This week, George W. Bush and the Republican Party are pulling out all the stops to pressure Democratic members of the House of Representatives to vote against the interests of their constituents to approve a conference version of the fully-loaded FISA Amendments Act. The version of the FISA Amendments Act that they’re going to try to push through the House of Representatives this week
- allows government agents to search your home or office without a search warrant
- allows the Bush White House to coordinate nationwide electronic spying programs against American citizens, listening to our phone calls, reading our emails, and watching us wherever we go on the Internet
- gives retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that broke the law and violated customer privacy agreements by helping the Bush Administration to illegally spy against Americans
In short, the FISA Amendments Act is a law that’s as bad as they come. It’s bad for freedom, and it’s bad for business. It’s bad news for the Democratic Party too, because it gives a Republican government the power it needs to spy against Democratic members of Congress, and even against the Democratic presidential campaigns.
A Democrat in Congress would have to be a genuine idiot to vote for this kind of law. Unfortunately, there are some congressional Democrats just that stupid. These are the House Democrats who voted last summer for the Protect America Act, the predecessor of the FISA Amendments Act. Their names are:
Alabama
Bud Cramer
Artur Davis
Arizona
Harry Mitchell
Arkansas
Michael Ross
Vic Snyder
California
Jim Costa
Colorado
John Salazar
Florida
Allen Boyd
Georgia
John Barrow
James Marshall
Illinois
Melissa Bean
Dan Lipinski
Indiana
Joe Donnelly
Brad Ellsworth
Baron Hill
Iowa
Leonard Boswell
Kentucky
Ben Chandler
Louisiana
Charles Melancon of Louisiana
Minnesota
Collin Peterson of Minnesota
Tomothy Walz of Minnesota
Mississippi
Gene Taylor
New York
Brian Higgins
North Carolina
Bob Etheridge
Michael McIntyre
Heath Shuler
North Dakota
Earl Pomeroy
Ohio
Zachary Space
Charles Wilson
Oklahoma
Dan Boren
Pennsylvania
Jason Altmire
Christopher Carney
South Dakota
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin
Tennessee
Lincoln Davis
James Cooper
Bart Gordon
John Tanner
Texas
Henry Cuellar
Chet Edwards
Nick Lampson
Ciro Rodriguez
Utah
James Matheson
America, it is not too late to prevent the FISA Amendments Act from gaining the force of law. You can take action today to push back against this tyrannical law to establish Big Brother spying across America.
Call the Congressional Switchboard now, at (202) 224-3121, and ask to be connected to the office of one of the Representatives above. Call your own Representative, if he or she is on the list above. Make it clear, in polite but strong language, that any Democrat who votes for any conference version of the FISA Amendments Act will earn your opposition in the 2008 congressional re-election season.
Any idea who is on the conference committee or will they try to stop it after it comes out of committee? Did all GOPs vote for it? What about the ones who voted against, any chance of switching, should they be called?
Honestly, I’ve been looking for information about that, and it’s relatively difficult to find out. I know that Nancy Pelosi is calling for the passage of the FISA Amendments Act – just without legal amnesty for telecommunications corporations, and with a few changes here and there. It boggles my mind that she isn’t blocking it completely, as there really was no need for the Protect America Act and is none for the FISA Amendments Act. Give me a bit of time to hunt through some alternative directions – I’ll try to get the information up this morning.
Looking into this some more, a question arises in my mind: Is there a conference committee?
Sylvester Reyes and John Conyers from the House, chairs of the Intelligence and Judiciary committees, met with senators Patrick Leahy and Jay Rockefeller, chairs of the equivalent committees in the Senate. (Watch out for that Senator Rockefeller – he’s a nasty politician who voted for the FISA Amendments Act and pushed to include telecommunications corporation immunity after getting lots of money from telecommunications corporations).
No Republican senior members of these House and Senate committees attended, however, as would ordinarily happen. They refused to show up to even talk about the FISA Amendments Act. The White House refused to send representatives either.
Curious.
Also curious is that on Valentine’s Day, a new bill,
H.R.5440, was introduced by Republican Vito Fossella – under the name FISA Amendments Act.
Apparently, the Republican tactic is to avoid a conference committee involving the current passed House equivalent of the FISA Amendments Act, and to try to get a new House bill more to the President’s liking passed before any negotiations begin.
There are 16 cosponsors to that bill – more people to call.
YOU PEOPLE ARE VERY STUPID !! YOU ARE ALL NUTS
No, no. Some of us are fruits.
Others (from California) are flakes.
Hello,
I live in central minnesota and have been under pulsed microwave satellite surveillance for 4 1/2 years. This type of satellite surveillance locks onto the human bodies bioelectric profile and requires no gps chip to surveil you no matter where you go. It causes interference in my TV picture with pulsed diagonal lines in the picture. I was wrongfully accused of being a methamphetamines manufacturer and placed under this surveillance in the summer of 2003. This surveillance has an electronic harassment feature and they try to make you think your’e hearing voices. This bullshit goes on 24/7 365 days a year but I can drown their sorry loser asses out by cranking up the rock and roll on the stereo or boombox. This surveillance is being carried out by some slimeballs who are being paid with grant monies from the Dept of Homeland Insecurity. This type of surveillance requires no wiretap to hear every conversation I have. I think the men who participate in this surveillance wear their underwear inside out and backwards and like to take turns bending over and spreading their buttcheeks for each other. They arev basically some lowlifes who can’t get real jobs and be productive members of society.
Okay, listen. There’s a difference between paranoid delusions of being spied upon, and what the law will actually allow under the FISA Amendments Act.
Will we KNOW that we are being spied upon through REAL technologies – like the Internet and cell phone networks? No. Will we know that the government has taken that power? Yes.
How would you like to be the guy who broke the story about the warrantless wiretapping? If it hadn’t been for James Risen, we wouldn’t even know they were doing it. Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether Risen will ever be able to get phone service in his own name again, it looks like the telecoms are now trying to put him in jail:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2008/02/rick_karr_on_government_secrec.html