Capitulation

With a solid wall of Republican Representative votes and 34% of the Democratic Caucus, it looks like the so-called FISA "compromise" bill is going through in ugly, amnesty-laden form:

The proposal — particularly the immunity provision — represents a major victory for the White House after months of dispute. “I think the White House got a better deal than they even they had hoped to get,” said Senator Christopher Bond, the Missouri Republican who led the negotiations.

That's immunity for any of the big telcos that helped the criminal Cheney/Bush Administration break the law and spy on anyone, even citizens, without any warrant, as long as they can produce evidence that they were told it was okay:

Doesn't that actually endorse and extend to private actors the Nixonian view that if the president says it's legal, it's legal, regardless of what the law says and the Constitution says? Wouldn't that set an awful precedent that an administration could get private actors to do whatever they wanted including breaking the law?

The leader of the capitulating Democrats appears to be none other than Majority Whip Steny Hoyer, whom Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not want to get the job for reasons like these:

That's the "compromise" Steny Hoyer negotiated and which he is now -- according to very credible reports -- pressuring every member of the Democratic caucus to support. It's full-scale, unconditional amnesty with no inquiry into whether anyone broke the law. In the U.S. now, thanks to the Democratic Congress, we'll have a new law based on the premise that the President has the power to order private actors to break the law, and when he issues such an order, the private actors will be protected from liability of any kind on the ground that the Leader told them to do it -- the very theory that the Nuremberg Trial rejected.

Are the capitulating Dems just covering their own asses? Here's how the entire House of Representatives voted today. Obama's people have reported they are scrutinizing the legislation tonight, which is being jammed through for a vote tomorrow without any hearings, barely time to be read.

Hopefully Barack will stand on the right side of this one, which could be another game changer as well. Go ahead and tell your Congressperson via their website, or donate here to fight the abridgement of our Constitutional rights.