If a little blackmail won’t persuade the House to go along with Bush’s plan to facilitate—and immunize—Rove’s right to spy on US citizens’ phone calls, emails and faxes, then maybe anonymously funded attack ads aimed at House Democrats will.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/group_launches_ads_pressuring.php Foundation for the Defense of Democracies has launched a national ad campaign criticizing Democrats for not passing the Senate's surveillance bill.
According to the group's press release, the ad "will be seen on cable and satellite stations throughout the country and is also seen locally in 17 media markets across the United States."
That is a lot of cash coming from a new group that is solely interested in a single issue.
How much do you want to bet that if we could see its list of anonymous donors, we would find one donor---AT&T? Is this a new form of politics in the US? Direct corporate spending for “charitable” political attack ads aimed at furthering the interests of the business community?
The result is predictable:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3206525 WASHINGTON - The House Intelligence Committee chairman expects a compromise soon on renewal of an eavesdropping law that could provide legal protections for telecommunications companies as President Bush has insisted.
Rep. Silvestre Reyes, in a television interview broadcast Sunday, did not specifically say whether the House proposal would mirror the Senate's version. The Senate measure provides retroactive legal immunity to the companies that helped the government wiretap U.S. computer and phone lines after the Sept. 11 attacks without clearance from a secret court.
Hmm. Just weeks after standing up to protect our right to be free from warrantless search and seizure in the wake of the Senate’s dereliction of duty, the House claims that it too is about to fold like a House of Cards---in a couple of weeks. At least they are giving us some warning. Enough time to sit back and consider where we stand in this United States of America, One Nation Under Big Brother.
http://www.grandtheftelectionohio.com/060109.htm Right now,
Bush and the telecoms are not afraid of Congress. They have blackmail info on members of Congress—thanks to their own illegal domestic spying program which Dick Cheney started in early 2001 for this very purpose. They do not fear the nation’s rogue reporters, since they have also been accumulating sensitive info on journalists, their friends and sources to use on these guys and gals just in case. They do not fear the courts—the ultimate court has said that you have to have proof that you were spied upon to sue---a real Catch-22 since Bush and the telecoms will not reveal any details of their illegal spying operation.
However, there is one thing that keeps the telecom executives, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and George W. Bush from sleeping at night. A special kind of lawsuit, filed by the person you would least expect, someone who can bring to court names, places, times, information—everything that the Supreme Court said that it needed in order to consider a civil action.
That’s right.
An employee of the telecoms. Any one of a number of heretofore nameless, faceless individuals with an axe to grind against their Phone Company employer for any of the countless slights that the working grunt is forced to endure in the modern corporate world. Or maybe a patriot, like Mark Klein
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/05/70908who turned in room 641 A and became a national folk hero (and witness in the recent lawsuit that the SCOTUS tossed out).
If another whistleblower smuggles out some discs with the info that the Court claimed to need then voila----the whistleblower lawsuit is back on.No wonder the Bush administration is throwing every bit of blackmail info it has at Congress as fast as it can. No wonder the telecoms are skirting election laws through the creation of a single issue political action “charity” that is clearly anything but “nonprofit” in its intent. No wonder the House is acting exactly like the Senate did last fall when it announced that it would probably begin considering telecom immunity—and then stalled for four months before finally capitulating to the combined threat of blackmail and political smear.
While Bush and the telecoms are keeping their fingers crossed
praying that no telecom or NSA employee develops a conscience or a severe case of greed and comes forwards with the info needed to hammer the nails into the coffin of domestic spying, Congressional Democrats are praying just as hard that some person or group of persons will do this very thing.
If Democrats can stall long enough, they win. Even if every employee at AT&T and the NSA is a good little Republican, Bush and his war of choice in Iraq is increasingly unpopular, including within the president’s own party. The fact that Klein has been greeted as a national hero makes it even easier for the second whistleblower to step forward. I am truly surprised that Mukasey has not tossed him into Gitmo, just to discourage anyone else from following his example.
There is a second reason for Bush to want immunity granted now, rather than later. If I were an AT&T CEO, I would have already taken steps to minimize my future liability in the event of a lawsuit.
That means that the information superhighway would have a great big road closed sign posted right where all the good stuff can be found---information about what Democratic candidate’s wives say on the phone and what emails the Democratic party sends and faxes that come out of Countdown’s office and what sources Dan Rather is using and what Sy Hersch’s next article will be about and what the kids of the Senators on the Intelligence committee do in their spare time----
All of that would be off limits to Karl Rove, until his president convinced the CEO that he could not end up like this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben_TrialWith Cheney and Bush and Co. basking in the sun somewhere, thanks to pardons or immunity from prosecution granted by their new countries of residence.
And Karl Rove desperately needs to get his hands on all that illegally acquired domestic spying info that he has grown used to receiving. Rove will need to blackmail reporters and Obama’s campaign workers (highly placed ones if possible), maybe even pull an Eagleton and blackmail his VP choice (a great reason for selecting Hillary—there is nothing left there to smear). He needs to be able to know what ads the Dems plan to run so that he can have his counter ads ready. He needs to know when to stage phony terra scares to counter Democratic media blitzes. He needs to know where Obama will be so that he can stage “spontaneous” protests to make Obama look divisive. How will he be able to do all that, if AT&T will not furnish him the info?
The stakes have never been higher for Bush. McCain is his get out of jail free card. He can pardon everyone else, but who pardons him? Rove won’t allow his darling W. to languish in jail. Forced exile in Mexico or a South American country would be almost as bad. So, he has to pull out all the stops----blackmail, illegal campaign ads---to force Congress to make it possible for him (Rove) to enjoy the advantage of unlimited wiretapping ability this entire election season---all for the sake of W.’s felonious lily white butt.
Democracy? Democracy? We don’t need no stinking democracy. Actually, we do.
We also need a whistleblower, one who can provide the nation with the 2008 equivalent of Nixon’s Enemies List. Actual names, dates and content that were eavesdropped by the domestic spying program. Then the whistleblower suit would be back on. And then the public pressure on Congress to let the whistleblower suit go forward would be so overwhelming that Congress would have no choice but to let it proceed.
The more famous names that are included in the list of people upon whom the administration has spied, the better. As Hunter S. Thompson wrote, Nixon’s Enemies List made Watergate
real for Americans. They started taking a personal interest in it. The Enemies List sent Watergate to the top of the charts. If you think about it, if you were above the age of 12 when the List’s existence was revealed, you probably remember where you were, the same way you remember where you were when Kennedy was shot. Presidents were not supposed to keep lists of movie stars and politicians for the IRS to audit. That was not how the American system was set up by the Founders.
The
Enemies List II gives Bush and the telecoms nightmares, but it is our ticket out of the gulag. There are countless men and women---citizens of this democracy with the same obligation of eternal vigilance that we all have---who know exactly what kind of information was scooped up the Bush/Cheney/Rove domestic wiretap. If domestic spying occurred, it was illegal, and all it takes is for one of those citizens to come forward and save this country from becoming a totalitarian state in which Big Brother watches our every move.
"The price of democracy is eternal vigilance," Thomas Jefferson.
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