Bush and the Fourth Amendment This Week

Update: Contact Barack Obama.
Not nearly as compelling a visual as the Christie Brinkley divorce proceedings (at left), the votes in the U.S. Senate tomorrow on using the Nixon crimes-inspired FISA law to immunize unlawful presidential abuses that FISA was crafted to prevent ought draw the attention of every news organization and blog in the country.

But do not bet on saturation coverage of the FISA votes this week, no matter the advocacy of Russ Feingold, Chris Dodd and others. The Fourth Amendment is just not as sexy as Christie Brinkley, nor as powerful as the fear gripping too many supine Democratic U.S. Senators.

“... I hope that over the July 4th holiday, Senators will take a closer look at this deeply flawed legislation and understand how it threatens the civil liberties of the American people. It is possible to defend this country from terrorists while also protecting the rights and freedoms that define our nation,” said Feingold in late June, as he and others pursue a quest that we hope is not quixotic.

Fortunately, a growing coalition is taking some action. To protect the Fourth Amendment and hold Bush and his corporate cronies accountable for lawless surveillance of innocent American citizens, see Strange Bedfellows.

Pictured below is a full-page ad in the Washington Post paid for by the related Blue America PAC, intended to shame the D.C. political culture (specifically the Senate), and that includes Barack Obama, into striking passages of the House-approved FISA bill legalizing past illegal surveillance, immunizing corporate and presidential law-breaking.

Few are hopeful that the Senate has the courage to stand up to the lawless Republicans, one or two amendments stand a chance of passage (though the amendments would each need 60 votes to pass).

NYT on FISA

This morning's NYT gets to the heart of the FISA bill.

The Senate should reject a bill this week that would needlessly expand the government’s ability to spy on Americans and ensure that the country never learns the full extent of President Bush’s unlawful wiretapping.

The bill dangerously weakens the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. Adopted after the abuses of the Watergate and Vietnam eras, the law requires the government to get a warrant to intercept communications between anyone in this country and anyone outside it — and show that it is investigating a foreign power, or the agent of a foreign power, that plans to harm America. ...

The real reason this bill exists is because Mr. Bush decided after 9/11 that he was above the law. When The Times disclosed his warrantless eavesdropping, Mr. Bush demanded that Congress legalize it after the fact. The White House scared Congress into doing that last year, with a one-year bill that shredded FISA’s protections. Democratic lawmakers promised to fix it this year.