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Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) executive director Mike Tidwell writes that he, too, was listed as a “terrorist” by the Maryland State Police on their now-infamous “Case Explorer” database.  Tidwell:

Since 2001, I have devoted my life entirely to the peaceful promotion of windmills and solar panels to solve global warming. Apparently not everyone liked my work, however. Believe it or not, the Maryland State Police - your state police - put my name in their criminal intelligence database as a “suspected terrorist” as part of their larger program of collecting information about political activists in 2005-2006. I was on this outrageous “watch” list apparently because of a single act of peaceful civil disobedience I participated in outside a coal-fired power plant in 2004. CCAN’s former deputy director Josh Tulkin was also put in the database as was another former CCAN staffer who has chosen to remain anonymous. Neither of these people has ever been arrested for anything in their entire lives. (See background below)

So about one third of the entire Maryland CCAN staff - one of the largest environmental groups in the state - was officially spied on by the police while we peacefully promoted clean electricity and clean cars for Maryland. This is, of course, an outrage and a threat, not just to civil liberties in Maryland, but to the state’s entire environmental community. When people who are trying SAVE the climate and SAVE the Bay are considered terrorists, the world has truly been turned upside down.

Tidwell asks readers to send an email to Governor Martin O’Malley asking him to release all surveillance files gathered by the MSP (who prefer to destroy the files), and to support comprehensive legislation (being drafted by local State Senator Jamie Raskin) to prevent similar abuses from happening again.  There will also be a 10:30 am rally tomorrow at the Silver Spring Metro station to further publicize the scandal and press these demands.  The rally and email campaign are both coordinated with the ACLU-Maryland, whose lawsuit helped uncover the scandal earlier this year.

This fishing expedition by the Maryland State Police task force was as un-American as McCarthyism or Nixon’s “dirty tricks” — it was a dry run for Chinese- or Stasi-style surveillance and infiltration of innocuous activist groups, and their labeling as literally enemies of the state.  Dry run is putting it kindly, actually — this was the real thing. The recently released Sachs report relays what I consider a snickering, bald-faced lie about how the “terrorist” designation was considered no big deal by those aware of it:

While the MSP employees with whom we spoke recognized that the individuals and groups under investigation here were not “terrorists,” under any reasonable and accepted definition of that word, none who were aware of the use of the designation seemed to consider that a government agency’s decision to label someone a terrorist, particularly when that label is included in an external database, could cause serious harm to that person’s reputation, career, and standing in the community.

Baloney. They knew full well they were putting a bureaucratic scarlet “T” on all of the people they labeled that way. For this assault on civil liberties to be fully repulsed, that needs to be turned on its head: the superiors involved should be disciplined and demoted, and those doing their bidding should be reassigned to simpler chores, like checking parking meters or directing traffic.

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UPDATE, 10/23: CCAN online communications manager Susanna Murley has set up a “No Police Spying” facebook group, with photos from the rally; alternatively, see the CCAN blog post about it.  Also, the New York Times  Andrew Revkin (”.Dot Earth” blog) is covering the story.

Max Obuszewski and other activists spied on by
the Maryland State Police. From left to right:
Maria Allwine, (Baltimore Pledge of Resistance
(BPoR), Kit Bonson (Washington Peace Center),
Obuszewski (BPoR), Mike Stark (Campaign to End
the Death Penalty). Allwine and Stark were also
among those surveilled by the MSP.
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew.

I’ve written a couple of times now about the Maryland State Police spying scandal (”Sachs Report…”, “Maryland Police Surveillance: Case Explorer and Civil Liberties“).   This Saturday, I attended a forum about it organized by the Washington Peace Center and held at the Presbyterian Church in Takoma Park.

Speakers included four activists surveilled by the state police (Baltimore Pledge of Resistance (BPoR) activists Max Obuszewski and Maria Allwine, and Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP) activists David Zirin and Mike Stark), state senator Jamie Raskin, and David Rocah, the ACLU-Maryland lawyer who obtained the documents breaking the Maryland police spying scandal.  Ann Wilcox of the National Lawyer’s Guild broadened the focus by reporting on infiltration and surveillance connected with the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota in September.

Obuszewski, Allwine
Mr. Obuszewski explained that the discovery of police surveillance was connected with protests he was part of at the NSA facility at Fort Meade. Noticing that documents were being provided to the judge in his civil disobedience case, Obuszewski got the help of the ACLU in August of 2006 to obtain whatever he could by federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Maryland Public Information Act petition. Fellow BPoR activist Allwine said she was certain that surveillance had been going on before the time frame they were able to uncover, and may well go beyond the state police.  Allwine is particularly curious about an intelligence unit of the Baltimore City police.  Referring to a October, 2003 incident, she wants to know whether Martin O’Malley — then mayor of Baltimore — was aware of city police surveillance of groups like hers at that time.

