I disagree with her that retroactive immunity was given because it was a revenue stream for telecom firms, it was given because Bush pushed for it, issuing an executive order post 9/11 that mandated that the NSA, bypass FISC approval under FISA to start wire tapping. If you are a US based telecom firm, how exactly do you say no to the NSA when it comes with orders from Bush, at the time of large terrorism fears and general public support to do pretty much anything?

The blame is thus with the abuse of executive powers as envisioned by Cheney and the rest of the Nixon gang that believed that the President has the ultimate authority to do anything he likes. Also as I recall there was one single telecom firm that refused to abide by this and thus was mired in legal issues. I do however concede that there is alot of American technology helping China impose a surveillance society everyone from Microsoft to Yahoo to Google is involved there.

America needs civics education programs in schools from Elementary level. If you don't know your rights as a citizen, being free is a moot point.

I think if Democrats used the filibuster the way Republicans do, they never would have gotten immunity. Democrats were the majority at the time after all.

As far as Obama's own personal role, there's a lot to look at with the immunity question, and goodness knows I've poured through a lot of reporting on it, and my take on it is that Obama knew that there were enough lobbyist-loving, Constitution-ignoring, Republican-fearing Democratic Senators who were gonna vote for immunity that it would pass no matter how Obama voted.

He also was doing this whole run for the Presidency thing, and knew that if he voted against FISA's renewal, the right-wing noise machine would use this as an excuse to call him Weak on Terror^TM. Never mind that even at that time they were already toying with the whole "paling around with terrorists" shtick, but this was pre-Palin, so it hadn't been put out by any McCain people directly yet.

So Obama said "I'll try to get immunity out of the bill, but I'm going to vote for the final bill, regardless of whether immunity is in there", knowing that the likelihood of the immunity-stripping amendments passing the inevitable Republican filibuster were slim, and then voted for the final bill, because he knew he wouldn't be able to stop it anyways.

Still, I think Klein is right, Obama has a serious uphill battle with special interests going forward, and progressives need to fight fire with fire on that count. I just disagree with her conclusion that Obama's already failed to stand up to corporate special interests since he voted for the final FISA bill that contained telecomm immunity.

I have the solution but it involves killing everyone and then leaving the internet perpetually running so that future space travelers can get a good laugh. actually i guess thats the whole plan.

*dead

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