I've had about enough of Senator Rockefeller on FISA.

[Truth2Tell]

So Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-http://opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.asp?CID=N00001685&cycle=2006">AT&T) is all twisted in knots because a few of his more progressive colleagues have seen fit to stand in the way (at least briefly) of his soon to be successful attempts to provide criminal immunity to telecommunications companies who have conspired with the Bush administration to conduct illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens.

As we already know, Rockefeller, Chair of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, was among a key group of Democratic leaders that the Bush administration shrewdly kept in the loop on illegal wiretapping - likely so that in the event the illegal spying ever saw the light of day the Democratic Congress, as accessories to the crime, would be neutered from taking any real action.

This we know:

Rockefeller is among a small group of congressional leaders who have received briefings on the administration's four-year-old program to eavesdrop—without warrants—on international calls and e-mails of Americans and others inside the United States with suspected ties to al-Qaida.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8EK2VEO7&show_article=1

But some in Congress were informed of the wiretaps and did nothing to stop them. Instead, the ranking Democrat on Senate Intelligence, Jay Rockefeller, wrote a private letter to Vice President Dick Cheney expressing his "lingering concerns" and saying he'd keep it on file for posterity--or more precisely, for posterior-covering.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/weekend/hottopic/?id=110007783

Now yesterday we learn that there's more to this program than we humble citizens have yet been told. Rockefeller let slip that not only would the new FISA law cynically provide a get out of jail free card to some of his biggest political contributors, but that it would also create (or more likely retroactively sanction) an information "dragnet" to capture every bit of data on every network you can think of and hand it over to the National Security Agency. Senator Fascists Little Helper let this little tidbit slip in a speech on the Senate floor. I'd link to the YouTube video but it was pulled down today, presumably for "national security" reasons. Fortunately, Wired has the story (and the broken YouTube link):

In a Senate floor speech, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) inadvertently made plain that the proposed changes to the nation's spying laws radically expand how the government wiretaps inside the United States. Rockefeller was decrying an amendment that would require the government to discard non-emergency evidence if a court later finds that the spying methods violate the law.

Rockefeller makes clear that the impending changes to the law aren't about making it easier for the National Security Agency to listen in on a particular terrorism suspect's phone calls. Instead, the changes are about letting the nation's spooks secretly and unilaterally install filters inside America's phone and internet infrastructure.

Rockefeller, the chief Democratic architect of the changes, explains:

Unlike traditional Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application orders which involve collection on one individual target, the new FISA provisions create a system of collection. The courts role in this system of collection is not to consider probable cause on individual targets but to ensure that procedures used to collect intelligence are adequate. The courts' determination of the adequacy of procedures therefore impacts all electronic communications gathered under the new mechanisms, even if it involves thousands of targets.

-snip

The nation's current batch of politicians -- save for a handful like Rep. Rush Holt (D-New Jersey) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) -- see no problem in handing this unchecked power to the nation's spooks. They collectively have bought into the lies, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear%2C_uncertainty_and_doubt">FUD and politically-expedient exaggerations deployed by the administration in order to legalize the President's rogue warrant-less spying on Americans.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/sen-rockefeller.html

I think the time has come for Senator Rockefeller to shut the fuck up. As a Democrat it makes me sick to my stomach that a member of my own Party is leading this fascist charge.

Rockefeller belongs in jail for his complicity in crimes against the Constitution. He can have the cell next to Cheney. Crimes are crimes. It's as simple as that.

[Lasher]

1. I have no doubt this ties directly into Poindexter's Total Information Awareness program

Or whatever they're calling it these days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office

You would think that Jay's time would be better spent completing the Phase II investigation. You know, the one that was blocked by former Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts? The one I hoped would be the first order of business when Jay took over as Chairman. Not so, I've found out after having called Jay's office several times about it last year. They have other more important things to do. Obviously this is one of them.

[Truth2Tell]

2. Jay is a busy man.

Phase II would cut into his golfing time.

