Rep. Hoyer, You're About To Be Money-Bombed

Steny Hoyer's pathetic lie about why he engineered a FISA bill that grants immunity to the telecoms and the Bush Administration is so laughably bad that you wonder how this guy ever got elected Majority Leader in the first place. He certainly wilts in the spotlight.

Asked why Democrats don’t put aside the surveillance legislation until a new president is elected in November, Hoyer said he would prefer to do so, but can’t because so many House Democrats are prepared to vote for the Senate bill that he and other top House Democrats oppose.

“Clearly enough Democrats have indicated in the House they would vote for the Senate bill if it came to the floor. The alternatives are either the Senate bill or a bill significantly better” reached through negotiations with the Senate and the White House, he said.

“Many Democrats have indicated to me they are willing to wait as long as an alternative is in sight. If not, they are prepared to vote for the Senate bill,” Hoyer said.

That's just not factually correct. They all voted with the stronger House bill just a few months ago. They don't have the ability to vote for the Senate bill unless Hoyer and the leadership bring it to the floor. The discharge petition that would force the bill to a vote has been largely dormant for the past two months. It's just completely disingenuous for Hoyer to suggest he's controlled by the rank and file.

Glenn Greenwald reports that his efforts to hold Hoyer accountable for sanctioning lawbreaking are growing.

First, the amount raised in the last 24 hours is now a truly extraordinary $90,000 -- bringing the total for this campaign over $170,000. The more that number goes up, the more potent this campaign will be, the harder it will hit its deserving targets. Contributions can be made here.

The ACLU Press Release announcing this new coalition, which is being called "Strange Bedfellows," is here. We expect to announce numerous other additions to the coalition -- many quite significant -- very shortly [...]

As a result, our campaign will be unveiled in two phases, with Phase I to entail an immediate ad campaign aimed at three key Democratic enablers of this bill -- Hoyer, Chris Carney, and Blue Dog Rep. John Barrow of Georgia. The reasons for targeting Hoyer are self-evident and were set forth yesterday, and the campaign against Carney -- who has long bee one of the Blue Dogs spearheading the effort behind this bill -- is already underway and will continue.

Rep. John Barrow was, like Carney, one of the 21 Blue Dogs who signed the letter to Nancy Pelosi back in March demanding that they be allowed to vote on the Rockefeller/Cheney Senate bill. In July, Barrow faces a very credible primary challenger -- Georgia State House Rep. Regina Thomas -- who is much more in step with the district's Democratic base.

All good enough. Carney doesn't have a primary opponent, but to be honest, he can have his negatives increased so he's replaced by a Republican. Really doesn't matter a bit to me.

What Hoyer ought to be worried about comes next.

Phase II will involve a massive money bomb, to be planned by the same people who were behind the money bombs that raised millions and millions of dollars for the Ron Paul presidential campaign. The dates and other details for that will be announced shortly.

The plan there is to raise an extraordinary amount of money -- dwarfing the $90,000 raised in the last 24 hours -- by going to all of the various constituents of each member of this coalition in order to fuel a real campaign in defense of civil liberties, constitutional protections and the rule of law. The money raised will be used to oppose and punish those vulnerable members of Congress who continue to support the evisceration of our constitutional framework and core civil liberties, while supporting candidates and office-holders who meaningfully oppose that assault.

Like the ACLU said, it's Strange Bedfellows. But if citizens with different views can come together on supporting civil liberties and the rule of law, I enthusiastically support it. You can become a strange bedfellow here.

A citizen-led to use millions and millions of dollars attacking Steny Hoyer is something I can get behind.

FISA: Feingold And Dodd Throw Down

You get the sense that the FISA fight is moving to an endgame, when the two biggest defenders of civil liberties and the privacy of Americans in this debate send a letter to their leadership asking them to remember the Constitution.

Dear Majority Leader Reid, Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Hoyer, Chairman Leahy, Chairman Conyers, Chairman Rockefeller and Chairman Reyes,

As you work to resolve differences between the House and Senate versions of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, we urge you to include key protections to safeguard the privacy of law-abiding Americans, and not to include provisions that would grant retroactive immunity to companies that allegedly cooperated in the President’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program.

