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I’m proud to have been a small part of this: we have a total of 9 “Get FISA Right” ads scheduled to air in Minneapolis/St.Paul during the Republican convention this week, including at least four on FOX News network — two are scheduled for daytime hours (9am-4pm) on September 3, two for evening hours (7-12pm) the same day.

Though another set of ads being aired are more partisan, the ones I helped place are more non-partisan — without being in denial about how the FISA Amendment Act came to pass:

For 200 years, the Fourth Amendment protected us from unreasonable searches and seizures.
On July 9, all the Republican Senators voted to allow the government to listen to your phone calls and read your email without a warrant.
We’re building a new movement that puts our Constitution above politics.
Don’t let American freedom die. Join us at getfisaright.net

“Get FISA Right” was originally formed as response by Obama supporters to Barack Obama’s disappointing “yes” vote on the FISA Amendment Act — breaking his pledge to oppose any bill featuring telecom immunity.  As disappointing as that was, though, a great deal of the blame goes to the administration that proposed the FISA Amendment Act and the lockstep Republican Party that unanimously supported it.*  Neither party can be let off the hook for the FISA Amendment Act; we need to be building support wherever we can find it to roll back that and other infringements of our civil liberties.

Moreover, given the crackdown underway in St. Paul (see prior post), “Get FISA Right” ads may be the closest encounter Republican conventioneers have with the Constitution and free speech.  As I wrote last week, it’s “a way to take a stand for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that GOP convention-goers can’t avoid: on their TV sets.”

It’s high time, too. The Bush era assault on the 4th Amendment is threatening to become an everyday feature of the political landscape.  The right against unreasonable search and seizure is also under siege by state, local, and federal police in Minnesota, as a  Joint “Terrorism” Task Force has intimidated, searched, and arrested people, and relieved of them of their laptops, video cameras, and the like, all on far-fetched suspicions of “intent to riot” and even of “fire code violations.”

FISA and the Fourth Amendment may seem like an abstraction to some people, but what’s happening in St. Paul isn’t abstract at all.  Those are your freedoms they’re trampling on.  These ads are one way to insist that’s not OK with us.

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* McCain, though absent for the vote, made clear he supported the bill.

NOTE: For other blog reactions to the ad campaign, visit this Get FISA Right wiki page (and please add your own entry!)
UPDATE, 9/2: Ari Melber, Washington Independent: Liberals Storm GOP Hotels in St. Paul
UPDATE, 9/3: Nick Juliano, Raw Story: Anti-FISA group targets GOP airwaves in St. Paul

The GetFISARight.net group is at it again, offering a new way for regular citizens — for instance, people who don’t need staff help to count their homes — to have a direct impact on the politics of civil liberties: individual sponsorships of cable TV ads, targeted at the Republican Convention. Thanks to saysme.tv, you can run an ad on all major cable news channels in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area between September 1 and 4 for $103 during daytime hours (9am-4pm), and as little as $324 during evening hours. More information about how you can help get the ad on TV is at http://getfisaright.net/ad.

GetFISARight’s first ad featured a tombstone for the Constitution. The new ad stars the Constitution as the main player, with the visual featuring a pan over founding documents. One version of the ad takes aim at Republican Senators, who voted unanimously to extend the powers of government to listen to Americans’ phone calls and read their emails without a warrant; another highlights John McCain’s strong endorsement of the Bush Administration’s wiretapping policies over the last eight years.

It takes 48 hours from purchase to airtime, so don’t delay. Here’s a way to take a stand for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that GOP convention-goers can’t avoid: on their TV sets. Please visit http://getfisaright.net/ad today!

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CROSSPOSTED to American Street, DailyKos. SEE ALSO: GetFISARight organizer Jon Pincus’s post on this: “Senate Republicans voted unanimously for the FISA Amendments Act — and (except for Specter) in favor of telecom immunity as well. A majority of Democrats voted against FAA, and only five supported telecom immunity. So there are clearly significant differences between the parties.” Julian Sanchez (Ars Technica): “Get FISA Right turns crowdsourced guns on McCain:“…the group seems to have calculated that they’re more likely to exert influence from within than by taking a “pox on both houses” approach.”

UPDATE, 8/26: WELCOME, “Sideshow” readers! Because I really want outclicks (and pledges, of course), I hope you’ll also click here just to take in the very interesting “fundable.com” mini-pledge drive model we’re using; you may want to give it a try yourself sometime. The pledges are void if the pledge drive goal isn’t reached.

