(This was faxed to Sen. Bayh Tuesday morning, February 12, 2008. Key FISA votes are pending at time of posting. Sen. Dodd is again threatening to filibuster. We fully support him.)
We are appalled and disgusted to see Evan Bayh repeatedly ally himself with a handful of Democrats in the Senate who continue to vote with and to do the bidding of the criminal Bush administration and the Republicans in the Senate as they frantically seek to cover up their past illegal activities and shield themselves from discovery by renewing extensions to FISA legislation that are inherently unconstitutional, AND NOT EVEN NECESSARY TO PROTECT AMERICA.
This administration was spying on Americans BEFORE 9/11. That tragedy was merely an excuse to implement their vision of a police state with full time warrantless surveillance of American communications. Every vote to support this lessens our Civil Liberties and increases their power.
FISA as written and as it stands, EVEN IF THE CURRENT EXTENSIONS DIE NOW, is more than adequate to address the surveillance needs of American intelligence, under court supervision and review. It was carefully designed over decades for that purpose.
We can understand why Sen. Rockefeller is so intent on immunity for the telecoms. All one has to do is look at the chart of the ramp up in his donations from the telecom industry. Money apparently talks more than liberty of American citizens for him.
But what is Sen. Bayh’s excuse? Has he also been funded by the telecoms? Has he published how much money he has received from them? Or does he simply not believe in the Constitution and Bill of Rights anymore? Such would seem to be the case.
Following is Glenn Greenwald’s in-depth analysis of precisely why this is such a lie, that is the claims about the need to grant even more unconstitutional powers to those who would make this a police state and turn us into a state where we are spied on without warrant or cause in all our communications, even domestic communications.
On the FISA legislation and all related amendments pending in the Senate, your ONLY position as a member of Congress is as follows:
(1) NO telco immunity
(2) NO basket warrants or reverse targeting — this violates the 4th amendment
(3) Sequestration of illegally harvested evidence
(4) Four year sunset.
Sen. Bayh appears to no longer believe in the fourth amendment, or any of that other silly stuff, the rest of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution. Who needs it when you have a Reich Ministry of Homeland Security and an emerging secret police, instead of courts, laws, warrants, all the things Western Democratic traditions have been built on since the Magna Carta, culminating in the American Revolution. Sen. Bayh is a disgrace to the state of Indiana.
