was indicted, therefore nothing illegal could have happened. The President wanted that whole immunity clause just to see if he could get it.
I’m going to take this further – tonight, I’m going to go spy on my hot neighbor, if I get caught looking at her naughty bits, I’ll say I was doing my patriotic duty in checking for terrorists!
Gimmeh Immunity!
Come back from the deep end. The government asked for the connections and the ONLY purposes of the lawsuits against the telecoms were intimidation and to extract out as many secrets from the litigation as possible to undermine our national security. That’s all. Immunity from ‘lawsuits’ is what the bill contains, not willful crime.
Correct. They wanted immunity from civil suits. They received no immunity from criminal prosecution because they and the government knew no laws were broken and criminal immunity was not needed.
Do you understand the difference between criminal and civil courts?
#52 khan
I feel more victimized every time I file my tax return than when some nebulous government bogeyman listens in on my phone conversations.
And my use of unreasonable seems to be in accordance with common English usage.
Kahn, re: “I would love nothing more than to shake that apathy and complacency out of you.”
I am neither of those, I just think that the benefits out weight the risks.
# 56 The fact that no on was indicted in the murder of Chandra Levy means no crime was committed. Is this what you are trying to argue? Seriously?
Chandra Levy was a crime yet where is the body of evidence (or any evidence) that a crime was committed by a) the administration or b) the telecoms?
Even this Supreme Court would eventually find FISA un-Constitutional yet that would not save the telecoms from the billions in litigations costs. The latter’s shareholders would have forced them to stop assisting the goverment and added billions of dollars of litigation for monetary loses; those are only reasons why the administration compromised. If the telecoms stop helping, they will never restart and our national security would have been permanently damaged.
I heard the same argument about giving up right when I had to remove my shoes before boarding an airliner. I did not give up a thing to make sure my fellow passengers feel more safe.
Now I hear that people think they are giving up something by having their phones tapped. BUNK. If you are not complicit in dealing with terrorists, you have nothing to fear. And IF (a great big FRIGGIN IF) they are monitoring my calls to Haiti, then they will strike me off their list as I have nothing to hide. On the other hand, if someone is plotting a strike from Haiti, I sure as heaven hope they are listening in.
I remember AlGore screaming about listening in and after 9/11, man.bear.pig was screaming how we should have been listening in. Liberals want it both ways.
Don’t listen in.
*Terrorists attack*
We should have been listening in.
#65:
Ragman, is there a reasonable articulable suspicion for the government to be listening to your – and I mean you specifically – phonecalls? No? Then that is unreasonable. Check out the 4th amendment some time.
#66:
You most certainly are both of those.
#67:
Where is the crime? Good question now that the lawsuits have been vacated. We’ll never know.
#68:
With that type of attitude, everything our founding fathers fought for and against is lost.
To add to #68 comments, remember all the “dots” we did not connect? It turns out that we had instituted a Wall (which started with the mere concern of a FISA court judge ) that kept those dots from being connected. Now, we have allegedly fixed the dot connecting problem so let’s screw ourselves up even worse by making it very difficult to collect the dots in the first place (thanks to FISA).
Please, somebody just shoot me now and put me out of this madness.
#62 Ahh It sounds like you have already spied on your hot neighbor…
The plane, Mr. O’Rourke, that plane!
Text from the bill:
So if the Attorney General says stop, the proceeding now stops. It’s nice for the telcoms as they now don’t have to reveal any information on what exactly they did for Big Brother. If there wasn’t anything wrong with what they did, it’s funny that Qwest refused to comply.
You must only sleep in a special room a Motel 6 where they leave a night-light on for you, the bed is on the floor so nothing can crawl out from underneath it, and with no doors on the closets behind which the boogie man might hide. LOL!
#68 Soap
Afternoon. Nice to hear you weigh in. I concur. I think the pendulum of individual rights may have swung about as far as it is going to. As a country we’ve come a long way from having to fear the cops beating a confession out of somebody.
