The United States Senate shredded the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution today by approving Bush’s spying bill with legal immunity for the telecom giants by a vote of 69-28.

Since the House passed a similar bill last month, watch for the official signing in the White House soon as king wannabe George W. Bush gloats.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendment Act of 2008 includes sweeping and retroactive immunity for telephone companies that provided information about customers to government officials without a warrant as part of the Bush administration’s surveillance program imposed after September 11, 2001. Even though some of the lawyers in the Senate who opposed the measure say the law was broken for five years, some of them voted for it anyway, for unexplained political reasons, presumably because they don’t want to be attacked in their reelection campaigns as “liberal” and “weak on terror.”

Sen Barack Obama (D-IL) voted for the bill, even though he had promised to oppose it, breaking his first campaign promise before he even officially accepts the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in August. His vote risks losing some of his more intelligent, progressive base, while he has spent his time lately going after the Christian Republican vote in red states. Go figure…

Moments before the final vote, a handful of senators voted to filibuster the vote, including Sens. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and Tom Harkin of Iowa, according to the TPM Muckraker in Washington, which beat the Associated Press on the story by a mile.

Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) voted against the filibuster and then voted against the law a few moments later, the independent online news outlet reports.

I guess the telecom lobbyists will have having a big party tonight in DC. They spent millions to sway Senators to vote their way, including major contributions to Republican Senators Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, and the Birmingham Democrat Artur Davis as well…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Liberty vs. Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.