FURTHER UPDATE, 8/26: I’m informed that the “fundable.com” model should only be used for informational, issue-advocacy ads. These are the so-called “FISA Tombstone” and “FISA Constitution 1″ ads. “FISA Constitution 2″ (“John McCain would do the same” — the one above) could be considered a political ad expressly advocating the defeat of a candidate; we’re advised to be cautious and not do any group “fundable.com” purchases for this ad. So I won’t, and pledges will go to the “Constitution 1″ ad.
If you’ve got the money, though, individual purchases of the “Constitution 2″ ad — you, saysme.tv, and $100+ — are strongly encouraged.

UPDATE, 8/29: A total of at least 8 ads have been purchased and will air in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area during the GOP convention.

On July 27 I attended a “Listening to America” event in Silver Spring, Maryland. The meeting at Mayorga Coffee Factory was held to gather local consensus positions for the Democratic party platform.

I had been alerted to the event — sponsored by the Democratic Party and Obama presidential campaign — by the people at “GetFISARight.net,” an online group dedicated to opposing and reversing the FISA Amendment Act passed in July. So I went with a fistful of fliers proposing platform planks dedicated to reversing this and other erosions of constitutional rights in the past eight years.

I found no argument at the meeting, and much agreement, so that one of the “GetFISARight” planks could be folded in to a broad set of planks under the rubric “Rebuilding and Reclaiming Our Basic Rights.” In the slightly rearranged and polished result that was circulated to attendees late last week as a report of the Platform Meeting, the passage read:

• It is critical to repeal or substantially amend laws that violate constitutionally guaranteed rights, including the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments law, the Military Commissions Act, related executive orders, and executive signing statements. We must endeavor to replace these with laws that reaffirm our fundamental rights and hold accountable all parties who violate those rights.

Thus, as can be seen by comparison with the original flier version, the “GetFISARight” language (the 2d bullet point in that flier) was reported back in essentially verbatim form, as were other points asserting that health care, education, a living wage, and housing were basic human rights. Similarly, language from a second focus group concerned with energy, global warming, economic and immigration challenges was accurately conveyed back to meeting attendees.

Likewise, I’m pleased to say, some of the gist of this message has emerged in the “Draft 2008 Democratic National Platform” presented by the Platform Drafting Committee chaired by Arizona governor Janet Napolitano. Turning to pages 48-50 of that document, even the phrase “Reclaiming” is used in the title of the relevant section, “Reclaiming our Constitution and Our Liberties,“ showing at very least that great minds think alike.

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As advertised, I went to a nearby “Listening To America” Democratic platform drafting meeting yesterday. The idea was that “people all across America will hold Platform Meetings in their homes, or in their local churches and even coffee shops, to help build the Democratic Party’s platform for change from the bottom up.”

Signing in to “Listening to America” platform
drafting event
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew

As it happened, ours really was in a coffee shop, the Mayorga Coffee Factory in Silver Spring. About twenty people showed up to the area set aside for us and signed in.

I brought a bunch of “Restore Our Rights & Demand Accountability” fliers I’d printed out drafted by the GetFISARight.net organization,* proposing three additions to the Democratic platform:

• Stop government practices that violate the constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech, privacy, and due process, including warrantless surveillance on Americans, secret evidence in military courts, torture, illegal imprisonment of U.S. citizens and others, and arbitrary racial and religious profiling.
• Repeal or substantially amend laws that violate constitutionally guaranteed rights, including the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments law, the Military Commissions Act, related executive orders, and executive signing statements. Replace these with laws that reaffirm our fundamental rights and hold accountable all parties who violate those rights.
• Restore constitutional rights that the Bush administration has eroded through its lawless theory of unchecked executive power, including dissent, free speech, assembly, habeas corpus, privacy, due process of law, and equal protection.

When the meeting began, it quickly became clear I’d have trouble getting all of those points adopted. The goal, it turned out, was to actually try to draft a single platform statement reflecting a group consensus, rather than perhaps voting on a series of possible statements like those above and just forwarding that to the higher ups in the process. The moderators — two very nice and able people from the policy side of the Obama campaign, Keith Harper and Chris Goldthwait (sp.?) — had in mind that we’d eventually form a couple of clusters around the commonalities that emerged as people introduced themselves and explained what they hoped for from the meeting. While I wasn’t alone in bringing the Constitutional/rule of law/civil liberties concerns to the table, there were plenty of other agendas — housing, health care, women’s reproductive rights, global warming, energy, education, poverty, to name just the ones I was able to jot down.

