I’m still pondering my options for this fall, in the wake of nascent dictator Smirk’s signing of H.R. 6304, which immunized the phone companies for their outstanding wiretapping of the last seven years, and the granting of widespread new spying powers to the executive branch.

In the final stretch leading up to this week’s shameful bowing by the Senate to the emperor Smirk, a coalition was formed between liberal bloggers, progressive leaders, and libertarians, including Ron Paul supporters. These Strange Bedfellows are working to defend our civil liberties. I say all the more power to them. Speaking of libertarians, Bob Barr, the former Republican congressman from Georgia, has been rather outspoken lately on civil liberties, especially FISA. Seems he agrees it’s a bad idea. I was never a fan of Barr, but I think I’ll have to check him out. He seems to be among a handful of politicians these days who actually care about the Constitution and the rule of law.

In the meantime, I’m not the only one who’s planning to vote for a third-party candidate, or considering renouncing support for Obama. Kevin Hayden at American Street has made it clear he doesn’t plan to vote for Obama; Richard Blair has also outlined why he is not casting his ballot for the Senator from Illinois.

A number of people will hold their noses and vote for Obama anyway, and I’m glad they are– they’re voting from the power of their convictions. But just as they have the right to vote however they choose, so I have the right to determine my own candidate. A lot of arguments I’ve seen so far for continuing to vote for Obama are made in the throes of passion, with very little logic attached, or they ring hollow (”The Supreme Court!” My thoughts? “Where were the Democrats on Roberts and Alito? Where was Obama on those two?”). I think this country is on the road to hell, and we’re going there either way– Obama’s path is just a bit slower and more drawn-out than McCain’s, in my opinion.

We’ll see what happens…

Some presidents have monuments named after them: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt.

Others have schools and universities named after them, like Kennedy.

A few are remembered during our morning commutes: Reagan, Eisenhower, and Lincoln.

Some are rather obscure– there isn’t a whole lot out there commemorating Rutherford B. Hayes, or Millard Fillmore.

A few are considered so atrocious that there is very little out there honoring them, such as Franklin Pierce and Warren Harding.

So what will happen when Smirk leaves office? A few people have already jumped the gun, and are ready to honor him. I found their idea a rather fitting one. The Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is suggesting a sewage plant be named in honor of George W. Bush.

It’ll probably be shot down before it’s placed before the voters to approve, which is a shame. I think it’s a great way to honor the man who brought us the last 7 1/2 years: the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. It takes answering the call of nature in the bushes to a whole new level.

Just the other day, I was despairing for our nation, its history, and most of all, its constitutional principles. I’d felt for many years that one commonality that the people of this country had was a deep abiding protectiveness of our constitution and the rights it espoused. But the last several years worried me to the point of fear– not fear of terrorists, not fear of foreign enemies, of fifth columns– but fear of ourselves. Despite FDR’s famous proclamation, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” I feared that the people of this country were willing to let a mighty nation sink into a morass from which it could not rescue itself.

I’m now cautiously hopeful that perhaps we haven’t reached that day yet– that just maybe we have leaders who understand, if only a little, what an extraordinary legacy our forefathers left us, and why it’s so important not to destroy it. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives did not cave in to Smirk and his corporate cronies by capitulating on the disingenuously named Protect America Act (PAA), which would have granted the telecoms immunity for their “alleged” cooperation in allowing our gummint to snoop on whoever they wanted monitor communications. Bear in mind that AT&T isn’t just about phone calls anymore; it’s also about internet service these days as well, which means it doesn’t matter whether you’re old or young, deaf or hearing, black or white– the gummint isn’t going to discriminate among different groups; it’s just going to cast a wide net, period.

Instead of following the Senate and just handing the White House whatever it wanted, the House rightly rejected the renewal of the PAA. The main bone of contention between the Senate and House bills is that the Senate more or less agreed that the telecoms and the executive branch could do whatever they pleased; the House, on the other hand, thinks that maybe people’s civil liberties should be preserved, and people who break the law (read: the telecoms) shouldn’t be given a free pass.

