take action on telecom immunity

I just received the following alert from the ACLU and thought that I’d pass it along, on the off chance that someone out there still gives a damn about the Constitution.

Despite the outrage coming from a broad coalition of concerned citizens, by tomorrow night the House of Representatives will vote on whether or not to gut the Constitution and give immunity to phone companies who broke the law and spied on Americans.

We have to act now. Even if you’ve emailed, called or visited your members of Congress about FISA, we need you to contact them again today.

Congress is moving so fast and so secretively that we only got a copy of this bill this morning. I can tell you it’s horrible. It contains vacuum cleaner style surveillance that sweeps up the phone calls and emails of Americans. And it’s blatantly unconstitutional.

The bottom line is that this is legislation that benefits a few of our country’s largest corporations while taking away basic rights from the rest of us. And it is unacceptable.

I’m going to spend the rest of the day on the phone calling Capitol Hill trying to stop this bill. I hope you will spend whatever time you can to make the voice of freedom heard in Congress — make calls, ask your friends and family to call — please do whatever you can.

Put Congress on notice that the American people don’t want a “compromise” that sells out our rights. Act now. We’re hearing the vote is tomorrow, so we could have less than 24 hours…

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6 Comments

  1. Brackache
    Posted June 20, 2008 at 10:13 am | Permalink

    Amen!!!

  2. Paw
    Posted June 20, 2008 at 10:24 am | Permalink

    Now we just sit back and wait for Old Mr. Cross to counter with an anti-Amen.

  3. Ol' E Cross
    Posted June 20, 2008 at 3:03 pm | Permalink

    Since terrorists exclusively use cell phones, I think the government should only be allowed to listen in on conversations taking place via cellphones.

    If there is a landline involved, it is obvious to everyone that the conversation is between true Americans and the government should stay out of my business.

  4. Brackache
    Posted June 20, 2008 at 3:12 pm | Permalink

    I’m very liberal in my use of the word “militia” on public blogs, OEC. I suggest we use a dead drop from now on for your own protection, since my patriotic law-abidig ass must be good as gitmo by now.

  5. Brackache
    Posted June 20, 2008 at 3:13 pm | Permalink

    …”abiding.” with an “n”.

  6. Meta
    Posted June 25, 2008 at 3:53 pm | Permalink

    Senator Schumer is fighting the telco immunity provision of the FISA bill.

    http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/25/schumer-to-oppose-fisa-bill/

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