Senate approves retroactive immunity for telcom pals

There's lots of basic truths that need to be reiterated in today's McCarthyist environment. For one, those of us who oppose the war are not unpatriotic, despite what the wingnutosphere spin machine claims. Also, those of us who oppose any other recent Republican policy are not unpatriotic. Another basic truth is that Bush's warrantless phone-tapping program is grossly illegal, and telcom giants knowingly broke the law when they participated in it.

This truth is as sure as David Vitter having a diaper fetish. (I was originally going to use this analogy in an entry yesterday, but it works much better here.)

Thus it should be absolutely unthinkable that the telcom corporations should be given immunity from civil suits by Americans who had their phone conversations bugged. It's even more unthinkable that it should be retroactive (which would in effect go back in time to change the law). So what's the Democratic Senate to do? Why, these shitheads granted immunity to them, of course.

One of the main purposes of electing a Democratic Congress was to stop this from happening. Talk about not living up to a voter mandate.

These days, it literally takes an act of Congress to sue a major corporation. The Dodd/Feingold amendment (written by 2 Democratic senators) would have quite rightly stripped retroactive immunity from the pending surveillance bill. But this measure failed by a smashing 67 to 31 vote - with many DLC Democrats joining the Mepublicans (sic) in opposing the measure. (However, the House version of the bill does not provide immunity, so there's still hope.)

At least Obama did the proper thing by voting to take away telcoms' immunity. With the rightward trend of the Democrats in general, there might not be a Democratic presidential nominee any better than Obama ever again.

The fact that so many Democrats caved on the Mukasey nomination is why I reregistered as a Green. The Democratic Congress was already such a towering disappointment then that it was no longer enough for me to hem and haw about what a big sellout the party has become under the DLC.

It really is a crying shame both major parties support the Bushiban.

(Source: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/senate_votes_for_retroactive_i.php;
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080212/ap_on_go_co/terrorist_surveillance)