ACLU Warns of Next Pass At Telecom Immunity 201
The ACLU has reportedly uncovered another pass at telecom immunity and is urging concerned citizens to speak out against what they call a "dangerous backroom deal." "But now, word comes that House leadership may be working hand-in-hand with Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who has spearheaded efforts to give immunity to law-breaking phone companies that provided mountains of customer data to the government without warrants. As discussions continue, it's critical that House leadership avoid buckling to pressure from the White House or Senator Rockefeller at all costs. House leadership — and every representative — need to draw a line in the sand, by rejecting any compromise that would undo the achievement we fought so hard for in February."
A letter worth signing. (Score:4, Informative)
Please follow the link and sign the ACLU petition [aclu.org] and call your local representative. Domestic spying should be exposed and eradicated. The principle is more important than party politics.
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Actually, it might just serve as the list to first go after when they get total control. You sure you want to make yourself a target?
That's why I donate to the ACLU (Score:5, Interesting)
Why be a pussy?
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Why be a pussy?
As I read that it sounds like you are asking yourself, as you should be.
Learn to read. (Score:2)
I signed the petition, not that it'll do much.
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cowardice and laziness- good one. I'd much rather do something that might make a difference and make myself a target than to sit back and let everything waste away.
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Then again, 331 MP's of the party proposing this idea were de-elected in the May Day massacre [timesonline.co.uk].
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Damn... my sarcasm gland just failed.
A different view on the matter (Score:3, Informative)
Andrew McCarthy [defenddemocracy.org], the former Assistant United States Attorney who prosecuted the 1993 World Trade Center bombers (including the "Blind Sheik"), has written The Case for Telecom Immunity [defenddemocracy.org]. Worth reading.
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There is no difference between what Bush wants and what the KGB did in the USSR. It was legal for the KGB to spy on their citizens and perfectly legal for people to disappear or to be killed by KGB agents. Are you really going to argue that it's perfectly OK to head in EXACTLY the same direction because it's "legal"?
A
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The "rights" of the many to do what, exactly? So you have a group that protects people from unreasonable searches and restrictions on their speech, but they occasionally make people stop buying religious trinkets with public money. I'd say that on the balance, they're doing a pretty good job of making the US a better place.
That's true of just about every organization. My poi
Stupid question... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Stupid question... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Stupid question... (Score:5, Informative)
The supreme court has the final power to decide what is illegal and not illegal. Personally id say the power to determine is really in the hands of the court.
Re:Stupid question... (Score:5, Interesting)
So, litigation is moot under the proposed laws. That's why it's important to fight the immunity and hit the congressional urge (and heavily lobbied) to offer the telcos immunity. My view is that it'll be weaseled in somehow, because we have no guts, and no glory in the Congress. I wish it were otherwise. Vote in November.
For not answering? For being a bad man? For fun? (Score:5, Informative)
STAHL: If someone's in custody, as in Abu Ghraib, and they are brutalized, by a law enforcement person -- if you listen to the expression "cruel and unusual punishment," doesn't that apply?
SCALIA: No. To the contrary. You think -- Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don't think so.
STAHL: Well I think if you're in custody, and you have a policeman who's taken you into custody-
SCALIA: And you say he's punishing you? What's he punishing you for?
Oh, that's great, you have dishonest monsters deciding what is equal protection and what isn't! Fantastic!
Re:For not answering? For being a bad man? For fun (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's then incumbent upon us to vote to ensure our sentiments
What the hell are you on about? Since when do presidential candidates talk about what kind of judges they want to see appointed to SCOTUS? You "the majority rule of democracy will solve every problem" people make me laugh. Maybe if we had a national referendum with veto power over SCOTUS nominations or better yet referendum veto power over individual SCOTUS decisions you would have a point. Even if the US were a pure democracy (and we sure as hell are not) and could vote directly on everything it would sti
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Otherwise I wish to see their blood refresh the tree of liberty.
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Yet civility requires tolerance. My 'rights' are unfortunately open to misinterpretation. But I forgive, otherwise my unyielding ways might be misspent. YMMV.
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Re:For not answering? For being a bad man? For fun (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn! I mean DAMN!
It should be blatantly obvious, he's punishing you for not giving him the information he wants!
