I know I am opening myself up for another thrashing here but I am very curious.  Telcom immunity is, as Obama says, a deal-breaker.  It's not about getting a pound of flesh from the telcoms, it's about getting the truth about who the administration has been spying on, whose rights were violated, and putting that into evidence for post January 2009 accountability.  Saying that it's about getting a pound of flesh from the telcoms betrays a complete misunderstanding of the legal strategy behind the ACLU/EFF lawsuits, which is to put the wrongdoing of the administration on the record.  Immunity means no lawsuits.  No lawsuits, no discovery process.  No discovery, no evidence.  Obama is helping get Bush and Cheney's asses out of one of the most legally airtight slings they have managed to get themselves into, pure and simple.

My question: Where does Hillary stand on this, and is there any conceivable legal scenario under party rules in which, at the convention, a nominee can be renounced and the process thrown back to the floor of delegates, for the nomination of someone, for example, Hillary?  Or Kucinich?  I am admitting my extreme ignorance on these processes; are there any precedents in history?  Hillary was never my favorite candidate, but..

It's quite a spectacle: a Democratic Party digging in and going for broke over a seemingly wonkish aside like telcom immunity.  There must be some reason some powerful people in both parties really, really want this in order for them to endure the harsh vilifications being thrown their way, all richly deserved.  

Two of the persistent blanks in the picture since George Bush's original brazen admission that he had "re-authorized" an NSA program of illegal surveillance on Americans are:  the breadth of the net cast, and the identity of targets who may have had nothing to do with terrorism.

Remember, Bush's drive for unaccountable surveillance powers long pre-dates 9/11, going back to nearly the day after he was inaugurated.  He began the "Total Information Awareness Program" under Poindexter then.  When that was shut down, a now-famous technician at ATT in San Francisco discovered an Internet "vacuum cleaner" operation being conducted by the NSA, which swept up billions upon billions of private emails, credit card transactions, download histories, Internet searches, anything that crossed the trunk lines and routers which are the sinews of the modern Internet.  

John McCain gave an interview to Newsweek and screwed the pooch twice, which may be a single-interview record.  Not only did he flatly deny ever saying something he in fact said on national TV last Tuesday night, he again changed his position on warrantless communications surveillance and again indignantly denied having ever changed his position on warrantless communications surveillance. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

A 501 is running attack ads against Jerry McNerney (CA-11) on KCBS radio accusing him of being soft on the terrorists because he doesn’t support giving away our freedoms to support the Bush Administration. I have a call in to Ed Cavinero, News Director at KCBS (phone--415-765-4049) to ask why KCBS has chosen to run this false and defamatory ad.

Things are still in a bit of a lull right now. On the one hand, that's good, the longer we stall things and the intelligence community keeps doing its thing and preventing terrist attacks, the more people will hopefully grow tired of Bush's wolf-crying.

On the other hand, some of us are worried about a lack of information about a plan on the dems side. It's good that dem leaders in both the House and Senate are speaking out and responding to Bush's scare tactics, but I'm not confident that this is more than talk. Here are some of my specific concerns and questions. I'm hoping someone less ignorant than i will be able to address some of these and better inform us all.

UPDATE: It has been reported (by lgcap - ht) that the House is going to be taking up this issue next week. If so this is potentially bad news, see below...

One of our digital circuits went down yesterday, and I spent a fair amount of time talking with an AT&T digital circuit technician after he found and corrected the physical problem, but before the switch-house cleared it and processed the paperwork.

Talk turned to politics, and then to Obama, and he surprised me when he shared his concern that Obama supported suing the phone companies. This issue hit home with him and was a dealbreaker, and I smelled the faint scent of the AT&T party line.

The more we talked about it, the more the missing piece became clear. The phone company had been patriotic, a team player, a good citizen. They shouldn't be punished for this; it was a windfall for the lawyers and a landmine for the phone companies and the ratepayers.

The missing piece? Though he understood far more about the business of telephony than most any average joe, he had never heard of the FISA court. The false "you need a warrant" admonition from Bush was either forgotten or never understood.

And I realized why our incremental victories are so tentative and temporary, and how tenacious we have to be fighting for these multidisciplinary issues like telcom immunity and net neutrality.

Did I win him over? Take the jump.

On Monday, we have a historic vote in the Senate that will tell us whether or not the Democrats are a force for change, or simply a force for more of the same shit we've been getting from Chimpco since 2001.  

We've already seen clearly that Harry Reid stands with the Republicans on telcom immunity.  We saw today that plenty of Democrats -- including most of the usual suspects -- are going to ONCE AGAIN choose standing strong with Bush over our Constitutional rights and the rule of law.

Follow me across the Great Divide...

I wanted to explain to my family and friends what had happened and how they could be a part of it.

I've just realized that my email may be useful to Kossacks who wish to enlist their family and friends in the continuing fight for our constitution.

Feel free to copy and use what follows.

REMEMBER: put in your personal contribution, where appropriate.  You might also have to copy and repaste the relevant URL's from your browser locater bar (they seem to be truncated in the published diary)

If you've used this, then please rec the diary so that it has a chance to stay visible.

I find this to be outrageous that Mukasey would jump into the political fray over the telecom immunity provision of the FISA bill.  But what else should we expect?  We knew he was bad.

Readers here are much more informed regarding the details of telcom amnesty than the public at large, yet if yesterday's heartening developments, thanks to Senators Dodd, Feingold and Wyden, are to gain a foothold and ultimately derail the amnesty initiative, it would be helpful if grass roots lobbying of our Congress people is taken up by a larger group than the progressives who are typically fairly activist. In short, we need a more reductionist message to highlight the issue for those who do not have the time or inclination to follow the details to the same extent as readers of this and similar sites. I have a suggestion about how we might call even wider attention to this issue, based on both my conversation with an aide in Senator Rockefeller's office yesterday, as well as the Ryan Singel piece at Wired that was linked in Glenn Greenwald's excellent post this morning. Details are after the fold.