…The battle now moves back to the Senate, where there are even more conservative Democrats who have taken huge amounts of corporate bribes from the Telecoms and who are backing Bush and his Republican rubber stamps. Jim Neal is a Democrat running for the Senate against one of those rubber stamps (Elizabeth Dole)– and, in the North Carolina primary, against a reactionary Democrat who has said she favors retroactive immunity, Kay Hagen– and he responded to today’s vote in the House very positively with a letter to North Carolina voters:

The latest FISA bill, approved by the House, is about protecting our Constitutional freedoms and our nation.

It is the duty of any elected official to protect the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic.

That is why I oppose any law that grants telecommunication companies retroactive immunity for collaborating with the Bush Administration’s warrantless, illegal wiretapping of Americans’ private conversations.

Our Constitution limits unchecked government power by giving the Courts and Congress the power to oversee the actions of the Executive Branch.

This Administration prefers to act in secret– above the law and beyond the Constitution.

That’s not what democracy is about folks. If Americans can’t have privacy in their conversations, then where can we have privacy? What’s next?

I’d bet that any agreement the telecom companies made to provide customers’ private records to the Administration included a guarantee that the government, not the companies, would be responsible for any lawsuits that might arise. I’ve worked with many Fortune 500 companies– and their lawyers are smart enough to require that kind of legal immunity.

The Administration, again, is trying to smokescreen its shady backroom dealings from the American people which it profoundly distrusts.

Read the full post at downwithtyranny.com