In the evolving fight to preserve the rule of law by not granting retroactive amnesty to the telecom companies who allowed warrantless wiretapping--i.e. domestic spying--on Americans, Sen. Chris Dodd has made a series of bold steps.
He first put a 'hold' on the bill, stopping it from reaching the Senate floor.
Mr. Dodd, announcing his hold on the proposed legislation, described the immunity proposal as "amnesty for telecommunications companies that enabled the president's assault on the Constitution by providing personal information on their customers without judicial authorization."
When the whispers began that Majority Leader Harry Reid might still bring the bill to the floor, Dodd announced that he would filibuster, and has been joined by several other Senators. Thank goodness.
As I pointed out earlier, not only does the notion of amnesty for the telecoms have serious and troubling implications for the basic tenets of law and justice--and that if the telecoms are granted immunity, it's likely that we'll never be able to accurately determine whether and to what extent the Bush administration illegally spied on Americans--but it also ties directly back to the corrupting and overwhelming influence of powerful special interest money in politics.
Note how the Senator who forged this compromise received ten times more money from the telecoms this past year than in the five previous years combined.
Mr. Rockefeller received little in the way of contributions from AT&T or Verizon executives before this year, reporting $4,050 from 2002 through 2006. From last March to June, he collected a total of $42,850 from executives at the two companies.
Two simple takeaways, for me:
1. The telecoms should not receive retroactive immunity, especially when it's still unclear what they're receiving it for, i.e. whether what they did was legal, and what the specifics of the program were.
2. Whether or not his compliance was bought, the clear impression from that spike in campaign cash from the telecom industry to Rockefeller is that he's not an impartial legislator. Until we create a system of full public financing for all races, especially for Congress, we will continue to live with the suspicion--if not the reality--that powerful special interests are buying favors and currying excessive influence with our lawmakers. It is moments like this--when the apparent "best interests" of the people come into conflict with the wishes of major campaign donors--that highlight why having a political system awash in private money is such a bad idea for our democracy and why we must devote ourselves to changing it.
