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10 New York Dems Vote For Lawlessness, Monarchy

by: phillip anderson

Fri Jun 20, 2008 at 14:18:47 PM EDT

There's so much to despise in the bill these 10 NY Democrats voted on today, but Glenn Greenwald tries to pick the worst:

Perhaps the most repellent part of this bill (though that's obviously a close competition) is 802(c) of the telecom amnesty section. That says that the Attorney General can declare that the documents he submits to the court in order to get these lawsuits dismissed are secret, and once he declares that, then: (a) the plaintiffs and their lawyers won't ever see the documents and (b) the court is barred from referencing them in any way when it dismisses the lawsuit. All the court can do is issue an order saying that the lawsuits are dismissed, but it is barred from saying why they're being dismissed or what the basis is for the dismissal.

So basically, one day in the near future, we're all going to learn that one of our federal courts dismissed all of the lawsuits against the telecoms. But we're never going to be able to know why the lawsuits were dismissed or what documents were given by the Government to force the court to dismiss the lawsuits. Not only won't we, the public, know that, neither will the plaintiffs' lawyers. Nobody will know except the Judge and the Government because it will all be shrouded in compelled secrecy, and the Judge will be barred by this law from describing or even referencing the grounds for dismissal in any way. Freedom is on the march.

Is that what a democracy looks like? Are you telling me that we stood down a Soviet Union with tens of thousands of nuclear warheads aimed directly at us but that some half literate cave dwellers have driven us to basically gut the Fourth Amendment and bless the ones wielding the knife? And don't even get me started on how this whole vote went down.

When Democrats took over the Congress, they issued a document vowing to "end the 'dead of night' special interest provisions that turn bills into special-interest giveaways" and proclaimed: "Lawmakers must have the opportunity to read every bill before they vote on it. It's common sense."

Today, the House leadership has set aside a grand total of one hour to debate the FISA/amnesty bill, and gave its members less than 24 hours from the time it was released yesterday until they have to vote on it today. That's the same bill which the NYT this morning calls "the most significant revision of surveillance law in 30 years." They're going to enact massive changes to our spying laws without having the slightest idea what they're voting on. All they know is that the President demanded this, and that's enough, because -- as Kit Bond says -- "when the government tells you to do something, I'm sure you would all agree that I think you all recognize that is something you need to do." In this formulation, "the government" means "The President."

Disgraceful.

The following Democrats should remove me from their lists:

Ackerman (NY-5)
Arcuri (NY-24)
Bishop (NY-1)
Crowley (NY-7)
Engel (NY-17)
Gillibrand (NY-20)
Higgins (NY-27)
Lowey (NY-18)
McCarthy (NY-4)
Meeks (NY-6)