One woman (A.) noted how in other parts of the world, things like health care, education are considered human rights, and that (I’m paraphrasing) we need to catch up with that. So I suggested that maybe my civil liberties/constitutional erosion concerns and those like education and health care might be joined up under a single rubric of “restoring and expanding rights,” and that’s pretty much what happened.

The meeting broke up into basically one “rights” group and another “problems” group (energy, global warming), and got to work. After a bit of philosophical discussion about whether we were for expanding rights or reclaiming ones that were there all along, we settled on “Rebuilding and Reclaiming Our Basic Rights” as a title, and then A. came up with a pretty good preamble. From my notes:

The Democratic Party has long recognized that the most significant role of government is to protect basic human rights. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his “Four Freedoms” speech, set forth a comprehensive vision of human rights, and Eleanor Roosevelt fought hard to ensure that vision of human rights was incorporated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Success - getfisaright.net point adopted
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew

Then Keith, our moderator, said it was time to get specific - “put some meat on the bones.” I figured of the ones I’d brought, I most wanted the second one, because it mentioned accountability (i.e., prosecutions, I explained to one guy before the meeting started).

So I said that I knew I’d said a lot already, but I really hoped that point could be part of our platform recommendations. And people were OK with that; we dictated it to the “raporteur”/Obama organizer (Mona) keeping track on a poster sheet. Hooray! We then went on to “rebuild and reclaim” other basic human rights — living wage, education, health care, housing — with codicils that, for example, reproductive health care was part of the picture for universal health care. When we got back together with the rest of the meeting, no major changes were made by either group to the overall result.

I guess it’s true: sometimes all it takes is showing up. Of course I can’t guarantee that these points will make it to Denver or actually become part of the Democratic party platform. But it’s to the credit of the Obama campaign that they have this much grassroots input to the platform, and I think they’ll have to take note of all of us somehow. At any rate, it felt like a good afternoon’s work to me.

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* An alternative excellent flier focused on the FISA Amendment Act per se. I picked the “PlatformConstitution.pdf” one on the theory that it might help to put the FISA Amendment Act in a broader context in a platform discussion.

UPDATE, 7/29: You, too, can be part of a platform drafting team — follow this link to Netroots Nation’s Democratic Platform and vote on or write your own plank on Civil Liberties!
(UPDATE, 8/11: the full text of the 7/28 Silver Spring consensus statement is here.)

The people at GetFisaRight.net — Obama supporters deeply unhappy with his reversal on this issue — are hoping to get grassroots “buys” of cable TV ad time for this ad. I’m not made of money, but I’m considering this.

While you’re thinking about it, send a letter to your Senators thanking them for their “Nay” votes against the FISA Amendment Act …or spanking them for their “Aye” votes.

GetFisaRight is also trying to get people to “listening” meetings held by the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party as part of a weeklong grassroots contribution to the party platform process; the final set of meetings — but apparently most of them — are today. I hope to attend one near here at 3:00pm; there may still be time for you to sign up for one in your area.

• Email Your Senators About Their FISA Vote — check
• Join and participate in the online site Senator, please get FISA right — check
• Add your name to the ACLU’s newspaper ad announcing a lawsuit against the FISA Amendment Act seeking a ruling that it’s unconstitutional — check
  
• Forward ACLU ad signature link widely — check
• Let Barack Obama know how you feel about his vote; sign an open letter to Sen. Obama demanding accountability — check:
  

  Senator Obama,

  I voted for you in February in Maryland. I nearly voted Edwards, even though he was out of the race, so I was not among your fervent supporters at that time. Still, I thought that you had integrity, that you’d got Iraq right when Clinton, Edwards… and I had got it wrong. So I believed that you would get us out of Iraq, and the more I learned about you, the more I thought you were a serious person who revered the Constitution and would restore the balances between the presidency and Congress, even if I didn’t agree with all of your positions (esp. impeachment of Bush and Cheney, who merit it as no others ever have).
  Read the rest of this entry »

An American News Project report via Real News Network

The sums involved may seem paltry — but maybe that just proves how cheap a Congresscritter vote can be: “94 House Democrats who reversed their earlier position and voted in favor of immunity got an average of $8,359 from telecom PACs since 2005.” On the other hand, Senator Jay Rockefeller — who you’d think would be rich enough not to need it — got $51,500 this year alone. Guess it’s true — you don’t get rich by spending money. (Pretty wicked reporting of this in the video, watch for it around 1:40.)

