Immunity for Telecom’s is a side issue! Yes, they should be forced to follow the law and pay a fine…but the crux of this, the reason BushCo has worked so incredibly hard to win this battle is not save his cronies some money, (as if), the main event that will occur when these lawsuits get dismissed is that the last chance to discover the extent of the actual surveillance will disappear when dismissing these suits.

BushCo is hiding sweeping surveillance actions that went far beyond any legitimate terrorist investigation. The extent of that surveillance, the information they obtained on their political enemies, business rivals, dissidents etc. will no doubt curl the country’s hair, (whatever hairs remain as yet uncurled!)

my guess is that many of the Dem’s voting FOR this outrageous ‘agreement’ were caught by the short hairs in that dragnet…starting with Pelosi (whose head is definately going to explode, poor thing)

(see Glen Greenwald’s Pulitzer-class reporting on this for the last couple of years.)

Now the Democrats want to give the telecoms immunity — but the White House and Telecom companies all say they don’t need it because nothing was done illegally…

Then, why can’t we let the courts decide? Why can’t we find out what our Government was/is up to? I heard from reputable sources the Bush Administration was conducting domestic spying BEFORE 9/11.

At the end of the day, I am ashamed of my Government because of the erosion of our Civil Liberties. It wasn’t Americans who hijacked planes and killed thousands of people, it was Arabs… so why then is our Government so intent on conducting vast surveillance on nearly all facets of American citizens’ lives???

I would encourage everyone to contact their congressional representatives and urge them to stand their ground and not let telecoms and the White House off the hook when they chronically trampled the 4th Amendment.

“I believe in the division of labor. You send us to Congress; we pass laws under which you make money…and out of your profits, you further contribute to our campaign funds to send us back again to pass more laws to enable you to make more money”

PS: Mr. Burghardt, thanks much for your thorough research and clear and concise articles on telecom immunity and wiretapping.