Do you want the terrorists to win? What do you think has prevented another American soil terrorist attack? Obviously it was the NSA wiretapping. To go back to the quaint Bill of Rights only plays into the Islamofacists hands. To think wiretapping should be illegal would be an example of pre-9/11 thinking. We live in a new world (cough).
Besides, the telecommunications corporations say they have nothing to hide. They haven't done anything illegal. Of course, to prove this, they will have to endure several unfounded frivolous lawsuits. The mere allegation and bad press that they will have to go through will sour their stock price and interfere with the all-mighty free market. Any good American would want to protect their balanced 401k mutual fund as well as prevent another terrorist attack.
The average American thinks that the domestic wiretapping controversy only popped up after the feds started spying after 9/11, right? So how's about it Dodd, Obama and Feingold? Will you release the FISA hold if it only pertained to post 9/11 spying?
(the flip is different, I promise)
The kicker here is that this whole telecommunications wiretapping-without-court-order was put together even before Bush took office. Which was, if I'm not mistaken, before 9/11. From court records of former Quest CEO Joseph Nacchio during his insider trading trial:
Nacchio planned to demonstrate at trial that he had a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, at NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., to discuss a $100 million project. According to the documents, another topic also was discussed at that meeting, one with which Nacchio refused to comply...[snip]
The documents maintain that Nacchio met with top government officials, including President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice in 2000 and early 2001 to discuss how to protect the government's communications network.
Of the big telcos, only Quest refused to comply with the government's request of phone records seeing it as both illegal and inappropriate.
As an aside, Nacchio wasn't exactly a flaming liberal. Bush actually appointed Nacchio to a national security telecommunications advisory panel. Nacchio contends that his rebuff to the NSA got him fingered in his insider trading case.
The NSA contract was awarded in July 2001 to companies other than Qwest.
USA Today reported in May 2006 that Qwest, unlike AT&T and Verizon, balked at helping the NSA track phone calling patterns that may have indicated terrorist organizational activities.
So the NSA had the records. What did they do with them? Either nothing or they wrote a memo titled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S." which was ignored. They sure didn't protect America with the information. Perhaps they were sifting the information for dirt on prominent Democrats. We all know how the Bush Justice Department works (see frmr. Alabama Governor Don Siegelman).
So before 9/11, the government was wiretapping Americans and yet the terrorists were sucessfull that bloody day. Perhaps we can help the traditional media draw that line by focusing on spying before 9/11. Introduce the FISA bill with immunity for the telcos so long as the immunity does not extend earlier than September 11, 2001. The lawsuits that the government wants to protect the telcos from will still proceed (and thus still flog the constitution haters for years). Democrats in the Senate can shout from the rooftops, "Bush/Cheney spied on us and it didn't even help!"