I hope everyone had a great Holiday. We came back from a short break to find another great letter to the editor about Senator Dodd's FISA fight. This one comes from Andrea Calandrella of Lebanon. It ran in today's Valley News.
There was a showdown on the floor of the US Senate on Dec. 17. The debate was over the proposed renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). At stake was nothing less than the US Constitution and the preservation of our civil liberties.
The specific issue was a provision to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that illegally disclosed millions of private records, including yours and mine. These disclosures were made in response to warrantless requests from the Bush administration beginning in February 2001, months before 9/11.
FISA as it exists provides reasonable means to conduct surveillance legally and with proper oversight. To date, only 5 of 18,000 requests under FISA have ever been rejected. If the telecom companies acted in a legal manner, there is no need for immunity. If they acted illegally, the proper place to address this is in a court.
Chris Dodd left the presidential campaign trail to fight this granting of retroactive immunity. With passion and eloquence, he held the floor for over 8 hours on Monday until the majority leader, Harry Reid, postponed action on the bill until January 2008. Without Chris Dodd’s leadership and political backbone, there is no doubt that the bill would have passed with the inclusion of retroactive immunity. Watching him on C-SPAN was seeing democracy and statesmanship in action.
The fight on this issue is not over, and Chris Dodd will be back in January to continue to the battle. I urge you to contact your Senators and voice your opposition to retroactive immunity. Our input does make an impact; the Senate received over 500,000 emails and logged thousands of calls this past week in support of Chris Dodd and in opposition to this bill.
In addition to contacting your Senators, if you value this type of leadership in action that our nation so desperately needs, please vote for Chris Dodd for president on January 8.
