No Amnesty For Telcos - Democrats Grow Spine

From Wired


The current threat level

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It's about time for someone to reign in the Commander Guy

Democrats continued their defiance of President Bush on Friday over his secret wiretapping program, passing a spying bill that calls for a commission to investigate the program, and refusing to give amnesty to telecoms that collaborated with the warrantless surveillance.

House Democratic leaders secured passage of the spying bill four weeks after a similar measure was defeated by a coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats. That defeat led to the expiration of a temporary spying measure, setting off a week-long Republican effort to scare the American people with phantoms of lost wiretaps.

Republicans were championing a Senate bill that includes amnesty for telecoms and gives the nation's spies wide powers to wiretap using facilities inside the United States with little court oversight.

Instead of caving to that rhetoric, the House Democrats doubled down on their original legislation, by including a call for a commission, armed with subpoena power, that would investigate the secret spying.

"The House of Representatives took a significant step backward in defending our country against terrorism and passed a partisan bill that will please class-action trial lawyers at the expense of our national security," White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto said.

Bush argues that the participating companies were patriots, and that they would stop complying with lawful court orders in the future if not freed from the lawsuits accusing them of conducting illegal surveillance for Bush.

Let us hope this bill will pass.

Do you really think that the Dems have enough Ballasity to pass this?

I don't know how much 'spine' has to do with it. On the other hand, it's obvious who got paid enough by the telcos and who didn't get paid enough.

The concept of extorting comes to mind but of course, this would be the legal, campaign contribution type of extortion, not that nasty criminal extortion, for which people are rightly sent to jail.

I'm sure all these politicians will be convinced to change their minds without too much effort being expended on the part of the lobbyists.

From the picture caption -- your link:  A man demonstrating the effects of ballasity. As this is a public site, a hole was cut in his shorts so that his testicles could be swung behind them where they are being held by a forklift.

Holy FSM!

Yes, and he's only 22 years old.  See what happens when you listen to Hans und Franz?  Ve are here to...

Unless, of course, you prefer the equally unbelievable photo of Margaret Thatcher from the same site.