What A Crappy Birthday Present

The Senate passed the final version of the piece o' crap Intelligence Committee's FISA bill by a count of 68-29. There are only 29 Senators who care at all about civil liberties. The bill not only gives amnesty to the phone companies, but gives the President a great amount of leeway to spy on really whoever he wants. DiFi, who said she would have a lot of trouble voting for the final bill if her amendments didn't pass (and they didn't), did opposed the bill, but that's a small victory indeed.

Here's Russ Feingold:

“The Senate passage of this FISA bill, while not surprising, is extremely disappointing. The Senate missed a golden opportunity to pass a bill that would give our intelligence officials the tools they need to go after suspected terrorists while also safeguarding the privacy of law-abiding Americans. Instead the Senate, with the help of too many Democrats, is yet again giving the administration sweeping new powers – and letting it off the hook for its illegal wiretapping program. I hope that our House colleagues will hold a stronger line, and refuse to accept the deeply flawed Senate bill. The calls from Americans tired of having their rights and their Constitution trampled on by this administration are only growing louder. Congress should stand up for the American people, and the Constitution, by opposing such a badly flawed bill.”

Four committees looked at this bill. Three thought it needless to give amnesty to the phone companies. Only the Intel Committee saw it as a necessity, and they got their way. As Chris Dodd called it on a conference call today, this is "the single largest invasion of privacy in American history."

The bill is going to conference, and the House's bill is manifestly better. You can sign here to demand that the House stands behind their bill. Many House leaders have come out today and spoken in defense of stripping amnesty out of the bill. Today John Conyers wrote that secret documents provided by the White House do not justify amnesty for the phone companies.

But we'll see if this means anything. Truly this is the perfect crime: the President decides to break the law, he employs industry to help him do so, then when he's called on it, he enacts the state secrets privilege to evade oversight from the Congress and the courts, and then demands immunity to let industry evade responsibility because they can't defend themselves, restricting any peek into the scope of the lawbreaking.

Thanks for making me sick on my birthday!

UPDATE: Sorry but this is true.

So Hillary Clinton missed all the FISA votes today. It's a shame--the Dems trying to block telecom immunity and add surveillance oversight were badly beaten, and I'm sure Clinton's 35 years experience and legendary ability to work for change would've come in real handy.

The primaries today are in Maryland, Virginia and DC. You could have come back to vote. This was important.

UPDATE: After voting against stripping telecom amnesty from the bill, and seeing her amendments fail, Sen. Feinstein voted against the final bill. Here's her statement:

“I have decided to vote against the FISA Bill before the Senate. This is not an easy decision because I strongly believe that we need to modernize the law relating to the gathering of foreign intelligence, and I support many of the provisions in the Senate bill.

However, I believe this bill didn’t do enough to protect against the assertion of executive power. I have said on many occasions that without the additional language to strengthen and tighten the exclusivity already in FISA, I could not support final passage.

I offered an amendment on this very issue. My amendment, which would have made it clear that FISA is the excusive authority for wiretapping U.S. persons for foreign intelligence purposes, received well more than a majority of this body – 57 votes. But it did not receive the 60 votes required. Given this strong vote, I remain hopeful that similar language will be included in a FISA bill that goes to the President.

There should never be another warrantless surveillance program. And I continue to believe that there should be a strong statement in law making it crystal clear that FISA must be followed, period.

Unfortunately, the bill before the Senate did not include such language and simply didn’t go far enough in protecting against executive power. That’s why I voted against the Senate bill.”

This elides the immunity issue and foregrounds the exclusivity amendment. But take it for what it's worth.

UPDATE II: This is the best explanation for why Dodd and the others agreed to the pretty bad unanimous consent agreement:

3.) Why didn't Dodd object to unanimous consent on the "compromise" that determined vote thresholds?

Well, the answer is simple: If he didn't Jello Jay would have bolted and brought Democratic Senators with him to vote in favor of a subsequent McConnell cloture motion. The same kind we beat back before the extension.

Had Dodd objected, there would have been no amendments at all. Not that the ones we got made a difference.

It was a damned if we did, damned if we didn't situation.