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SCALIA: And you say he's punishing you? What's he punishing you for? ... When he's hurting you in order to get information from you, you wouldn't say he's punishing you. What is he punishing you for?
Damn! I mean DAMN!
It should be blatantly obvious, he's punishing you for not giving him the information he wants!
And since he's a judge supreme, we can't ascribe his statement of opinion on law to incompetence. We must therefore admit it was motivated by malice.
The Constitution doesn't apply anyway (Score:2)
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As a result, Congress can immunize them from doing so because it is Congress that created the laws to punish them in the first place; if those laws to punish them were unconstitutional, so be it, but it renders unnecessary the need to immunize them.
For how long? (Score:3, Insightful)
So the question becomes, how long until we burn out?
Re:For how long? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wake up from your dreaded party politics dream and you'll see the real nightmare.
use proper measurements on the scale (Score:4, Insightful)
There are indeed valid, substantial questions regarding Jay Rockefeller's campaign contributors and the FISA Bill's telecom immunity clause. My questions about him go back farther to when he was minority committee leader, and was being pussy-whipped by Sen. Roberts (Can's-Ass) about Robert's promise to have the Intelligence Committee investigate the administration's use of pre-Iraq War intelligence, and even get around to issuing subpoenas, so Feith and Wolfowitz would get their asses hauled down to assert their 5th Amendment rights under oath while being televised nationwide. There are several Democratic Senators whose defense of civil liberties is very questionable.
However, your intimated assertion of a partisan parity is absurd, and a wild flight of fantasy from reality.
Let's investigate reality without the rosy-tint of you blurry lens:
Senate Roll Call Vote #20 on February 12, 2008, The FISA Amendments Act [senate.gov]
Clearly, The Democrats are The Lamer of Two Evils.
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Excellent proof that you simply refuse to pay attention, and again just struck out without proper knowledge to justify the attack.. I have not been a member of either the Dem or Rep parties in over 20 years now, and have either been an LP member or simply non-aligned. You accuse me of only seeing two parties, because I listed the count by party of the Senate Roll Call Vote for The FISA Amendments act of 2008, and faithfully listed the two Senators who are independents? Would you have been happier if I had
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If its McCain, I recommend investing in lube. We'll need a lot of it.
Re:For how long? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:For how long? (Score:4, Insightful)
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A Democratic president that has a Demo congress has a better chance of breaking logjams, for constitutional and party-whip control reasons.
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Of Clinton, see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-hamsher/hillary-clinton-a-bundle_b_70052.html [huffingtonpost.com] which shows she skipped an earlier vote on the subject. However, she differs from Obama's lobbying efforts, where most of the bribery, oops, influence begins.
Re:For how long? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:For how long? (Score:5, Informative)
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No, the 'next administration' isn't really that important. What is important is the next Congress.
And last election, anyone with a D next to their name got in. This election, those Ds that aren't actually Ds have had primary challenges they're going to lose, and get replaced with real D.
The Republicans, right now, are pretending that it takes 60 votes to get anything they don't like through the Senate. Meanwhile, somehow, three or four Democrats caving to the Republicans give them 52 votes, which is someh
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What a simpleminded, biased, and totally incorrect worldview.
Those "not a real D's", what some are calling Blue Dog Democrats won their office because they were, in your words, "not real D's" Somehow, you'll have to come to grips with the fact that in many places in the country, Democrats are a distant second choice.
And
more evidence of the left's lameness (Score:2)
Attitudes like yours are a significant cause for the flight of Americans from the Democratic party. How many times are you going to play your asinine circular firing squad game before you realise nobody wins?
Please offer valid citations for your defamatory statements about Reid, or admit that you are not in fact motivated by a will to defend liberty, but instead by the same lame-brained liberealities that got the party sodomised by the new right in the first place.
Christ Almighty! - Evil to the right of
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Senate Dem majority is a myth (Score:5, Informative)
49 D - 49 R - 2 I
Reid is the majority leader by virtue of Lieberman's two-timing hide. Care to guess which side of the isle he votes on FISA and telecom immunity?
You also need to consider that cloture votes (an agreement to end debate and go to a vote on a bill or specific debated issue in a bill, requires a super-majority of 60%. Back when the Democrats used this to block a handful of Bush's most activist of right-wing judge appointees, they were criticised as being undemocratic. Now that Republicans have have used the tactic to effectively shut down any attempts by Democrats to right wrongs from the last 7 years, the Democrats are called inept or in collusion.
