Pine Belt Progressive

Today the Senate is probably going to pass the President’s revisions to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The one that grants immunities to the country’s largest telecom companies for illegally wiretapping entire phone exchanges without warrants, because the President told them too. If this bill makes it into law, the chance of eventually having investigations and consequences for these crimes goes from slim to none.

It’s probably going to pass because the Republicans are all sticking together, and the Democrats, who are in the majority, cannot round up enough Senators on the correct side of this issue to sustain a filibuster.

So, today is the day the Senate says it’s o.k. to break the law, if you are a big company and the President tells you to. It’s they day they tell you that a majority of Senators don’t really believe the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures, is worth the paper it’s written on.

Today, bipartisanship yields more of the same results it’s been yielding since the days of the Contract with America. Bipartisan agreement on this FISA bill is bipartisan agreement that big companies and the President are above the law. It’s bipartisan agreement that the Congress really has no power and no desire to hold the unitary executive accountable for its actions. It’s bipartisan agreement that it’s o.k. for the government to record and analyze everything you say on the telephone and everything your write into an e-mail or instant messenger without showing that you’ve done anything to warrant such scrutiny. Gotta love that bipartisan spirit.

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Suggested Reading: Cracks in the Wall parts One, Two, and Three by Sara Robinson. Discusses the problem of authoritarians in terms of behavior and associated personality traits. Recommended for everyone, but especially for those three or four of you out there with clinical experience (you know who you are).