Smirk of course didn’t like being told that, so he cajoled and threatened all day Thursday and Friday, but the House left town without renewing the bill. Now we’re being told that we’re all in danger (funny how every time we’re being told to fear something or that we’re in danger, it’s when the administration is either potentially in lots of trouble or they didn’t get their way. Kind of how little kids act, really… anyone remember color-coded terror alerts? Does anyone know if we’re at “yellow” these days?), but when you think about it, it’s really a bluff.

For one thing, as I noted last month, the “patriotic” phone companies only let their patriotism go so far; once the bottom line was being threatened, they cut off gummint snooping until the bills were paid up. Guess they aren’t too worried about “imminent attacks,” are they?

Just in case you think this is all a bunch of hot air over nothing, let’s look at what Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) had to say about all this the other day:

Let’s not forget why we are even talking about this issue.  At some point in 2001, the Bush Administration began a massive program of warrantless spying.  New reports suggest that the Administration began its warrantless spying even before 9/11.  The Administration never told Congress what it was doing.  In clear violation of the FISA law and in complete disdain for the 4th Amendment, it also never told the FISA court what it was doing.

Because the Bush Administration secretly ignored the law, we still do not know how deeply this program invaded the privacy of millions of innocent Americans.  The push for immunity by this Administration is a push to avoid all accountability for a wiretapping program that was a massive violation of the law.

Gee, our gummint didn’t bother to tell Congress about what was going on? The Fourth Amendment too. Say, isn’t that the one about “unreasonable searches”…? Something about “warrants” and “probable cause” too. Isn’t that pesky?

Kennedy goes on to add:

Think about what we’ve been hearing from the White House in this debate.  The President has said that American lives will be sacrificed if Congress does not change FISA.  But he has also said that he will veto any FISA bill that does not grant retroactive immunity.  No immunity, no new FISA bill.  So if we take the President at his word, he is willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies.  The President’s insistence on immunity as a precondition for any FISA reform is yet another example of his disrespect for honest dialogue and for the rule of law.

It’s painfully clear what the President’s request for retroactive immunity is really about.  It’s a self-serving attempt to avoid legal and political accountability and keep the American public in the dark about this whole shameful episode…

This is what it’s really all about. It’s about a president who’s broken the law, co-opted the telcoms to break the law along with him, and is now trying to cover his ass and the asses of the corporate hacks he pals around with.

As for FISA, it’s still in existence. Nothing has changed– we are not suddenly going to lose the ability to spy at all– it’s just that the executives who cared more about money are going to have to perhaps face the music instead of getting away scot-free for breaking federal laws.

That’s the real issue here, and Glenn Greenwald, in another great post, excerpts and highlights Michael McConnell’s (no, not a certain “pundit”!) admission of what it’s really all about: “However, that’s not the real issue. The issue is liability protection for the private sector.”

In other words, it’s all about Cover Your Ass (and your political donors’ asses).

Congressman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) also had quite a bit to add. His entire letter is worth reading, but I’ll just include this bit here:

The issue of telecom liability should be carefully considered based on a full review of the documents that your Administration withheld from Congress for eight months.  However, it is an insult to the intelligence of the American people to say that we will be vulnerable unless we grant immunity for actions that happened years ago.

“…a full review of the documents that your Administration withheld from Congress for eight months…” Hmm… whatever happened to cooperation between the different branches in our gummint? Sounds more like a power grab, increased unchecked power, and a blatant disregard for the laws of this nation, doesn’t it?

So I’m hoping that the new pair our Representatives seem to have grown aren’t just temporary ones, a “good for one day only” deal. I’m hoping that finally Congress will reassert itself and restore some semblance of balance, and finally demand some accountability. Yep, I’m cautiously hopeful…

Tomorrow will be a rather momentous day in the history of our country. A vote on cloture will take place in the U.S. Senate, at 4:30 p.m. EST. Cloture, for the uninitiated, is the only means of overcoming a filibuster, actual or threatened. This vote concerns the renewal of the so-called “Protect America Act,” which deals with FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act). At this point, without debate or a filibuster, the Republicans will most likely shove the bill through. If a debate/filibuster is allowed, Russ Feingold, Chris Dodd, and others will attempt to preserve our privacy in regards to FISA.

