{"id":197561,"date":"2008-01-25T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-25T22:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/01\/25\/my-letters-to-my-senators-on-telco-immunity\/"},"modified":"2008-01-25T17:30:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-25T22:30:00","slug":"my-letters-to-my-senators-on-telco-immunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/01\/25\/my-letters-to-my-senators-on-telco-immunity\/","title":{"rendered":"My Letters to My Senators on Telco Immunity"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had to send two very different<\/span> letters, because Ben Cardin voted against retroactive Telco immunity, and Barbara Mikulski voted for it.<\/p>\n

To the Honorable Barbara Mikulski:<\/p>\n

I have no idea why you were one of the 12 Democratic Senators to vote for Telecommunications Company immunity in the recent vote on the FISA update.<\/p>\n

However, I will tell you as a lifelong Democrat, I can find no reason for you to do so.<\/p>\n

Given the electoral dynamics of Maryland, you are at no risk, and in any case, you are not up for election this year.<\/p>\n

The activity that you voted to indemnify PRE-DATED THE 911 ATTACKS, and the demands of the Bush administration, and were CLEARLY illegal.<\/p>\n

Indemnification is an attempt to cover up the clearly illegal actions of the Bush administration and the NSA to illegally spy on Americans.<\/p>\n

Absent a convincing justification for this vote, I cannot support you, or vote for you in the future.<\/p>\n

This is not an issue of national security. FISA as it exists already includes the necessary mechanisms to make our country secure, notwithstanding DNI Michael McConnell’s lies on this matter.<\/p>\n

This is not a matter for politics, or for listening to lobbyists employed by the telecommunications industry.<\/p>\n

These actions were clearly illegal, which is why Qwest refused this access, and given the intensity of the desire of the Bush administration on this issue, I can only conclude that the purpose of this immunity is to cover up systematic surveillance of political opponents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To the Honorable Benjamin Cardin:<\/p>\n

I appreciate your vote on to remove telecommunications immunity from the FISA update.<\/p>\n

This is a matter beyond politics, and it strikes at core of our constitutional rights to be free from unreasonable searches.<\/p>\n

Much of the illegal activity in question was taken months before the attacks on 9-11, and it was unequivocally illegal.<\/p>\n

The desire for immunity on the part of the Bush administration is clearly driven by a desire to cover up their role in illegally spying on American citizens, which very likely involved spying political opponents.<\/p>\n

Personally, I would consider any vote to create retroactive immunity to be unacceptable, and dangerous to our republic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can find a list of the Democratic Senators who betrayed their oaths of office here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had to send two very different letters, because Ben Cardin voted against retroactive Telco immunity, and Barbara Mikulski voted for it. To the Honorable Barbara Mikulski: I have no idea why you were one of the 12 Democratic Senators to vote for Telecommunications Company immunity in the recent vote on the FISA update. However, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[971,1067,998,1102,978],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-communications","category-congress","category-intelligence","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197561"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}