Allwine spoke of the chilling effect this can have on free speech; she’s advised worried people in the past that “you have to assume we’re being spied on,” but added “this is the most un-American thing I can think of — people responsible for public safety turning around and spying on” people exercising their right to free speech.

Below:
Fifty-three peace and death penalty “terrorists” — not four
Dissatisfaction with Sheridan, Sachs
Raskin/Hixson legislative reponse
The real “fringe”

Read the rest of this entry »

In “Review Assails Spying in Md. By State Police,” the Washington Post’s Lisa Rein reports:

The Maryland State Police “significantly overreached” when they spied on peaceful opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war and were oblivious to their violation of the activists’ rights of free expression and association, an independent review concluded yesterday.

Calling the 14-month monitoring during the administration of then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) a “systemic failure,” former U.S. attorney and state attorney general Stephen H. Sachs said the police violated federal regulations and showed a “lack of judgment” when they entered personal information about some activists into a federal anti-terrorism database.

(Emphasis added.)  This was the part of the scandal I singled out for scrutiny in late July when the story broke (”Maryland police surveillance: “Case Explorer” and civil liberties“), and I’m pleased to see it got detailed attention in the Sachs report.

From that report (”Review of Maryland State Police Covert Surveillance of Anti-Death Penalty and Anti-War Groups from March 2005 to May 2006“; .PDF, 149 pages, link added):

Second, MSP [Maryland State Police -ed.] violated federal regulations when it transmitted some of its investigative findings to a database maintained by the Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program, a federally-funded initiative to promote cooperation and information-sharing among federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. Regulations promulgated by the United States Department of Justice permit MSP, when participating in the HIDTA project, to collect and maintain intelligence information concerning an individual “only if there is reasonable suspicion that the individual is involved in criminal conduct or activity and the information is relevant to that criminal conduct or activity.” See 28 C.F.R. § 23.20(a). Again, no such reasonable suspicion existed with respect to the investigation at issue here. To its credit, in late 2005 MSP discontinued, on its own initiative, its practice of sharing this type of information with HIDTA. [...]

While the MSP employees with whom we spoke recognized that the individuals and groups under investigation here were not “terrorists,” under any reasonable and accepted definition of that word, none who were aware of the use of the designation seemed to consider that a government agency’s decision to label someone a terrorist, particularly when that label is included in an external database, could cause serious harm to that person’s reputation, career, and standing in the community.

While this is absolutely no reflection on Mr. Sachs’s excellent report, that last part seems so implausible that I wonder if any of this was based on depositions under oath; if not, that’s a step I would then hope is not long in coming.*

Setting that aside, the Sachs report provides a wealth of information about the decision to use Case Explorer, and the ramifications of that decision; I’ll be studying that part of the report and writing about it separately.

Meanwhile, Sachs recommends that the Maryland State Police “formulate binding regulations that govern covert surveillance of “advocacy” or “protest” groups” which respect their constitutional rights.  But Sachs also makes several specific database- and “Case Explorer”-related recommendations (emphases added):

2. MSP should establish standards for the collection and dissemination of criminal intelligence information; provide for periodic auditing of the contents of MSP’s intelligence database; and require that information inappropriately entered as criminal intelligence information be purged promptly and that other information be purged on an appropriate cycle. Numerous law enforcement agencies around the country, including in Maryland, have promulgated regulations that address these issues. In Section IV below, this report identifies several models from which MSP may choose to draw.

3. MSP should revise, and possibly discontinue, its use of the Case Explorer database in connection with its intelligence-gathering activities. If funds are available, it should separate its criminal intelligence database from the information that it maintains in Case Explorer for other purposes. As presently employed by MSP’s Homeland Security and Intelligence Division, Case Explorer encourages the overinclusion of individuals and groups in the database, does not facilitate supervisory review of ongoing investigations, and, for a variety of technical reasons, frustrates the troopers, civilian analysts, and supervisors who have to use it on a regular basis.

He also recommends that MSP allow surveilled individuals who aren’t suspected of violent crime to see their files and then purge those files.

These recommendations echo those by constitutional law professor Jack Balkin in “The Constitution and the National Surveillance State”, which I outlined in my “Case Explorer and civil liberties” post: “…create a regular system of checks and procedures to avoid abuse … stop collecting information when it is no longer needed … discard information at regular intervals to protect privacy.“  If the Sachs recommendations are enshrined in state law and regulations, Maryland will have turned an deeply disturbing civil liberties failure into a historic civil liberties success, one that can show the way for other states and even the nation.

I’ll be forwarding these comments to all of my Maryland state representatives, and to any others who seem to have a role to play in enacting reforms.  I hope other Maryland citizens will add their voices in support of the Sachs recommendations.

