I got the following e-mail from Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake with some good advice:
Dear Clark,
The House passed a version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) last week that included retroactive immunity to the telecom companies that conspired in Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program. And now, as the bill heads to the Senate, it looks like we have one last chance to stop this massive erosion of the rule of law.
Thankfully, we have a few champions, like Russ Feingold and Chris Dodd, who look poised to fight this to the very end, but they can’t do it alone. They need both strong support from progressive senators and the vote of those senators currently sitting on the fence. This is where you come in.
Sen. McCaskill could be the deciding voice and vote on stopping retroactive immunity. Please take a minute right now to give her a call and ask her to strip the retroactive immunity provision of FISA.
You can call either by dialing the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121, or by using our list of direct number for target senators.
After you are done with the call, please take a moment to let us know how the call went.
Senator Feingold effectively summed up the insanity of retroactive immunity yesterday by saying, “It doesn’t simply have the impact of potentially allowing telephone companies to break the law. It may prevent us from ever getting to the core issue…which is the president ran an illegal program that could’ve been an impeachable offense.”
I hope that you’ll join me and do what you can to help prevent this from happening.
Thank you,
Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake
Supposedly due to the large number of incoming calls. I registered my complaint and left contact info in case they wanted to get back to me. I’m not going to hold my breath.
Although my message to her is (a) the message above and (b) that the rest of the bill gives far too broad of powers to the executive with far too many limitations on oversight to protect we citizens and (c) that as citizens we expect particularized warrants based on probable cause, not broad authorizations to search any facility based on reasonable belief. She shouldn’t vote for this bill unless ALL of these problems are fixed.
It bothers me tremendously how many big name bloggers are only willing to blog about the immunity issue.
at the state convention and at Truman Days. I politely suggested that Claire tell Jay Rockefeller to piss off (only I was a bit more blunt about my phrasing) and if she wasn’t up to it, she could bring him along next trip back and I would do it for her. Thus far she has not taken me up on my offer.
I got the Washington answering machine. I didn’t leave a message. I called the Kansas City office and said what I had to say. The polite person took my zip code. That was it.
They put me on hold for a couple of minutes, but then I got a live aide.