With respect to immunity, we are particularly concerned about a proposal recently made by Senator Bond, and want to make clear that his proposal is just as unacceptable as the immunity provision in the Senate bill, which we vigorously opposed. As we understand it, the proposal would authorize secret proceedings in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to evaluate the companies’ immunity claims, but the court’s role would be limited to evaluating precisely the same question laid out in the Senate bill: whether a company received “a written request or directive from the Attorney General or the head of an element of the intelligence community … indicating that the activity was authorized by the President and determined to be lawful.”

Information declassified in the committee report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the FISA Amendments Act, S. 2248, confirms that the companies received exactly these materials:

The Committee can say, however, that beginning soon after September 11, 2001, the Executive branch provided written requests or directives to U.S. electronic communication service providers to obtain their assistance with communications intelligence activities that had been authorized by the President.

… The letters were provided to electronic communication service providers at regular intervals. All of the letters stated that the activities had been authorized by the President. All of the letters also stated that the activities had been determined to be lawful by the Attorney General, except for one letter that covered a period of less than sixty days. That letter, which like all the others stated that the activities had been authorized by the President, stated that the activities had been determined to be lawful by the Counsel to the President.

In other words, under the Bond proposal, the result of the FISA Court’s evaluation would be predetermined. Regardless of how much information it is permitted to review, what standard of review is employed, how open the proceedings are, and what role the plaintiffs’ lawyers are permitted to play, the FISA Court would be required to grant immunity. To agree to such a proposal would not represent a reasonable compromise.

There's more at the link and I urge you to read the whole letter. The ACLU has also made their opposition known. There are still "basket warrants" in this compromise bill, which rejects the clear intent of the 4th Amendment by allowing surveillance on individuals without a case made in court as to the need for surveillance of that specific individual. There is also an exception to the exclusivity agreement in the bill for "exigent circumstances," which basically gives the executive the ability to trump any civil liberties protections and spy on whoever he or she wishes. And of course, as Feingold and Dodd note, it lets the telecoms and the government off the hook for illegal spying.

There are lots more problems with the bill but your government and your media doesn't want you to know about it, and so they are censoring free speech that tries to raise awareness.

Two weeks ago, the Blue America PAC submitted ads to numerous cable television stations, newspapers and radio stations criticizing Blue Dog Rep. Chris Carney (D-Pa) for his support of a bill to expand dramatically the President's warrantless eavesdropping powers and to immunize telecoms (such as Comcast) which broke the law in enabling the Bush administration to spy on their customers with no warrants. The ads also documented that several of the lawbreaking telecoms which would benefit most from the amnesty Carney advocates donated substantial sums to his campaign (with Comast being the largest such contributor to Carney).

The ads that were submitted were accepted by numerous newspapers and radio stations in Carney's district, as well as one television station operator (one much smaller than Comcast). None of the companies which own those media outlets were involved in the President's spying program nor were they criticized by the ad, and they have been running the ads for many days now.

By stark contrast, Comcast -- from the moment the ad was submitted -- was blatantly reluctant to broadcast the ad, insisting that numerous, extremely cumbersome "conditions" be met before they would consider accepting the ad. But even once those conditions were repeatedly met -- in the form of ample "substantiation" documenting the claims made in the ad -- Comcast continued to concoct additional barriers. When it was conveyed last week to Comcast's representative that it was becoming increasingly clear that they were refusing to broadcast the ad because it was critical of the role it played in the Bush administration's illegal spying program, and because the ad targeted a Congressman to whom Comcast representatives have contributed generously (and who is working hard to secure amnesty for Comcast), Comcast advised Blue America that it was retaining outside legal counsel to advise it on whether it should accept the ad [...]

