My letter to my Senator - Bill Nelson - regarding retroactive immunity

Dear Senator Nelson,

I am writing to ask you to push for the version of the FISA bill that does not contain retroactive immunity for the telecom companies regarding warrantless spying - the Judiciary Committee version.  I understand how Majority leader Reid has made the intelligence committee bill the "base" bill and how - ultimately - the effect of this will likely be to require 60 votes to keep immunity out of it.  Yes, given the complexity of Senate rules, it may not pan out that way, but it probably will.

I would ask that you support the call of Senators Dodd, Biden, Obama and Clinton (the later two albeit less than strident) to filibuster any bill that includes immunity.  Consider this recent New York Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/...

Even if we assume that the Times might very well have sources who are lying, if we pass a bill granting immunity, we will never know one way or the other.  The Times is not some left wing blog, answerable to no one except partisans.  If there is reason to suspect that the government has been spying domestically without a warrant - and really who can argue with a straight face that there isn't such reasonable suspicion - then the Senate has a duty not to essentially shut down any incentive for the most valuable potential witnesses (the telecom companies) to testify.

The American people are obviously sick of partisan politics, as evidenced by dismal approval ratings for both the President and the Democratic Congress.  But it's worth noting that Congressional Democrats' approval ratings were substantially higher a year ago before people realized that the Democrats did not appear to be doing any better job stopping the war and government excesses than the Republicans were.  To many people, it simply seems that the Democrats are afraid to be seen as obstructing things or as weak on national security and thus they essentially cave in when push comes to shove.  It's not that you haven't passed some good legislation, it's that you have failed on the things that matter most to people.  If last April, 50 senators had been unwilling to send  an Iraq funding bill without a timeline, then either Bush would have been forced into actions that would undoubtedly have gotten him impeached, or the troops would have already started coming home.  Sure, there was a risk of being perceived as not supporting the troops, but when you look at the numbers, it's hard to see how approval ratings could be much lower for Congress if you'd done that.

Anyway, I bring that up only to point out that you have had and continue to have in your power the ability to do a lot more than has been done.  Surely you must see that the administration with its current low level of trust could no longer successfully spin a failure to grant retroactive immunity as being weak on terrorism.

If you believe that we should not be granting immunity to companies that violated all of our privacy, then there is no earthly reason for you not to be one of 40 senators to support a filibuster.  Your party is in charge, so a filibuster or credible threat of one does not mean no bill will be passed and those provisions passed in August will expire.  It's a good bet that there are 51 votes to pass the bill without immunity for the telecoms, if the will is there.

I don't care if the President is Bush, Clinton, Reagan or Carter, our country was founded on NOT trusting the government to operate in secret.  Terrorism is indeed a threat, but many men, including several of the founders, have said that the greatest threat will always be that we give away our rights willingly because we are afraid or lazy.  What al qaeda could not accomplish on 9/11, we have started to do ourselves in allowing so much to go without oversight for the last 6 years.

I beg you, don't let it continue with this bill.