Via watching the vote on C-SPAN.

Now is as good a time as any to say I’ll support any reasonably liberal Democrat in the primaries against Senator Mikulski should she run for office again. The opponent should preferably make Mikulski’s votes on FISA a centerpiece of the campaign, but the main thing is that Mikulski must go.

Other Nays include Inouye, McCaskill, Salazar, Hagel (R), Landrieu, Lieberman, Feinstein, Warner.

Ayes include Clinton, Obama. Hm. They’re “Leaders” of “our” “party,” but this is still happening and going down to defeat. Also Menendez, Whitehouse, Boxer in decreasing order of surprise. Also Kerry, Byrd.

The motion has failed 32-66. Roll-call when available. More votes ahead, of course; the Bingaman amendment delaying immunity for 90 days pending investigation of the surveillance is said to have an outside shot of approval.

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Specter appears to get it, at least re unexamined prior illegal surveillance. Having joined in mid-debate, I’m honestly not sure which amendment he’s referring to; turns out it’s his own. Jay Rockefeller is worried for the poor widdle telecoms: “it’s not fair” to put the burden of assessing legality on them, too. Sorry, that’s what FISA did. That is, that’s what it used to do, as of the expected vote for this disaster later on today.

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Now voting on Specter’s amendment to the FAA: it failed.

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Now another two-minute!!!! debate on the Bingaman amendment; Feinstein co-sponsors. He says FISA Amendment Act gets the order wrong. Says opponents and proponents of the FAA itself are cosponsors. Kit Bond gets up and warns Bingaman amendment will get a veto and “we’ll have to start all over.” That would be terrible, of course.

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Now voting. I’ll have to quit now, but doubt there will be a happy ending.

Just spoke with a staffer at the Cardin office, who confirmed that Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) will be supporting the Dodd-Feingold-Leahy amendment to the FISA Amendment Act. Their amendment removes language conferring immunity from civil lawsuits to telecommunications companies who worked with the NSA warrantless surveillance program. A staffer at Senator Mikulski’s (D-MD) office was unable to say how she would vote on that amendment.

You can use the easy Blue America tool I did to contact your own Senators. You give it your phone number and zip code, and the system calls you and connects you to the right Senator’s office. There’s a brief bit of phone coaching first, a script, and a place to record what happened. (You can leave the phone number blank and still get the script and form to record what happened.)

Via “Get FISA Right“, which also recommends a similar Electronic Freedom Foundation system (doesn’t call you, though) about the whole FISA bill.

Graphic and button via firedoglake, where you’ll find a lot of good links to Senator Dodd, Glenn Greenwald, and others.

I don’t usually just cut and paste a post, but this will be an exception. I’ve added a couple of links within the post; to see the reply itself, click the first link below. “Get FISA Right” is a group primarily organized at the Obama campaign web site “mybarackobama.com.”

An Open Letter to Senator Obama
From the 20,000+ members of the my.BarackObama.com group
“Senator Obama – Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right”

Dear Senator Obama,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to us with your post “My Position On FISA” dated July 3rd, 2008. In your response, you pledged to “listen to [our] concerns, take them seriously, and seek to earn [our] ongoing support,” and in that spirit, we would like to continue this conversation. We ask that you help transfer our passion and political activism into getting the FISA bill right — now.

Senator, as a legal scholar who has done extensive study of our country’s constitution you know that the FISA re-authorization bill currently before the Senate (HR 6304) threatens the rights guaranteed to American citizens in the Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment.

One of the most troubling parts of this bill is its provision to provide retroactive immunity from civil lawsuits for telecommunications companies that may have assisted the Bush administration in violating the civil rights of Americans. You wrote in your statement that you “support striking Title II,” which provides this immunity, “from the bill, and will work with Chris Dodd, Jeff Bingaman and others in an effort to remove this provision in the Senate.”

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