A fine example of this tactic is : Roll Call Vote #340 [senate.gov] on September 19, 2007. It was a cloture to vote on Senator Specter's Amendment #2022 [loc.gov] to The Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 - the purpose of which was to restore habeas corpus for those detained by the United States. The voted count was 56-Yea -- 43 Nay -- 12 NoVote. The Party affiliation of the vote was:
Yea - 49 D - 6R - 1 I (Sanders)
Nay - 42 R - 0D - 1 I (Lieberman)
Habeas corpus is a Natural Right, which the Constitution states can only be suspended in times of domestic invasion or public insurrection. To assert that a sneak attack by 20 detemine F**ks, which to this Nation's great misfortune, coincided with an administration so arrogant, ignorant and derelict, it failed at its primary duty to defend America constitutes an "invasion", is to chase after a well dressed bunny down into a dark hole in the ground. This should not be a partisan issue, and REAL conservatives understand this clearly. Read Kenneth Starr's written opinion to The Senate [liberatedtext.org].
My question to you is: did you actually look last time or did you just accept what you were told?
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Actually, I did look ... what I found was a page on the senate.gov website, which I expect to be authoritative on this subject:
http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/one_item_and_teasers/partydiv.htm [senate.gov]
I did notice the 49 seats each, but also noted that there is also one Independent Democrat. A certain Joe Lieberman. Clearly, just like many Democrats and Republicans, he does not always vote with "his" party.
Democratic and Liberman are mutually exclusive (Score:3, Insightful)
It is absurd that a person who refused to accept the democratic vote of his own party in the primaries, and then reentered the election as an independent who accepted major contribution from the other main party, and pulled all party support out from under their own candidate, would be referred to as being democratic.
Liegberman subverted the democratic process of his own chosen party, The Democrats. He aligned with the Dem. side, because the Senate rules force third party and independent members to pick o
my spin (Score:5, Interesting)
I am one who has for many years believed that the two party system was the ultimate root cause for the Nation's ills, and have also loudly asserted that if your vote was based on a "lesser of two evils" decision, without question, you have voted for evil.
The Bush Administration, and concomitant GOP Congressional dereliction, has taught me a bitter lesson though. I must now choke back the bile that rises in my throat, whenever I long nostalgically for the time in America's past, when a President's lies were only about acts of consensual sex, a cum-stained blue dress, and tobacco products with odd exotic aromatics; instead of a President's lies about Natural Liberties, Immoral War, and the Blood-stained Iraqi Sands.
This is the cause for a correction in my analysis. While it is wrong to vote for a lesser of two evils; a very good argument can be made to support a vote for the lamer of two evils. The GOP has not yet begun to experience the pain that is necessary to purge the excessive resident evil within. There need be a return to a state of polar equilibrium in quantities of evil, or there need be the end to the Republican Party, as a clear and present danger to the people's liberty. There is no third way.
The oath was: against ALL enemies, foreign and domestic, or to condense it down to a Bushified black and white: are you with the Friends of Liberty or Against Us. Choose wisely...
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All Politicians are by this simple definition, evil. They are humans who actively seek possession of power beyond what is a Natural Right for them to possess. A motivation of what they believe to be an altruistic higher good, should not be viewed as a mitigating factor. Instead it should be an sentence enhancement.
Do not be deceived; a state is essential for the protection of liberty, but it is also a hideous monster which should never be released from its muzzle and chain, or it will turn and devour i
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Not necessarily. They are people who use power to whatever ends. Power is useless without some kind of purpose (e.g. personal gain, positive change, etc). They may not be seeking power, but seeking some undetermined goal, even if that goal, if successfully reached, leaves them powerless (in theory).
Besides, your definition is far too broad and all-enco
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I would just put forth one final notion to your argument. And that is the idea that things need to get worse, before they get better. The state of this country as it stands now, is one where the balance is forever being tipped in both directions. I would say that the sooner this country dips into darkness,
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In which case, the current system has won, it's just a question of what scares you more: the "liberal agenda", or the "conservative agenda", and you're right smack in the middle of the bullshit, wedge issue, framed debate you're being pushed into.
You equate the wa
Is there a difference (Score:5, Informative)
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I love how smug Democrats and Republicans are when we've seen the damage that both parties do.
