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At last Tuesday’s blogger meetup (which was fantastic by the way – if you weren’t there, you really missed out), the talk turned to Claire McCaskill’s recent disappointing votes on FISA and on troop withdrawals from Iraq. The feeling all around was disappointment in someone that many of us worked really hard for in 2006. We knocked doors, made phone calls, and raised money to elect someone who would not rubberstamp Bush’s excesses like her predecessor did, but that’s what we’re getting. (Yes, I am happy with her vote on the Webb Amendment to extend rest time for the troops.) And what’s worse, we had no inkling as to why McCaskill voted the way she did, especially on FISA. I mean, why would you vote to expand the powers that Bush was already abusing?
I wrote to Senator McCaskill and received no response, but a friend of mine did get an e-mail response from her office. She argues that the DNI (yeah, that guy) wrote a letter to the Senate requesting a speedy revision of the FISA law because of the increased threat of terrorism, so she gave it to him. McCaskill actually argues against herself, saying in the end, this temporary legislation erodes constitutional protections. So why vote for it at all?
The temporary nature of the legislation does nothing to assuage my fears, either. The Patriot Act, Bush’s tax cuts, and the Iraq War all face or have faced sunset provisions, and even in the case of the unpopular Iraq War, Bush, hardly an endearing president, always gets what he wants. Apparently McCaskill is going to work hard to fix the situation; I’ll believe it when I see it.
I still haven’t seen anything amounting to a logical line of reasoning coming from McCaskill on why Bush (or any president, for that matter) should have the power to sidestep the courts when listening in on the private communications of an American citizen.
Full text of the letter below the jump.
Photo courtesy of PubDef
Dear [redacted]:
Thank you for contacting me regarding the Protect America Act of 2007 (S. 1927). I appreciate hearing from you, and I welcome the chance to respond.
On August 1, 2007, I was faced with a stark reality: the Director of National Intelligence sent a letter warning the Senate of the heightened threat of international terrorism, and urging us to modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) before the August recess “to ensure that we do not have critical gaps in our ability to provide warnings of threats to the country”. The call to quickly revise FISA in order to reflect developments in telecommunications technology was echoed by four Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. I chose to heed these urgent warnings.
I voted for two measures to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I preferred the legislation offered by Senators Rockefeller and Levin; however, it failed to gather the 60 votes needed to pass. I also voted for the Bond-McConnell version, which did receive enough votes to pass. Corresponding legislation was later approved by the House of Representatives, and the President quickly signed the bill into law.
It is important to recognize that this legislation is a temporary fix to provide our intelligence community with the most immediate tools needed to protect our country – it will be in place for only six months, and it cannot be renewed before it is thoroughly reviewed and authorized by Congress. This gives us six months to create a more acceptable permanent intelligence collection process that that allows us to effectively monitor terrorist communications overseas while also protecting the privacy of law-abiding American citizens. I can assure you I will be one of the Senators working hard to re-establish the constitutional protections that have been eroded by this President and this temporary FISA legislation.
Again, thank you for taking the time to share your concerns with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of any further assistance.
All best,
Senator Claire McCaskill
who gets these expanded, threatening powers. It’s far too likely that every president from here on out will claim them. That’s the nature of power: nobody willingly gives any of it up, whether Republican or Democrat.
She says that she was faced with a “stark reality”. But what was that stark reality? She got a letter from an administration official claiming something was true.
Was the something claimed in that letter actually true? She makes no claims that she knows whether it is true or not or whether she took any actions to determine if it was true. She says that 4 other democrats also made “urgent warnings” and she chose to heed those warnings. Again, no statement that she did any investigation herself into the bill and whether those urgent warnings were valid. Which, considering that she broke with the Democratic majority to vote with the Republicans for this bill seems like a question she should have asked herself.
So basically an administration that is FULL OF KNOWN LIARS asked her to rubber stamp something because it was urgent and she did it because 4 other Democrats asked her to. Despite the rest of the Democratic caucus voting against it. You are absolutely right – there is no logical statement in here about why in her judgment ANY president should have the power granted by this bill; indeed there is no statement in here about her analysis of the bill at all.
I agree that her statement at the end about eroding our constitutional protections is a contradiction. SHE voted to erode our contstitutional protections. She may claim she only voted to erode them for 6 months but SHE eroded them. If she had voted against the bill it would not have passed.
I was thinking after the meetup about all the Democrats I’ve worked for in my life – beginning as a child. And I believe I can say with no hesitation that I have NEVER been as disappointed in someone I worked to elect as I am with Claire.
