When Bush first took office in January 2001, eight months before 9/11, one of the first actions of his administration did in February was to go to the telephone companies and ask them to begin illegally wiretapping American citizens without warrants. This was criminal behavior on the part of both the Bush administration and of the telephone companies who acted as the new administration instructed them. Nothing in the FISA Act, which was the primary wiretapping law at the time, permitted that action. The phone companies who conducted the illegal telephone wiretaps can be sued for damages because they conducted those illegal wiretaps. Their lawyers knew that no law permitted their action.
The Bush administration pushed through the Protect America Act of 2007 that, among other things, provides immunity against lawsuits to phone companies who act illegally at the request of the government. What the Protect America Act did not do was make that immunity retroactive to relieve the phone companies from liability for their earlier clearly illegal actions.
For the last year the Bush administration has been demanding that Congress include retroactive immunity for the phone companies for their already conducted crimes. This is an issue of whether the government and the phone companies should be subject to the Rule of Law, but it is sufficiently technical to glaze over the eyes of most voters. Only policy wonks and bloggers recognize how totally Unamerican the actions by both the Bush administration and the telecoms were. Sen. Reid (Democratic Majority Leader) was ready to pass a renewal of the FISA Act that included a "retroactive immunity for telecoms" provision. Sen. Chris Dodd had placed a hold on the bill which prevented it from being considered by the Senate until that provision was removed. Harry Reid is known to have said that as soon as Sen. Dodd drops out of the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination he would quit grandstanding and the updated FISA bill with immunity for the telecoms would be passed.
Well, Sen. Dodd has dropped out of the race for the Presidential nomination, and apparently he was not grandstanding. Chris Bowers of Open Left quotes the Wall Street Journal:
We're told that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is saying privately he now won't attempt to update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on the wiretapping of al Qaeda suspects. Instead, he'll merely support another 18-month extension of the six-month-old Protect America Act. Among other problems, the temporary bill includes no retroactive immunity for the telecom companies that cooperated with the feds after 9/11.This is a big win for America, for the Rule of Law, for Sen. Chris Dodd, and for Sen. Dodd's supporters in the Blogosphere.
This win is probably the most significant "flexing of the political muscles" by the blogosphere. It is another step forward as the blogosphere becomes a significant player in American politics. Since the blogosphere is the only institution in American politics which is NOT controlled by some form of small group of leaders. It is a place where anyone can throw out ideas, complaints and proposals and not be subject to arbitrary control by some gatekeeper. Instead with the blogosphere we get significant groups coming together around various issues, and now we see that those groups are beginning to show real muscle politically.
While this may be a new form of mass democracy, as the blogosphere begins to demonstrate political power, there will be currently existing institutions that try to get control of the blogosphere. So we need to watch both the growth of effective power in the blogosphere, and then we need to watch to see who pushes back.
Welcome to Terra Incognita. At least at the moment the direction of movement is correct.
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