Re:Is there a difference (Score:4, Funny)
A guy is sitting in the front row of a "town meeting" in an overwhelming republican town, when the R presidential candidate comes to speak.
the candidate asks "So who here is a republican?" everybody else raises their hands, so he asks the gentleman in the front "So why aren't you a republican?"
"Well, my father was a democrat, his father was a democrat, as so was his father before him, so I'm a democrat."
"Well, what if your father, and his father has been idiots?"
"Then I guess I'd be a republican"
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[Members] of the progressive wing are very different from conservative Republicans.
And just how are they different, exactly? I mean, they both have grandiose ideas about the next bits, pieces, and large chunks we should tack on to our already crufty federal government. Given a choice between the two, I mostly prefer the vision of the Democrats, but it's not all that much of a choice.
Both parties are also very much committed to maintaining our military presence in 130 countries, yet the only thing that's mentioned is their differences on the ridiculously costly war in Iraq, and even tho
Re:Is there a difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Democrats used to be the party in favor of civil rights & bigger social programs & friendly with labor. Foreign policy tended to be dovish. You couldn't have guns or put up a Christmas tree on public land, but you could have porn and/or gay sex. Left wing.
Now they both tax the crap out of us, spend us into a world of deficit, screw the working/middle class and infringe on our rights while cutting social programs. Or maybe it has always been that way, and I'm only starting to notice. Hmm
Seriously though, although the Republicans are generally right of center and Dems are generally left of center, since there are only 2 parties each party covers a lot of ideological ground and there is some overlap in the middle. With both parties being mindlessly poll-driven, I feel like most of them are simply parroting the feel-good position of the day as it comes to them from their handlers, making both sides sound remarkably similar overall. Mostly they just argue over who gets the blame or the credit, depending which way the poll numbers are going.
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You don't say?
'Center' is _defined_ as the middle ground between the biggest players.
There is no fixed 'neutral' center. Who the big players are and what their stances mean varies with time and from country to country, and so does the perception of what the 'center' means. The 'center' here in Norway is far out to the left of the US Dems. Even our extreme right wing struggles to be slightly to the
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I'm told that Europeans think of Dems as being rather conservative. They're generally horrified by the Republicans.
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What if I'm for lower taxes & smaller government & farmers? What if I want guns, even semi and fully automatic ones? What if I'm in favor of civil rights & social programs & friendly towards labor? What if I could give a fuck about xmas trees anywhere? What if I like porn and could give a fuck if someone has gay sex? What then?
There a difference (Score:2)
at least presently. Admittedly it is nuanced and difficult to perceive. I would have preferred a more secluded place for this pointer, but if you poke around the relevant part of the namespace presently given as mine in this note's header (it will be obvious is you visit), you'd probably begin to perceive them.
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A sizable chunk of Democrats want to hold the Bush administration accountable for this crime, Almost no Republican does.
Almost all Democrats are against Telco (and by extension, Bush) immunity, but enough are willing to vote with just about every single Republican tha
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You are closer to the mark, but the figures should be clearly stated. Republicans have historically been slippery eels when it comes to properly assessing causality from their actions. Accepting Personal Responsibility is not actually a tenet of contemporary conservatives. It is instead a strategy that provides them with multiple opportunities to insult poor folk.
In The Senate, It was Roll Call 237 on October 11, 2002 [senate.gov]. The toal vote count was:
Yeas - 77 --- Nays - 23
The party affiliation breakdown was
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That's not a different political view. It is considered a given in Europe that every delegate of a party supports the issues put forwards by the party leader, while the opposing party (or parties) vote against it on principle. If anything, a European observer would say that the Reps have their delegates under control while the Dems don't.
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Democrats want to increase government spending and lower taxes, in that order. Republicans, on the other hand, want to lower taxes and increase government spending, in that order.
If that's not enough, there's other issues they differ on. Republicans are in favor of important useful rights like firearm ownership, and strongly against dangerous inhuman practices like abortion. Democrats, however, are in favor of important useful rights like abortion, and strongly against
flight of fantasy from reality (Score:2)
You're right that Democrats tax and spend, but Republicans spend without end, and foist the costs off onto the backs of future citizens. When is the worst of two paths to traverse?
