The Senate just passed a FISA bill including retroactive immunity for the telecoms that complied with the Bush administration to illegally spy on American citizens. This is bad news, dudes.

Glen Greenwald, a constitutional lawyer and writer for Salon.com does a good job explaining why here: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

To quote:

What were the consequences for the President for having broken the law so deliberately and transparently? Absolutely nothing. To the contrary, the Senate is about to enact (ed: has already enacted)a bill which has two simple purposes: (1) to render retroactively legal the President's illegal spying program by legalizing its crux: warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, and (2) to stifle forever the sole remaining avenue for finding out what the Government did and obtaining a judicial ruling as to its legality: namely, the lawsuits brought against the co-conspiring telecoms. In other words, the only steps taken by our political class upon exposure by the NYT of this profound lawbreaking is to endorse it all and then suppress any and all efforts to investigate it and subject it to the rule of law.

Please contact your representatives in the house and tell them to stand firm against any bill containing immunity for the telecoms, and to support their own, previously passed bill, the RESTORE Act.

I don’t typically put too much stock in online petitions, but if you won’t contact your representatives, you can at least sign this one and pass it on to friends: http://action.firedoglake.com/page/petition/RestoreFISA

Not that it would have changed the outcome, but it’s worth mentioning that Obama voted for the defeated ammendment to remove immunity from the FISA bill, while Clinton didn’t vote at all. In my book, that’s almost worse than the 13 Democrats who voted against the ammendment. Not worse, but certianly more cowardly.

In other news, I’m ready to drink Obama’s Kool-Aid.

Bottoms up!