I'm sick and tired of it.
In 2006, I worked tirelessly to try to elect Democrats across the country. I phone-banked for Claire McCaskill, canvassed for Bob Casey, registered voters for Ned Lamont and helped organize a fund-raiser for Sheldon Whitehouse. I donated more money than I should have and was filled with dork-like glee when my investment was returned to me in the form of the first Democratic majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate since 1994.
Although they had some successes early, including raising the minimum wage and forcing Republicans into a politically-perilous corner on issues like children's insurance and stem cell research, I have generally deemed their rule as a failure thus far. I have desperately waited for them to turn the proverbial corner, but there has never been a time quite like this to convince me that it will never happen.
In 2006, it was revealed that, in the weeks and months following the September 11 attacks, the Bush Administration, AT&T, Verizon and other telecommunication corporations were working hand-in-hand to spy on Americans at home and abroad without a warrant or any court approval at all.
The telecoms have plenty of lawyers that could have (and did) tell them that this operation was against the law. Even then-Attorney General John Ashcroft had written several memos questioning whether or not the program was constitutional.
Normally, law-abiding administrations would have followed the rules and regulations put in place by the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (FISA). FISA was passed in 1978 as a means of setting boundaries for the federal government for monitoring communications in the emerging Digital Age. It created a secret court that would check what the government was doing and making sure that it was acting legally. Because of our ever-shifting technological standards, this law was due for a major update.
However, what Congress and the White House are on the verge of signing into law is an affront to our Constitution and a slap in the face of every voter who hit the polls in 2006 looking for change. The FISA "reform" bill that passed on Feb. 12 includes a number of abhorrent provisions, and the Senate rejected any attempt to amend them.
One of the most controversial sections of the bill was one that established retroactive immunity for the telecommunication corporations that broke the law by handing over private information over to the Bush Administration.
Republicans said that the companies were just doing what their government had asked them to do, and that subjecting them to litigation would expose too many state secrets about the program. Unlikely story.
Retroactive immunity is in the bill to protect consumers whose privacy may have been violated from discovering what was handed over and pressing punitive liability on the companies for breaking their contracts and legal obligations. Also, it is no surprise that Republicans are seeking to protect companies that are awfully generous to them come fund-raising time.
The precedent that American corporations can break the law and get bailed out of trouble as long as the government cries "national security." is a terrible one - one that is not compatible with the Democratic ideology of corporate accountability.
There was an attempt to strip this provision from the bill, but the Senate rejected it 31-67 (including 18 Democrats). That is 67 of your United States Senators who felt that protecting telecommunication corporations was more important than protecting the privacy of U.S. citizens.
Various amendments aimed at improving this shoddy bill were shot down by a faux-compromise between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and the Republican minority. Democrats agreed, essentially, to a 60-vote threshold for any amendment that had majority support (to ensure that it did not pass) and Republicans agreed to allow a simple majority vote for amendments that did not have 50 votes.
One amendment, termed as an "exclusivity agreement", would have established that the FISA reform law was the law governing how surveillance could be conducted against American citizens and that any other practice or operation was strictly prohibited. This amendment failed 57-41, under the 60-vote "agreement."
I will repeat that for you: the U.S. Senate rejected an amendment that would have said simply that the law they passed was the law and that the Bush Administration could not operate outside of its boundaries.
The original FISA law, of course, had an exclusivity provision in it. This new law will reject that and create an environment where no one will really know the law regarding surveillance because the law in the so-called "PROTECT Act" may not actually be the law at all.
To boil it down, 41 US Senators do not believe that Congress should have any absolute lawmaking powers.
After weeks of partisan debate, legislative delays and "compromise," what has the Democratic majority given its hard-working supporters? Exactly what the Bush Administration wanted; no more, no less.
Because of Democratic complicity and Republican arrogance, the new FISA bill is likely to grant a wide swath of powers to the executive with little or no mechanisms for accountability. Your privacy, your Constitution - shredded for political convenience.
Our Congress is supposed to be the people's legislature tasked with protecting the freedoms and liberties we hold dearest in America. With the passage of the FISA "reform" bill, the Senate has spectacularly failed at this task.
Scott Harris is a UMass student.
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