You are no longer able to return to you former fantasy world within your distorted model of a bipolar polity. The GOP Gone Wild in D.C., when they possessed a 3 - 0 branch majority is well-documented as fact, that proves Republicans are nothing but scum-sucking lying thieves of liberty.
The Democrats are The Lamer of Two Evils.
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I think they both rather need to be eradicated.
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I think that's it really.
But then, I'm also European so what do I know
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That much foolish naiveté in an adult is unpardonable. If you're a child, then it's forgivable, as you may yet learn about the nature of politics, power, and corruption as you grow.
Re:For how long? (Score:5, Informative)
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Quite frankly I don't see how anyone over there is able to Afford Such A High Price.
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There's more to it than that. First you have to be vigilant. Then you have to do something about it.
Re:For how long? (Score:4, Funny)
In the past for social change to become in the public awareness it has taken a bad economy or an intolerable immediate social situation. Given the track record of the Republicans over the past 30 years the best path to force social change would be to keep electing them so that they destroy the economy and the standing of the US in the rest of the world to such a level that only public outcry and massive social change can bring us back. Naturally, no one wants this so we are stuck between a rock (iraq) and a hard place.
So do us all a favor and vote for the worst candidate from here on out. It's the only way. It will bring out social change faster than the small bandaid method we are currently employing. This is the best way to 'burn out'.
Note: this message has been edited for the sarcasm impaired.
Re:For how long? (Score:5, Funny)
So do us all a favor and vote for the worst candidate from here on out. It's the only way.
He's been in the White House for seven years. I don't think we're getting the results you were hoping for.
What does it matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What does it matter? (Score:5, Informative)
If there is immunity, no one can start a suit. But we still have many dragging answers from the administration about the nature of what happened, and to the extent it happened, and so the class of people injured (who then have nexus to sue) really isn't known yet. When it is, provided you really can sue, someone will. And I'll be happy to become a party to the plaintiffs that do it. Such behavior cannot be rewarded, and the damage to privacy and freedom in the name of security is done.
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Spending cuts, sure. (Might have been nice to stay out of this trillion-dollar war in Iraq.) But at any given level of spending, cutting today's taxes just means raising tomorrow's taxes.
It also means putting upward pressure on interest rates, which makes mortgages more expensive, makes it more expensive for businesses to raise capital, etc.
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Re:What does it matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
If they are granted the immunity, it basically gives future administrations a precedent for saying they're above the law. Who cares what those pesky laws say, we'll immunize you if you do our bidding.
What's wrong with investigations? (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh-oh, Big Brother. It looks like that logic has a nasty way of working both ways. The only way to prevent this from happening in the future is to keep immunity out, sue every single telecom into bankruptcy, and throw every member of the Administration who was involved into prison.
Pff... hahahahah. Alright, it was worth a good laugh. Now please, go back to watching your televisions. The Factor is coming right up! Top news story? Reverend Jeremiah Wright is not an "honest man," and makes money selling lies...
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Yeah, how dare he say that people hate us in the Middle East because we took a dangerous and selfish angle in our diplomatic relations to the region's influential states! We're perfect and there can be no repercussions for our actions! He's just racist against real Americans...
In British English... (Score:2)
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This is really really important. (Score:5, Insightful)
What's at stake here is the public's right to discover who in our government (allegedly) requested that the law (allegedly) be broken.
What's at stake here is nothing less than the rule of law itself and whether the law is controlled by the People or by the corporations.
Think about the consequences if fucking telecommunications companies for God's sake get away with (allegedly) violating our rights to privacy guaranteed by the FISA laws...
Think about the consequences if the (alleged) pressure to break the law from our own government never is fully exposed...
Think of the consequences if justice is not served to those who deserve it...
If they get away with this, the grand experiment that is America has failed.
Allegedly.
$150,000 for EACH person spied on by AT&T... (Score:2)
Which at this point is, I believe, about $150,000.00 for each person whose rights have been infringed.
I could use that money. I could fill up my car, what? 50 times!
thank you scuttlemonkey (Score:2)
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TFS says that it is the House that should be contacted (rather than the Senate) and they can be found here [house.gov]
But how do you feel about the ACLU? (Score:2)
Telecom immunity is fine (Score:2)
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Creating a "new" tradition of un-intrusive Federal government would really put the "P" in Progress for many of us.
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