Chris Dodd, Constitutionalist?

I'll have some final thoughts on the 6.1 million that Dr. Paul raised today in a later post. But I just wanted to throw this up there. Pilfered from Daily Kos, via the Crossed Pond:

The latest word from the Dodd camp regarding what will happen on the FISA bill is that tomorrow, Dodd will take the floor and not yield.

He can take "questions" from other senators during the filibuster, which can be no more than 20 minutes. We understand that Kennedy and Feingold so far have agreed to do this.

Let's hope Feingold and Kennedy have some good twenty-two-part questions of their own. And let's also hope that they won't be the only senators supporting Dodd.

And this is also where we come in. I've been told by the Dodd folks that the Senator wants to know what we think he should read during the filibuster. So please suggest anything you think might be relevant to the issue of retroactive telecom immunity - speeches, articles, even your own comments, diaries or blog posts. Dodd staffers will undoubtedly be checking the comments here for good ideas, and you could wind up having your own thoughts read aloud on the floor of the United State Senate.

This is our chance to stand with Dodd and stand up for the Constitution. Let's do our best to help him - he's going to have a lot of time to fill. And to urge your senators to join in, click here.

Wolves and Sheep

Judge Andrew Napolitano, legal analyst and a regular on Fox News has a new book out called "A Nation of Sheep". Andrew Young has an overview at LewRockwell.com:

Judge Napolitano dedicates a significant portion of his book to detailing the Bush Administration’s assault on the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans from unlawful searches and seizures of their homes, person, and property. He perceptively notes that one of the main justifications for the American Revolution was the British policy of allowing soldiers to conduct searches by simply writing their own warrants. The Framers specifically outlawed this practice when they adopted the Fourth Amendment, which bans searches and seizures unless a judge has signed a search warrant.

Conservative Belle: Wiretapping Concessions Are Necessary

UPDATE and BUMP:

According to Verizon Communications, they turned over to the government information without court orders 720 times since 2005:

From January 2005 to September 2007, Verizon provided data to federal authorities on an emergency basis 720 times, it said in the letter. The records included Internet protocol addresses as well as phone data. In that period, Verizon turned over information a total of 94,000 times to federal authorities armed with a subpoena or court order, the letter said. The information was used for a range of criminal investigations, including kidnapping and child-predator cases and counter-terrorism investigations.

Now the telecoms are lobbying Congress for legal immunity when they turn over records or eavesdrop on conversations without a court order and they don't want to be held liable for doing this in the past as well.

The 4th amendment is very clear:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The negative consequences of granting immunity to the telecoms are huge. You can count abuse by the government with no recourse for the individual among them. How many more fishing expeditions are going to come about because there is no incentive for the phone companies to maintain the privacy of their customers?

Some will argue "But if you aren't doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to hide" but I don't think that argument has as much validity now considering we spent the better part of a year watching a government official put the Duke Lacrosse team on trial so he could get re-elected. While justice is supposed to be blind, it is applied by people with their own biases and interests. The 4th amendment is supposed to be a backstop against that.



I made some comments over there since I'm too lazy to blog about it over here. But it's an interesting topic to me.

Warrantless Searches

Over at Conservative Belle's blog, there is a post that talks about how telecom companies should have immunity for helping the NSA eavesdrop on conversations without warrants.

I understand that we should be concerned about terrorism here in this country. But if the argument I have heard from Republicans of the Bush/Romney/Giuliani school for why we were attacked on 9/11 was because of our freedoms. Aren't we appeasing our enemies by making our country less free?

Aren't we doing exactly what the terrorists want us to do? Terrorists can't invade or occupy us. They can't bomb us back into the stone age. But they have scared us into changing the very things that make our country great.