Is it Requiem time for the 4th Ammendment yet?

It is being eviscerated, can it survive? Well, what's left of it will not be of much use anymore.

They can come surreptitiously into your home and you will never find out, but they can use their findings to declare you an enemy combatant, charge you in secret courts and deny you Habeas Corpus, even if you are innocent, they can lock you up and hypothetically, 'throw away the keys', no matter what the Supreme Court rules, surprisingly so, considering how right wing it has become.

They did listen to domestic phone conversations and it was a violation of Federal Law, as a matter of fact, Bushco did it more than 30 times with the assistance of giant Telecommunication Corporations, and on July 9, 2008, the Senate will make it OK to do so, the House will eagerly do likewise, further, it gives retroactive immunity to Bush Administration Officials and the Tel. Corporations, in addition to throwing a blanket over the whole affair, thus preventing any investigation to determine who did what to whom (In general, we know the answer: THEY, DID IT, TO US)

Beautiful isn't?



No One Above the Law

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Yeah! Right!

Not in Bush's America and a two Political Party system where one Party fools a segment of the population and the other one, (except for a growing minority working to end the two party system by building the base for others) fools the rest, getting screwed by both, where the only difference appears to be that one party uses lubricant, so the screwees (sic) we, don't hurt as much.

Some 40 lawsuits have been filed against suspected participating telecoms for alleged violations of federal privacy law. Proponents of immunity say the companies were simply acting in good faith for five years and that the Administration showed them paperwork certifying the government thought its own conduct was legal. Opponents say the telecoms knew they were violating the clear dictates of federal privacy law and that no one should be above the law -- especially since this wasn't a one-off request just days after 9/11.

Glenn Greenwald who also has done extensive research on this issue, writes:

The votes in the Senate on various amendments to the FISA "compromise" bill and to the underlying bill itself were originally scheduled for today, but have been postponed until tomorrow (Wednesday, July 9) to enable Senators to attend the funeral of Jesse Helms. Rejection of the amendments -- including the Dodd-Feingold-Leahy amendment to strip telecom immunity from the bill -- is all but certain, and final passage of the bill (with the support of both presidential candidates) is guaranteed.

Once passed by the Senate, the FISA bill will then immediately be sent by the Democratic Congress to an eagerly awaiting and immensely pleased President Bush, who will sign it into law, thereby putting a permanent and happy end to the scandal that began when -- in December, 2005 -- he was caught spying on the communications of American citizens in violation of the law. The only real remaining questions are (a) whether Bush will host Steny Hoyer and Jay Rockefeller at a festive, bipartisan White House signing ceremony to celebrate the evisceration of the Fourth Amendment and the rule of law, and (b) whether Bush, when he signs the bill into law, will append a signing statement decreeing that even its minimal restraints on presidential spying are invalid.

As part of the campaign to target those responsible for the ongoing destruction of core civil liberties and the endless expansion of America's lawless surveillance state, we have a full-page ad in the "A" Section of this morning's Washington Post, the purpose of which is to serve as a final argument directed to the Beltway class, a clear statement of exactly what it is that they are really about to do this week (click on both parts below to read the ad with large print or click here for the highly readable .pdf version):

If nothing else, as the Democratic-led Senate follows in the footsteps of the Democratic-led House this week by passing a bill demanded by George Bush and Dick Cheney to cover up and retroactively legalize their surveillance crimes and protect the lawbreakers, there will be a clear record -- delivered to their front doors -- of what they're really doing, along with an accounting of the deceitful propaganda they are disseminating to mask and justify it.

Nothing less than fear is the tactic they are using, the amazing thing is that nobody really believes it, much less the Senators voting in favor of the Bill, go figure and draw your own conclusions.

Greenwald continues:

The rationale behind the amendment is clear and simple: namely, members of Congress, the vast majority of whom know virtually nothing about what the telecoms did, shouldn't grant immunity unless they know what this illegal spying program entailed. If the IG Report reveals that the program (even though illegal) was devoted to a benign and proper purpose, then Congress (if it is so inclined) can grant immunity then. But if the IG Report reveals the spying program to be something other than what the President and the telecoms claim it to be -- if it entails far more invasive surveillance of Americans or was abused for improper purposes -- then immunity would obviously be wildly inappropriate. Even the ACLU and EFF, the lead organizations behind the telecom lawsuits, favor the Bingaman Amendment.

That amendment is a true compromise. It rests on what should be the completely uncontroversial proposition that Congress shouldn't immunize the lawbreakers until they at least know what was done. In the meantime, the lawsuits are frozen so that telecoms are spared the tragic burdens of having to account for their behavior in a court of law like everyone else does.

Revealing what telecom immunity is really about -- ensuring a permanent cover-up of Bush surveillance crimes -- Bush DNI Mike McConnell (who previously worked on behalf of the telecom industry to increase their government surveillance contracts) and Attorney General Michael Mukasey sent a joint letter to the Senate yesterday vowing that the President would veto the entire FISA bill if the Bingaman amendment were included, and issued this standard fear-mongering decree:

So not only does our Safety require that telecoms be immunized from lawsuits over their lawbreaking, but we can't even wait until we know what was done before immunizing them. Even waiting to immunize telecoms will gravely imperil "national security." Frightening. Immunize telecoms -- now, not later -- or prepare to be slaughtered by the Terrorists. And that's all Congress needs to know. McConnell and Mukasey end the letter by advising that they "strongly support the prompt passage" of the House FISA bill. I bet they do.

Manipulative appeals to "national security" are, of course, exactly what has enabled the Bush administration to bully Congress into giving them everything they want for years -- "give us the powers we want and immunize our lawbreaking or be killed by Terrorists." That's how our country has been "governed" in the Bush era -- with heavy-handed, authoritarian decrees that we must comply with our Leader's secretly-formed judgments if we want to survive -- and it's likely how it will continue to be governed. And that is the mentality -- in an even more absurd formulation than is typical -- that is likely to lead the Congress yet again to comply this week with the President's orders in full.

Constitutional Law Proffesor at George Washington Universitey, Jonathan Turley, was asked by COUNTDOWN'S Host Rachel Maddow, sitting in for Keith Olbermann, in the number 4 story of the Program "UNWARRANTED CAPITULATION"

He breaks down the story to the nitty gritty as he always does, here is the video.

[ NOTE: I'm at a loss at to what happened since yesterday at MSNBC Video, I tried to figure out why it only shows the left 1 /3 of the scene on the right side of the screen, but it seems it is not my blog only, other Blogs are having the same problem, here is another one Too Frank? - Sorry if you were here earlier and couldn't see it, but here is the YouTUBE copy -- Aurora ]