[warren pease]

3. This may explain his recently discovered concern for these back-stabbing skanks...

Courtesy of gulfcoastliberal on this thread:

Just a reminder in case anyone forgot why Sen. Rockefeller (and probably Reid too) insist on protecting their corporate clients.

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) is reportedly steering the secretive Senate Intelligence Committee to give retroactive immunity to telecoms that helped the government secretly spy on Americans.

He has also recently benefited from some interesting political contributions.

edit

In fact, prior to 2007, contributions to Rockefeller from company executives at AT&T and Verizon were mostly non-existent.

But that changed around the same time that the companies began lobbying Congress to grant them retroactive immunity from lawsuits seeking billions for their alleged participation in secret, warrantless surveillance programs that targeted Americans.

full article here.

wp

[Truth2Tell]

4. Jay's not a cheap date. nt

[warren pease]

6. Actually, it looks like he's a "cost-effective" purchase for Verizon and AT&T...

With a personal fortune estimated to top $100 million, he lifted his skirts for Verizon for a modest $23,5000. And I hope he got kissed before AT&T purchased his favors for a mere $19,350.

You know, if that's all it takes to buy a Senator, we might consider pooling our money and buying one for ourselves. It's one thing to bitch about being powerless in the era of money politics; it's another thing entirely to have your own personal advocate on the Hill, bought and paid for at least for a year or so.

If we split it up, nobody needs to be on the hook for more than a couple hundred at most.

I'll keep the books if you want. Just send your donations care of Tarts and Trollops PAC, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Warren's Home for Wayward Girls, Inc.


wp

[Truth2Tell]

5. FYI: Rockefeller video is back up on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAka9Gx2E5c&feature=related

Relevant excerpt starts at about 4:25

[bluestdogest]

7. So have I.

[Leopolds Ghost]

8. Of course, this illegal NSA program already exists. This is the most important thread on DU.

I was ignored when I pointed out years ago back when DUers were racking
up 300-post count threads on imeachment that Rockefeller would not vote to
impeach because he promised that if Dems were elected, they would "fix the
law" to "clarify whether Bush's actions were unconstitutional" by passing
a law saying they, in effect, weren't.

Moreover, not a single mod or person over on GD: Politics cares about this
issue, perhaps because many of them work for the various political
campaigns and administrations in Washington.

NSA is the single largest user of power in Maryland, I believe, according
to a recent expose on the server farms at Fort Meade, which process store
and filter all phone calls in the US -- petabytes of data.

All illegally and all about to be authorized by the Democrats so that
President Clinton or Obama can use them (and prevent any information
stored therein from coming to light about themselves).

[Truth2Tell]

11. Yep, it's tough getting anyone's attention around here

these days with the Hillbot/Obamabot cage match to the death underway next door in GDP. And it's a microcosm of the nation. What a perfect time to roll back civil liberties a few more notches! Then again, anytime works - Americans don't really seem to give a shit anyway.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

9. K&R n/t

[Leopolds Ghost]

10. Isn't it interesting how Barbara Mikulski, one of the biggest Dem opponents of civil liberties,

Proponent of voter ID laws, infrared tracking devices on highways, and warrantless spying,

FOUGHT LIKE HELL to support ex-SecDef Rumsfeld's BRAC plan to eliminate military jobs in urban areas and relocate them to suburban areas in order to double the size of the Security Agency facilities at Fort Meade (which cannot be discussed in public but are mostly given over to global wiretapping operations reliant on filtering all data on the network regardless of origin, according to numerous media exposes of the NSA project over the past 20 years)

It is a JOBS issue for her. Many of her constituents, especially liberal programmers,
work for the security agencies as contractors, installing and maintaining these server farms.
This is now a huge section of the DC-area workforce which is one of the reasons
Beltway professionals are so bought and sold.

[Leopolds Ghost]

12. The Democratic wing of the sheeple no longer cares about this issue

Witness the lack of response on these boards.

They want to give President Clinton or Obama
the authority to commit the same crimes and
the same evils as Bush, because Bush's actions
are now normalized (and they trust their new
president will commit the same evils in a
"more responsible fashion" being Democrats).