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* UPDATE, 10/2: Sachs notes that he could not take testimony under oath, but got full cooperation from the MSP.  From the introduction: “As you know, I was not asked to conduct a formal investigation.  I had no power to issue subpoenas and no authority to take testimony under oath.  That said, my colleagues and I consider it important to note that we have received full cooperation from the State Police in [making MSP personnel] available for interviews, and giving us full access to all of the many documents we sought to examine…”

While it wasn’t her point, Nell’s excellent post earlier this week (”Prepare to Dare or Prepare to Despair“) reminds me that I’ve been less energetic than I should have been in supporting and discussing Dennis Kucinich’s H.Res. 1258 resolution calling for George Bush’s impeachment.  The lengthy resolution presents 35 articles of impeachment, leading with Bush’s propaganda campaign for the Iraq war:

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under article II, section 3 of the Constitution ‘to take care that the laws be faithfully executed’, has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice President, illegally spent public dollars on a secret propaganda program to manufacture a false cause for war against Iraq.

The resolution is a resource in its own right, presenting factual bases for each of the charges.*   As David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org said,

Impeachment is only a lengthy process when you don’t already have the evidence.  President Andrew Johnson was impeached three days after the offense for which he was impeached. … Bush and Cheney could be impeached, tried, and convicted in a week.

Not even every impeachment supporter will agree that every single article in H. Res. 1258 merits Bush’s impeachment,  removal from office, and  banning from future federal office.  But even in this the resolution serves a useful function, reminding us that impeachment is by design a political tool, to be wielded by the House of Representatives — not a judicial one or one limited to narrowly proveable violations of U.S. law.

To be sure — for those who insist on them — there are (in my opinion) such statutory and treaty violations involving illegal detention (Article 17), torture (Article 18), and illegally spying on American citizens (Article 24).

But impeachment can and sometimes must also be applied to the kinds of breaches of trust and willful poor judgment that have characterized the Bush administration, even if no specific statute is broken, even if “only” our constitutional system itself is at stake.   The cannon of impeachment may seem less warranted for, say, the relative fly of “endangering the health of 9/11 first responders,” (Article 35), but quite a bit more so for the propaganda catapult of misleading claims about Iraq and 9/11 (Article 2), Iraqi WMD (Article 3), or “even” climate change (Article 32) — regardless of whether particular statutes were broken in the latter cases.  Yet others strike at the equally profound subversion of the American political system, such as those about tampering with free and fair elections, corruption of the administration of justice (Article 28), creating secret laws (Article 22), and announcing intent not to follow duly enacted law (Article 26).

As AfterDowningStreet.com is reporting, Dennis Kucinich will present petitions supporting immediate impeachment hearings to Speaker Nancy Pelosi today. (You can still add your support here.)

Kucinich will also reportedly urge the formation of a truth and reconciliation commission — something Mark Gisleson (”Norwegianity”) supports in an article written for Mick Arran’s impeachment blog “The Bush/Cheney Impeachment Papers.” The arguments of Mr. Gisleson and others (like local congressional candidate Gordon Clark) notwithstanding, I see the “T&R” idea as a half measure ratifying a drift away from the Constitution and towards unwritten and impotent customs and conventions.

But even the half-measure of “truth and reconciliation” is not eagerly embraced by the Obama campaign.  As Mark Benjamin reported for Salon.com (via Mick Arran) this summer:

…don’t hold your breath waiting for Dick Cheney to be frog-marched into federal court. Prosecution of any officials, if it were to occur, would probably not occur during Obama’s first term. Instead, we may well see a congressionally empowered commission that would seek testimony from witnesses in search of the truth about what occurred. Though some witnesses might be offered immunity in exchange for testimony, the question of whether anybody would be prosecuted would be deferred to a later date — meaning Obama’s second term, if such is forthcoming.

On the other hand (and for what it’s worth), while it doesn’t call for either a commission or impeachment, the draft Democratic platform identified many of the same issues highlighted in H. Res. 1258.  And it closed the relevant “Reclaiming our Constitution and Our Liberties” section with the ringing words:

Our Constitution is not a nuisance. It is the foundation of our democracy. It makes freedom and self-governance possible, and helps to protect our security. The Democratic Party will restore our Constitution to its proper place in our government and return our Nation to our best traditions–including our commitment to government by law, and not by men.

Impeachment is not a nuisance either — it’s an integral part of the Constitution.  Impeachment is no esoteric afterthought — it’s the biggest actual “check and balance” in the document, and it’s mentioned six times.  Impeachment is literally patriotic.  And it would be a far more powerful tool towards uncovering the truth than any congressional committee or even special prosecutor would be — refusal to honor impeachment-related subpoenas was itself an article of impeachment in the Nixon articles of impeachment.

As Nell Lancaster wrote:

Impeachment is the key to reversing the damage of the last eight years, not simply papering it over. The time to organize for demanding it is not after the election, but now.

