From the new west blog: U.S. Senate votes
Just One ‘Nay’ on FISA from Rocky Mountain Senators
By Jill Kuraitis, 7-10-08
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| Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana) | |
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Montana Sen. Jon Tester was the lone vote from a Rocky Mountain western senator against H.R.6304, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which passed the U.S. Senate Wednesday, 69 – 28.
Colorado Sens. Wayne Allard (R) and Ken Salazar (D), Idaho’s Larry Craig (R) and Mike Crapo (R), Utah’s Robert Bennett (R) and Orrin Hatch (R), and Montana’s Max Baucus (D) all voted for the FISA bill.
Include Oregon’s Sen. Ron Wyden (D) and Nevada’s Sen. Harry Reid (D) and there were two more Nays.
Though the Nays were all cast by Democrats, two Democratic Yeas – from Salazar and Baucus – helped pass the bill.
Sen. Barack Obama voted yes, but Sen. Hillary Clinton voted no. Sen. John McCain skipped the vote.
FISA overhauls federal surveillance laws and includes President Bush’s drop-dead requirement granting legal immunity for the telecomm industry. Those companies which cooperated with a wiretapping program run by the National Security Agency and approved by Bush after 9/11 are now retroactively immune from prosecution and will remain immune.
A New York Times article has full coverage and analysis. Here in the west, citizen debate is just beginning to show up on blogs.
Colorado’s SquareState.Net blogger John E posted: “At Drinking Liberally Denver tonight we’ll be taking a moment of silence for the loss of our fourth amendment rights. It seems ironic that the bill just passed lets the administration off the hook for domestic spying beyond what the original bill allowed. That original bill was passed because of the domestic spying Nixon has Hoover’s FBI do on his political enemies. Nice!”
Montana’s 4&20 Blackbirds blogger Pete Talbot has this: “Sen. Jon Tester voted the right way but Sen. Max Baucus didn’t on the FISA bill. I was just starting to warm to Max after his work on the sale of Plum Creek lands to conservation groups and his effort to halt Medicare cuts, and then he votes to shred the Constitution in favor of big telecommunications.”
And after a blog post about FISA on Idaho Democratic blog 43rdStateBlues, a commenter wrote “IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT!”
As conservative bloggers post comments, they’ll be added here.
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Comments
There is a disturbing trend to go with the ideas of spying on your neighbors, check out and article By Bruce Finley of The Denver Post, 06/28/2008, its exposes how hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and even utility workers have been trained to dispatched as "Terrorism Liaison Officers" in Colorado and a handful of other states. They record "suspicious activity" and report findings into secret government database for terrorist activity. The very vague nature of the TLOs' mission, and focusing on both legal and illegal activity, has generated objections from privacy advocates and civil libertarians.
Senator Obama may have a shot at winning Montana, but it's not going to happen if he wants to flop around like dying fish on these key issues. Spying on Americans, corporate immunity, and compromising our Constitution do not make us a safer nation.
Thanks Senator Tester!!
Marion, I seem to remember an Anthrax attack that came after 9/11. Plus that suicide bomber in Davenport, Iowa on 9-11-06. But even if you are ignoring these terrorist attacks, I would point out to to you that correlation is not causation. But since that is a sort of mathematical/scientific idea, and knowing that you are so inept with science that you still think weather and climate are the same things (and you think computers decieved mankind into thinking the Earth is really old--for some devious purpose), I will explain it like this: how do you know it is warrantless spying and torture that protect us, and not a force field thrown up by Jesus? I prayed for one you know, and you can't prove that isn't the cause.