Manifestly, Comcast is refusing to broadcast these ads for one simple reason: because they want to suppress any viewpoints critical of their behavior in this matter [...] Comcast has no legal obligation, at least that I'm aware of, to broadcast particular ads. But the danger of allowing corporations like Comcast to control the content of vital political debates by refusing to broadcast ads that are critical of them or their Congressmen is manifest, and that's particularly true where -- as is the case for Rep. Carney's district -- one company controls the bulk of the important television outlets. In an age where corporate consolidation of our most influential media outlets is increasing rapidly, companies such as Comcast can suppress the expression of political views it dislikes -- or conceal their own illegal behavior -- by censoring any political viewpoints that are contrary to their interests or to the interests of the political figures who receive substantial contributions from them and then serve them. Obviously, that is precisely what Comcast is doing here.

The fix really does look to be in on this one. That's why Feingold and Dodd are speaking up now. The Bush Administration and their corporate benefactors are desperate to immunize themselves for illegal spying on Americans, and they'll go to whatever lengths necessary to get the law passed. People power is going to need to be stronger than ever on this one.

UPDATE: I think Eric Lichtblau gets these issues pretty well, but his latest article is basically outsourced to Kit Bond fearmongering, with the attendant "we are going to lose intelligence-gathering capabilities" if we don't give Bush everything he demands. Lichtblau knows better, this is sad.

FISA Update

I'm starting to get worried with what I'm hearing about a FISA "compromise." Republicans in Congress have been supposedly shifting on the rules governing surveillance, and are claiming that this is their final offer. Steny Hoyer and Jello Jay Rockefeller have been working on this bill with Kit Bond, and it doesn't look good. Here's Ryan Singel's report.

As for amnesty, here's a compare and contrast between bill (.pdf) the Senate passed in February and Bond's compromise.

S. 2248: In any case brought against a telecom for allegedly helping the government spy on Americans, the Attorney General could then write a secret letter to the judge in the case. The letter can certify that the company didn't participate or that the companies had gotten a piece of paper from the government at some point, saying that the President thought the program was legal. The letter does not even have to say that the telecom's participation was legal, simply that the government's end was. The judge would be obligated to throw out the case, unless he found an "abuse of discretion" on behalf of the Attorney General.

Bond compromise: Under this proposal, the Attorney General's letter goes to the secret spying court, rather than to a normal federal judge. A FISC judge would actually be able see whatever requests or orders were given to the telecoms, and parties in the case could actually file briefs. The judge would then decide on a "preponderance of the evidence" whether the telecom secretly spied on Americans as part of a program authorized by president and that they got a letter at some point from the government.

In other words, the outcome in the compromise is as foregone as the original amnesty provision. Both essentially work like directives to the court to throw out lawsuits brought by Americans who allege massive violation of federal privacy laws.

This is pretty close to the Feinstein "compromise" on FISA from earlier this year. It allows a secret court to make the determination on allowing lawsuits to go forward - of course, it's a secret court, and the point of the lawsuits is not necessarily to bankrupt telecoms but to discover the extent of the spying on Americans by the White House, which this would short-circuit. In addition, it sets up FISA as the exclusive means for telecom surveillance, which is fine, but that's already the law, and the Bush Administration thinks they have the power to invalidate exclusivity by executive order and secert law, anyway.

There is no constituency for this bill other than the telecom industry, which has spent millions in lobbying fees already this year. There's supposedly a deadline in August after which some wiretaps set right now would have to be stopped, which could be fixed very easily with a patch covering international communications that go through a domestic switcher. There is absolutely no reason to give in on this. John McCain is flopping like a fish on this one because he doesn't even know what the independents want out of this - the truth is they want NOTHING and they care about their civil liberties. The right has already put up the TV ads and called Democratic members of Congress soft on terrorism and it DIDN'T WORK. Somehow the Dems are acting like it did. Of course, this is because they feel just as culpable for spying on Americans and want to eliminate any possibility of the extent of the spying getting out. So we're fighting against two parties on this one.

But fight we must. The ACLU has a petition calling on people to reject the Bond compromise. Progressive organizations like Blue Majority are running our own ads aimed at wayward Dems like the awful Chris Carney, taking them to task for supporting warrantless eavesdropping. They Work For Us is running radio ads in Bush Dog districts as well. Somehow these conservative Dems think they own the caucus but that's just because they aren't being scrutinized for their actions, which are substantially similar to the actions of the Bush Administration which the country has rejected.