Keith olbermann comments: Democrats approve FISA bill

House Democratic leadership (which is to say, Congressman Steny Hoyer) announced a "breakthrough" in discussions with the White House and the Republicans which would produce a "compromise" in the long fight over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I have taken several days to look over the legislation and have some comments. First, the debate over FISA is of vital significance to our country. The issues are simple. They go to protection of our democracy, now under unrelenting attack by the Bush Administration. Repeatedly, official spokesmen for the administration have mischaracterized the FISA statute, misstated the import of their own proposals, and have used fear as a tool to try to ram through ill-considered legislation that would undermine one of the fundamental principles of the American republic: the notion that the Government's intrusion into the private dealings of its citizens can occur only after a check through the judicial branch. The debate raises many other issues. One of the most significant of them is the idea of immunity for telecommunications companies. The evidence at hand now shows that telecommunications companies facilitated criminal surveillance of their customers (i.e., surveillance that violated the limitations of FISA, and was therefore felonious) at the request of the Bush Administration's rogue Justice Department and National Security Administration. The telecoms have spared no expense lobbying in their effort to get out from under the liability that this presents. Their efforts are plainly paying off. In a sense, the entire experience with the FISA legislation works to demonstrate the darkest fears that James Madison articulated about war and fear-mongering and their ability to undermine the essential checks-and-balances of the United States Constitution. In 1798, at the height of the Quasi-War with France, which was shamelessly manipulated by the Federalists for partisan purposes, Madison wrote to Jefferson: The management of foreign relations appears to be the most susceptible of abuse, of all the trusts committed to a Government, because they can be concealed or disclosed, or disclosed in such parts & at such times as will best suit particular views; and because the body of the people are less capable of judging & are more under the influence of prejudices, on that branch of their affairs, than of any other. Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions agst. danger real or pretended from abroad. In a like manner, the Bush Administration's "war on terror" has provided a pretext to transform the American republic into a new form of state. In place of the Founders' carefully counterposed checks and balances, the Bush Administration offered a new, unfettered executive capable of unilateral action even when encroaching upon the hitherto guarded rights of the citizens. The Bush Administration's concept was of a National Surveillance State, in which a supposedly benevolent and protecting executive would move towards omniscience through the marvels of new and intrusive technologies. But the Bush Administration's secret constitution has another, potentially more worrisome aspect. It presented the president as ultimate interpreter—not guarantor—of the law. As the Stuart monarch who spawned the English Civil War, Charles I, said "rex est lex" (the king and the law are one), so President Bush and his followers enact Richard Nixon's famous statement, "when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." http://harpers.org/archive/2008/06/hbc-90003151