How are your civil liberties feeling today? If they feel a bit bruised you can thank the members of the United States Senate. Once again, as they have on countless occasions in the past seven years, the “elite 100” have done their duty to serve the Executive. By a 69 to 28 vote the Senate voted to grant the Bush Administration another free pass on their efforts to spy on American citizens with complete impunity. Oh and it doesn’t stop with Bush and Company. The just passed FISA Compromise Capitulation comes with immunity from prosecution for any telecom that cooperated with the Bush Administration by turning over records and facilitating access to customer phone and data lines.
While this bill should never have come to the floor for a vote if there any such thing as leadership in the Democratic Senate Majority, there were some on the Democratic side who stood for the principle that the Constitution should be served above all else. And so, for those who are interested, here are the names of those 27 Democrats (plus Independent, Bernie Sanders) who sided with the Constitution :
Akaka (D-HI)
Biden (D-DE)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Clinton (D-NY)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Murray (D-WA)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Wyden (D-OR)
And those 21 who chose tyranny:
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Conrad (D-ND)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lincoln (D-AR)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Obama (D-IL)
Pryor (D-AR)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Webb (D-VA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
[ADDENDUM - 7/10/08]
h/t Mock Paper Scissors via Crooks and Liars dot com
Peace,
Chad (The Left) Shue
3 comments:
We just heard the shreading of the 4th ammendment to Our Constitution. The very one, those you mentioned, took an oath to uphold.
Thanks for the link!
Regards,
Tengrain
The ACLU's action may still preserve the 4th Amendment but I don't think it will reverse the telecom immunity.
A guest on Squawk Box (CNBC) recently commnented that the telecoms should not be punished for being patriotic!
Let's get our electeds to propose a resolution of commendation to the telecoms that refused to violate the constitution.
The telecom immunity prevents the people's (lower case) access to justice in our courts. I don't get it.
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