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* I’m planning to find or publish a web page of the resolution with hyperlinks to supporting documents and reports.

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

Amy Goodman and Two Democracy Now! Producers Unlawfully Arrested at RNC (Democracy Now! press release via Alternet) –

Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar have all been released from police custody in St. Paul following their illegal arrest by Minneapolis Police on Monday afternoon. All three were violently manhandled by law enforcement officers. Abdel Kouddous was slammed against a wall and the ground, leaving his arms scraped and bloodied. He sustained other injuries to his chest and back. Salazar’s violent arrest by baton-wielding officers, during which she was slammed to the ground while yelling, “I’m Press! Press!,” resulted in her nose bleeding, as well as causing facial pain. Goodman’s arm was violently yanked by police as she was arrested.

Massive police raids on suspected protestors in Minneapolis (Greenwald, Salon.com) –

Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff’s department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than “fire code violations,” and early this morning, the Sheriff’s department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying.

Federal government involved in raids on protesters (Greenwald) –

…the raids were specifically “aided by informants planted in protest groups.” Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force — an inter-agency group of federal, state and local law enforcement led by the FBI — was actively recruiting Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to infiltrate “vegan groups” and other left-wing activist groups and report back to the Task Force about what they were doing. There seems to be little doubt that it was this domestic spying by the Federal Government that led to the excessive and truly despicable home assaults by the police yesterday.

Some piece of paper –

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. [...]

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Gustav is not the story, Palin’s teenage daughter’s baby is not the story. Even Palin is not the story compared to this: jackbooted thugs are roughing up protesters and journalists at the GOP convention in St. Paul, and searching and arresting them without reasonable cause.

And this is part of a pattern — and not some dated one from the bad old days immediately after 9/11, but an ongoing one no longer excusable (if it ever was) by the fears of those days. In Maryland, in 2005-2006, the Maryland State Police infiltrated and surveilled anti-death penalty and anti-Iraq war groups with no reasonable basis for doing so. Note not just the risible “Terrorist” part of the “Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force” name, but also the “inter-agency” description; recall the potential data sharing aspect of the Maryland story — “Case Explorer” — and wonder if records of the people unjustly surveilled will ever be deleted from federal, state, and local law enforcement databases.

We just got through weeks of tut-tutting about China doing this to its dissidents and journalists.  Either we’re a nation of hypocrites, a nation of sheep, or a nation of citizens with inalienable rights. Time to choose.

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UPDATE, 9/2: Ongoing RNC coverage at the Uptake.org, which has distributed video cameras to people who are recording and uploading reports to the site; reports locations are visible on a Google map of the city. (Via Jane Hamsher at “firedoglake,” whose post “The Revolution will be Twittered” lists other groups doing innovative coverage and monitoring of the RNC and local police actions.) See also Matt Stoller’s coverage at OpenLeft: “Gotham City is Safe From the Protesters.” Orin Kerr (”Volokh Conspiracy”), on the other hand, argues the police raids this weekend weren’t out of line because of the stated intentions of the “RNC Welcoming Committee.”  But National Lawyer’s Guild lawyer Bruce Nestor sees it differently:

…according to the Hennepin County Jail records they’re being held on probable cause. Which means no formal charges have been issued. No complaint has been reviewed or signed by a prosecutor or a judge. But the police have detained these people. They can be held on probable cause until Wednesday at 12 noon. In my view this is a preventive detention action by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s department. It’s designed to keep people off the streets. It’s designed to scare people from participating in protest activity . [...] Look if this raid was warranted people would be arrested on criminal complaints.

UPDATE, 9/3: See Nell Lancaster’s post “Conventional crackdown” for more. Nell:

The counter-terror targets: us. We commit conspiracy to riot by planning to assemble. Sure, you might insist it will be peaceable, but the security forces’ infiltrators have a different story to tell. And look: guys in masks smashing stuff, proving it’s just like they say.

UPDATE, 9/4: See also a guest post at “Making Light” by Elise Matthesen: “Who are these people?”

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.

Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area
(WB HIDTA) “Case Explorer” listing for Max Obuszewski, June 2005.
Via ACLU-MD “MSP Documents” dump, 7/17/08.

On July 17th, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Maryland released documents “…revealing that the Maryland State Police (MSP) engaged in covert surveillance of local peace and anti-death penalty groups for over a year from 2005-2006.”

As the Washington Post reported the next day,

A well-known antiwar activist from Baltimore, Max Obuszewski, 63, was singled out by the undercover agents and entered into a “Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area” database. His entry indicates a “Primary Crime” of “Terrorism-anti-government” and a “Secondary Crime” of “Terrorism-Anti-War Protesters,” according to the documents.

In the following, I summarize the story so far, and then pursue one aspect that may not yet have received sufficient attention: the “Case Explorer” database and its implications.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.