Lawmakers Delay Telco Immunity Vote 102
eweekhickins writes "The US Senate Judiciary Committee delayed a scheduled vote on whether telecommunications carriers should be granted immunity for cooperating with the White House's domestic spying program of telephone wiretapping and e-mail surveillance. The panel hopes to vote on the provision as soon as next week. Senator Pat Leahy said that immunity would make it impossible for Americans to seek redress for 'illegal' violations of their privacy." The article points out the confused state of the immunity measure: the House is considering a version of FISA renewal that has no immunity; in the Senate, two committees are working on different versions, one with immunity, one without.
Other side (Score:2, Interesting)
Obvious reason (Score:2, Interesting)
This is complete horseshit (Score:1, Interesting)
That is what must be determined conclusively.
If it was legal, then there is nothing to grant immunity for.
If it was not legal, then the telco companies are the least of our problems. They should of course still be nailed for it. Just because it is a government agency that is directing your company to commit a crime, does not mean that you will be protected from the other agencies in our government, or from the consequences of that crime.
At the end of the day the sad truth of the matter is that our enemies overseas are nowhere near as dangerous to the well being of our nation as our domestic enemies, many of whom are in government. We are at war. Unfortunately we are in a war which is largely undefined, at least by official sources. It is called the "war on terror." This is a lie. That is declaring a war on an activity without ever identifying the persons responsible for that activity. If someone was tracking mud into your house, declaring a war on mud without ever addressing the person tracking it in would result in nothing, except perhaps a lot of mopping. You have to define your enemy before you can successfully wage war against him.
Our enemies are those elements in the Muslim world who wish to see Islam, and particularly islamofascism, conquer the world. This isn't a war against terror, or even terrorists really. This is a war against people and groups and nations, who wish to destroy our civilization, our societies, and replace each with their own. Terrorism is but one of many strategies they employ to accomplish this. This is who we are at war with because this is who is waging war upon us, and upon the west as a whole.
Within our own nation, and our own government, there are those who seek to help our enemies overseas. They do this for a variety of reasons, but primarily because they believe that the enemy of their enemy is their friend. They have no special love for the Islamofascists. In most instances they would be mortal enemies. But both are enemies of liberal democracy, so they're working together to destroy it. Who is this internal enemy that is working with our enemies overseas? This enemy has many names, and many faces. It is not so much a singular enemy as much as an ad hoc swarm of smaller enemies, some of whom are almost as much at odd with one another as they are with us. Principle among these enemies are crypto-marxists. Then you have your socialists, gramscian marxists, and a whole slew of other groups and ideologies that can be collectively known as the political left. Not all self-described leftists are of course a part of this swarm, but the majority are. Others are unconsciously working in concert with them without understanding their intentions. These are generally known as "useful idiots."
These are people who attempt to color everything that the president and his administration are doing as an assault on the American people. There is of course room for honest criticism of this administration, but that isn't what these people are about. They're about weakening our nation from within so that we will be less able to fight our external foes. No nation is ever conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within, and that is exactly what their game plan is.
This is just the cold war all over again in many ways. In fact it would be more honest to say that the cold war never really ended. The Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight, but its allies here in the states never threw in the towel. Those allies are still hard at work on their long march through our institutions, weakening and destroying from within. Now that a new foe has surfaced, they're working overtime.
But none of this answers the question of whether these wiretaps were legal or not. The Bush administration knows all too well that our internal enemies will use the legal system to attack from within. If this administration did not verify the legality of what they were plann
Re:This is complete horseshit (Score:2, Interesting)
Want me to top off that kool-aid for you?
Re:Wrong (Score:1, Interesting)
If the Class Action Suit goes ahead, I bet a loss will cost them a few orders of magnitude more than a lawsuit with the government would have.
Court vs government (Score:4, Interesting)