I may start calling you in Haiti, because as I was saying to my friends Mohammed, Mohammed, Mohammed, Hassan, Ayman, Mohammed, and Steve the other day, it is really annoying trying to call them in North Waziristan with all of that hissing and clicking of the government tape recorders in the background.
sarc/
I’m through.
Have a great day, y’all.
Correct. Qwest feared civil suits because there was no precedence for this type of request because the technology was new and we hadn’t been attacked on the scale of 9/11 since 1941.
Re:71
All I know, is she was one hot terrorist…
#73 Maybe Qwest knowingly supports terrorist? They may need to be looked at a little harder…
Crap!!! I’m gonna have to start communicating through carrier pigeon.
The funniest part of this whole argument is that the liberals who decry someone listening in to your phonecalls ( which, unless you have dealings with terrorist, is 99.999% assured will never happen ) – are probably the same people who sit at the bus stop, walk through public, sit at the bar, or at the local restaurant on their cellphones gabbing – while 50 people in each direction hear their conversations….
But don’t wiretap me!!!!!!
Sure it is. Our founding fathers could never have imagined the telecommunications that exist today and they would have fought to prevent terrorists from having a free will to communicate within this country to plan attacks on our soil.
Remember Tripoli?
Funny, with my “attitude” I still have not given up a thing.
As for the silly argument that Big Brother will take away our freedoms, have you had the IRS ever “say” you owe money. Talk about a lack of freedom. Guilty until you prove your innocence and even then, good luck getting your money back if they owe you because THEY were wrong.
And you are worried about a few phone calls. SHEESH
Nice. It’s the job of the Executive Branch to protect the citizens of this country, and listening in to foreign calls is just fine with me. In fact, if I were Pres, I’d have never stopped – Ruth Bader packin’heat wouldn’t stop me. It’s a huge difference from snooping on US citizens here. If the call from AQ arrives at your home, well that’s interesting…could be a wrong number, might be good intel…
Would that as much concern were shown for the Second Amendment (the one you really need when the government gets out of control).
jr,
BINGO
Can’t shut them up in public about Bush. During WWII, people were asked to just shut up. That is where “loose lips sink ships” came from. Spies would just listen to soldiers chatting and would put together enough info for attacks.
And liberals still want to protect terrorist’s ability to attack us. Ididots.
Dimsdale ( you must be a Monty Python fan, I’m guessing ) -
To liberals, the bill of rights is like brunch – you simply go up and down the line and choose which ones you like.
Forget the rest.
I think we could assuage the paranoid fears of TOS, khan, Lion and Coyote if we granted them exemption from prosecution for storing porn on their computers.
I’d call that a win-win.
DHD,
You forget the porn ringtones on their cell phones.
Shoot, they’re prosecuting porn now? I, ummm, have to go…
ROFL
good thing i’m going home early..i…ahhh…errrr, have some cleaning to do….yeah!
honestly, i’m glad this is in place. having our intelligence people with their hands tied behind their backs is a bad way to be.
Oh come on TheOtherSide – is this your “A” game? Without immunity for the telcos, your ideological comrades would force the telcos to spend millions defending themselves – a total waste of time and money. (Sorry dakine
ByeBye 4th amendment? I sometimes think this is what the far left has in mind: “The right of the terrorists to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, no matter where on earth they live shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall ever be issued without prior approval of the NY Times, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized, unless the search turns up incriminating evidence, in which case said terrorists will be entitled to citizenship, a mortgage, S_Chip and piano and dance lessons.”
Now try to imagine my best Shatner impression: “KHAN!!!!!!!!”
When government officials appraoch you and ask for your help in securing the country from terrorist threats, you are doing your civic duty, cooperating with the government, not breaking the law.
As for some rights I would like to give up, while we are at it:
The “right” of illegals to get free medical care
The “right” of illegals to get free education
The “right” to sue for punative damages
The “rights” of animals
The “right” to an abortion
Some of these are de facto and some were created out of whole cloth by the courts. I could do without these rights, for sure.