I’ve covered FISA several times on this blog, and will continue to do so, because I think civil liberties are a cornerstone of the America we’ve all been taught to believe in, and I have no intention of letting our civil liberties vanish without a fight. Additionally, I’m leery of allowing our government to have expanded powers where surveillance is concerned; too many times in our history, agencies and individuals have abused the power granted to them and to the government as a whole (for examples, see: J. Edgar Hoover, COINTELPRO, the Church Committee…).

The battle right now isn’t so much over beefing up security, or fine-tuning FISA; no politician or citizen in their right mind wants to weaken security. The real struggle is over three things: 1) the fact that Smirk et al knowingly broke the law, including a public admission by Smirk; should we permit the executive branch to be above the law, and be unaccountable for its actions? 2) blanket warrants; in the past, warrants could only be submitted for use with individuals. Now our gummint wants the ability to just vaguely mutter about “enemies” and “suspects” and receive the right to snoop without oversight; should we as a country permit this? and 3) providing immunity, whether retroactive or future, for the telecommunications industry, which aided and abetted our gummint in breaking the law.

The squawking you hear comes from the gummint and its allies (including Jay Rockefeller, who is supposedly a Democrat), who claim the telecoms were merely doing their patriotic duty, that they shouldn’t have to be “punished,” etc., etc. What I find funny about this is that despite all the sympathy our “leaders” are trying to garner for these poor, defenseless telecoms is the fact that earlier this month, it was reported that these corporations (and they are national/global corporations, mind you) cut off the FBI from accessing our phone records because of unpaid bills.

So much for noble acts of sacrifice and patriotism. The telecoms apparently don’t care about their customers’ privacy or civil rights; they don’t care about “security”; they’re just in it for the money. Surprise, surprise…

Allowing our gummint (including Smirk and Shooter) the ability to evade the law and skirt rules and regulations where wiretapping is concerned angers me. But it also upsets me that Congress is willing to aid and abet by letting the telecoms off the hook. As I and others have said before, good prosecutors don’t let suspects or “persons of interest” off the hook without knowing all the details first. Yet, that’s exactly what the gummint wants us to do. One has to wonder why they’re so interested in the welfare of large, rich corporations that have well-paid lawyers on retainer. Who’s hiding what, and why? What is the real cost of allowing immunity to take place? What are the consequences that will happen in both possible outcomes?

We’ll never get the answer to these questions, and many more, if we allow the bill to pass as is, and for Smirk and his corporate pals to get their way. Right now, the Republicans are blocking all amendments, from every Senator that’s submitted one (including one of their own, Arlen Specter). Right now, Congress is potentially poised to once again sacrifice its constitutional rights of oversight, and in the process, once again upset our long-standing system of checks and balances. Right now, we have business executives and high-level government leaders, including our President and Vice-President, who don’t want to have to answer anything, who don’t want to be responsible for their actions, and who think they should be above the law.

If you’re okay with that, sure; no problem. Have fun re-living life in East Germany and other repressive nations throughout history that spied on their own citizens.

“It can’t happen here,” you say.

Oh? Want to bet? It already has. Check this out, at CQ Politics (h/t Firedoglake): “Collateral Damage: Surveillance Aimed at Terrorists Can Easily Go Awry.” As a writer and historian (of sorts), it alarms me what happened to Lawrence Wright. For those of you who are deaf, here’s an analogy: suppose I’m doing research into Deaf history or linguistics of signed languages in another country, and I call, write, or e-mail someone abroad about this. I am then subsequently investigated, wiretapped, my mail opened, my e-mails diverted, and I get a visit from government agents. It could happen; it’s already happened to Lawrence Wright.

Lest you think it’s just “lefties” like me who are concerned about what’s happening, check out this poll [PDF] commissioned by the ACLU (the folks who are fighting for all our liberties): even 51% of Republicans oppose this power grab.

If you’re like me and think that immunity and the ability to obtain blanket warrants should not be granted, then get on the phone NOW and call or fax your Senators, and tell them to vote NO  on cloture. Time’s of the essence. If this one is lost, the bill will most likely pass, and you’ll soon see a billboard in your neighborhood: “Wiretapping: Coming Soon Near You.”