Because if she did, I have a bridge for sale…
I tore her up over that letter, and so did my readers. I didn’t crosspost it here because I thought it was a little too pissed off for this forum. But then again, pissed off is rather called for right now. There is definitely such a thing as being too nice. That is an aspersion I intend to avoid having cast at me the remainder of my days.
I am expecting a barrage as a result of my comment, but that is ok.
I have not yet seen enough to convince me that Claire is not a serious Senator. While I DO NOT AGREE W. HER VOTE ON THE FISA BILL, the one I really want to hold accountable is the Senate Majority Leader for ever allowing a vote to come up on this in the impossiblly small time frame for senate consideration. And the four Democrats that Claire responded to were Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Members of her own party on the Senate Foreign Relations committee. HMMMMM. Put yourself in her shoes for a moment. Harry Reid knew that he could safely vote no b/c of the fear factor, enough democrats would vote for this bill. He got himself off the hook by putting others on, something he is quite good at. I place the responsibility squarely at the feet of Reid. Claire is a new senator and I think she decided to err on the side of safety while believing that a new more responsible bill would be passed within six months. I will wait to see if Harry can muster up a more responsible bill b/f he decides to just roll over.
That’s my story and I am stickin’ to it.
I sent this posting and all the comments to Claire’s office. The comments were so thoughtful. I have no doubt that readers learn more from our comments section than they do from the blogs themselves.
I got the same letter from McCaskill and would like to recommend Glenn Greenwald’s post today at Salon.com on “worthless beltway democrats, ” specifically my old California Senator, Dianne Feinstein, which touches on some of the same issues. I can almost forgive McCaskill everything but her FISA vote whch is one more step toward disabling the consititution. When the national lurch toward facism is enabled by someone I worked and voted for and for whom I had such hopes, it becomes almost too much to bear.
I will wait, however, to see how full-heartedly McCaskill works to redeem herself when FISA comes up again, although I do not really have much hope. I agree with those who have noted that if McCaskill were ever going to support progressive points of view, this early period in her term would be the safe time to do so.
The real question that we have to deal with is how do we deal with quislings in general. It is obviously not just a question of communicating our preferences to politicians who are themselves very much at ease with the prevailing, corporatist Republican culture and know that they can ignore us with impunity. Nor will making toothless threats do much. In McCaskill’s case, I can only believe that she knows her Missouri voters very well. She can easily calculate that if she continues to cater to the rural conservatives she will still very likely be able to count on progressives who will not allow the radical, fringe Republicans who now control the Republican party to maintain control–even if it means choking down a vote for a tepid Democrat such as she is proving to be. And she is probably right.
While the Iraq abomination may have given Democrats control of the congress temporarily, there is still a long way to go before the type of grass-roots and structural support is in place that is required to reclaim the Democratic party as a powerful, effective force for progressive values. Of course, blogs like this, which offer a forum for debate and sharing information, are an excellent beginning, but what else needs to happen?
I’m so happy to find this thoughtful discussion on McCaskills’s recent votes. I worked for her and I realized at the time that she was more conservative than I was and I understood to win the Senate in Missouri that was necessary. I too am also dissappointed in many of her recent votes, including immigration. I think my greatest disappointment is her failure to communicate with her voters and let them know what her thinking was on each vote.Does she ever hold a townhall? I would like to attend and see her answer some questions.Her website does not offer anything on controversial votes. Seems to me that support is a two way street, we make phone calls,knock on doors,hold fundraisers etc. our e mail addresses are all in the data bank when work or money is needed, why not when explanation is needed? I keep telling myself that she is very smart,strong and talented, even if I don’t always agree with her and I expect her to be like a dog with a bone on spending oversight but I wish she would communicate more with her base.
Senate Approves Whistleblower Protections for Defense Contractors
The list is endless.
Just a simple question: Would you rather have Jim Talent? If your answer is “No”, then the question becomes “How can you as an individual communicate your concerns to Claire McCaskill?”
If you haven’t already done so, call her office in Washington. (202) 224-6154
I guarantee that someone will listen to what you have to say.
today would be a good day to make that call or write that letter
“if your answer to the first question is “no” then there is a different second question”
don’t know what happened to that sentence.
If enough people contact Claire McCaskill she’ll get the message. When I called about her FISA vote the person on the other end of the line said something to the effect of “we’ve been getting a lot of calls.”
Part of our job here is to make the case to others for why they should take the time make that contact, don’t you think?