No Wonder They’ve Been Trying To Shut Us Down…

We should have known with all the Internet connectivity problems and spam and bandwidth filtering that the negotiations over telecom immunity and the surveillance bill are underway behind closed doors in Washington between the United States House of Representatives, the White House, the telecommunications companies and the intelligence community.

According to the TPMMuckraker:

Bush has been beating the drum for weeks (danger! terrorists! attack!). And finally the Dems seem to be marching in time.

…there are clear signs that whatever surveillance bill emerges from the House-Senate negotiations, it will more than likely contain immunity for the telecoms for their participation in the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. But Bush is not a man to settle. He wants more. Here he is speaking yesterday before a gathering of the state’s attorneys general:

“Now the question is, should these lawsuits be allowed to proceed, or should any company that may have helped save American lives be thanked for performing a patriotic service; should those who stepped forward to say we’re going to help defend America have to go to the courthouse to defend themselves, or should the Congress and the President say thank you for doing your patriotic duty? I believe we ought to say thank you.”

Now, as The Washington Post reports this morning, the bill negotiations are ongoing. So it’s not entirely clear what will emerge.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the Post reports, has been polling the Dem caucus on the immunity issue, with “the liberal camp” content with doing nothing (keeping the old FISA law) and “the moderate wing” pushing for retroactive immunity.

But it’s not clear if Hoyer has yet gauged support for this new telecom thanking provision. Perhaps it would come as a completely separate bill (the Thanks for Protecting America Act?), or perhaps all the lawmakers could just go down onto the steps of the Capitol and blow kisses. You never know what novel arrangement could emerge from the bill negotiations.

If they pass this bill, y’all, we can kiss our FREE free Internet goodbye. If you have any regard for your individual liberty, hammer your Congressman TODAY!

King wannabe George W. Bush went live on cable news this morning to take one more swipe at pushing retroactive immunity for the telecom giants, oddly also pushing his “faith-based initiative” to the governors visiting the White House.

He looked like he was back on the blow and Jim Beam last night while watching the CBS News’ “60 Mintues” show, seeing his disgraced former political adviser go down in flames in the heat of national reporting. His eyes were runny and he looked dehydrated and hung over and he was babbling worse than usual.

Since it appears no other news organization or blogger is rushing to get a story online about this, here’s the White House transcript.

Ad 1: Finally, the Washington Post gets something up…

Bush Pushes House to Renew Surveillance Law

Lock Yourselves In, Folks

The Newhouse press is putting out the press releases for the Alabama Department of Public Safety again, this time reporting that this non-holiday weekend will be another “Take Back the Highways” weekend.

Chris Murphy, director of the Alabama Department of Public Safety, tells the corporate, chain press motorists can expect more frequent, unannounced state trooper highway blitzes this year, even on non-holiday weekends.

There will be at least one statewide blitz using 400 troopers, and “regional blitzes” using 50 troopers over four days.

“We are trying to get more creative,” Murphy said. “We are trying to not just write tickets. If we wanted to do that, we could target I-459 to give speeding tickets, which is like fishing in a barrel. We want strategic enforcement.”

Wooh! Strategic enforcement to take more money out of your pocket with a recession looming, and more money out of the state coffers from sales taxes on meals out at the state’s restaurants. But it seems Bill Canary at the Business Council of Alabama has no problem with that. Maybe business is better at the churches?

The department plans to put more unmarked patrol cars on highways, including 30 new Dodge Chargers, although the unmarked cars will have DPS emblems on the passenger doors and officers will be in uniform, the News reports in Alabama, the nation’s number one police state.

Murphy also plans to put more marked vehicles on the highways, and this year he plans to use DPS’ 18 motorcycles as part of the traffic blitzes, like the seven that sometimes run a speed trap on John Rogers Drive by the Birmingham Race Course and new Guiding Light Church.

Topping the list is a blitz jointly planned for Mobile and Baldwin counties, where 90 people were killed in highway crashes last year. Other counties targeted are Chilton County, with 24 people killed in crashes last year, Tuscaloosa with 31 and Cullman with 39.

But remember, if you have to get out of the house and on the highways, and a small town Barney Fife pulls you over on the Interstate, that is against the law. You can challenge the ticket in court - and win! Call a lawyer…

To read more of the press release, click here and weep…

For once, the Congress of the United States has taken a stand against king wannabe George W. Bush. Only this time, it was the House, not the Senate, that did the right thing.

Members of the House smartly departed Washington on a 12-day recess today - without passing a new surveillance law giving the telephone and Internet providers a free pass for taking part in the Bush administration’s illegal scheme of intercepting the private telephone conversations, e-mail messages and Web surfing patterns of innocent American citizens, including peace groups, environmentalists, journalists and bloggers.

Of course the lame-duck president woke up this morning in a tiff and started lying to the American people again, this time saying without an extension of the so-called Protect America Act, the intelligence community will not have the tools it needs to protect the homeland against a potential terrorist attack. But that’s not true, of course, and Democrats rightly accused the president of “fear-mongering” and say he has the authority he needs to intercept communications of suspected terrorists, even if the law expires.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the congressional majority is simply trying to balance civil liberties concerns against the executive branch’s concern for security.

The new law updates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which requires a special court’s permission to monitor the communications of suspects inside the United States. Changes in technology since then mean much of the world’s computer and phone traffic passes through the United States, much of it over fiber-optic cable lines.

Precedent dictates that court orders are needed to listen in on any of them, but the new law, passed last August, would allow the federal government to initiate wiretaps for up to one year against a wide range of targets. The version updated and passed this week by the Senate explicitly compels telecommunications companies to comply with the orders and protects them from civil lawsuits for doing so.

Unable to muster the votes to extend the current law, House leaders say they’d rather let it lapse and operate under the old FISA rules than be pressured by the White House into accepting the flawed Senate bill. And good for them.

Any member of Congress who voted for this law in the first place should be replaced by the voters.

And to prove it, here’s a gut check for all those so-called conservatives and libertarians out there who might still be supporting the president on this issue. How would you feel if this invasive law were in effect and Hillary Clinton were president? Would you still want the federal government to have this power to spy on you?

Of course, Ms. Clinton was absent in the debate in the Senate this week and did not stand up against this assault on our civil liberties. She was out on the campaign trail trying to make up lost ground against Senator Barack Obama, who was there and voted against the version of the law granting unlimited amnesty to the telecom giants.

For that, he just got my vote - and the endorsement of this news organization for president. It is time to take sides.

We’ll have more to say about this later, but first we have a little trip to take down to the state capital city. Look for more updates late this afternoon…