Michael Moore Predicts 'President Romney' in November

[OnyxCollie]

80. You nailed it on domestic surveillance.

I remember then Senator/Candidate Obama pledging to support a filibuster of the FISA amendments.

Last year, after phone calls from MoveOn members and others, Obama went so far as to vow to "support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies."4 We need him to honor that promise.

These companies helped the Bush Administration illegally spy on the emails and phone calls of innocent Americans. By giving "immunity" to these companies, all lawsuits brought against them by civil liberties groups would be thrown out of court. That means we may never find out how far Bush went in breaking the law. And once it's done, it can't be undone. That's why we need Obama to promise to block any bill that has immunity.

Supporters of today's deal say it doesn't guarantee immunity—it just kicks the issue to a court to decide. But that's deceptive. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) points out:

"It gives attorney general the power to decide if cases against telecommunications companies will proceed. The AG only has to certify to the FISA court that the company didn't spy or did so with a permission slip from the president. A note from the president is not a legal defense. Allowing phone companies to avoid litigation by simply presenting a 'permission slip' from the president is not court review."5

Instead, he voted to give retroactive immunity to telecommunication companies.

What the fuck?

"It's chess! The Republicans would use it against him! We'll fix it later!"

((Domestic surveillance is an important issue for me. It's why I started studying politics. The vote on the FISA amendments was very significant. Here's the kicker: the amendments were due to sunset, and when they did, FISA would have returned to pre-Bushian status. All that was necessary was to hold up the vote. (Reid could have chosen not to bring it up, but that's another matter.))

Filibustering cloture and doing nothing would have fixed everything, yet Obama chose to break his promise and vote for retroactive immunity, i.e. a "Get Out of Jail Free" card for fucking telecommunication companies.

Not really surprising, actually, when one learns that Obama ($267,711)

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=D000000076&chamber=S&party=D&cycle=2008&state=&sort=A

and Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, ($50,650) were the largest recipients of campaign contributions from AT&T.

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=D000000076&party=D&chamber=H&type=P&cycle=2008

Birds of a feather, and all that. (Hillary came in second- $112,345.)

And with all the phone hacking News Corp has done, look who's the top recipient of News Corp campaign contributions- Barack Obama ($58,825)

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000227