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FISA Bill On Hold!

Posted Jun 26th 2008 8:23PM by Ana Kasparian
Filed under: Iraq, Politics, George Bush, Media, Young Turks

While the Senate was ready to vote on the FISA Amendments Act today, Senators Russell Feingold and Christopher Dodd fought to keep them from casting a final vote and jamming the bill through Congress.

In a statement released by Feingold, he says:

"I am pleased we were able to delay the vote on FISA until after the July 4th holiday instead of having it jammed through. I hope that over the July 4th Holiday, Senators will take a closer look at the deeply flawed legislation and understand how it threatens the civil liberties of the American People. It is possibly to protect this country against the terrorists while also protecting the rights and freedoms that define our nation."

For those who haven't read up on the new FISA bill, it would basically give the government the right to peek into the private overseas phone conversations, emails, and even text messages of all Americans. Part of the bill would give retroactive immunity to telephone companies that gave the government private information of Americans.

Feingold says the FISA bill would also allow the government to take all international communications and put it in a giant database. The most outrageous part of the bill states that there does not have to be any court review or evidence that anyone is doing anything wrong before the government intrudes on the person's privacy. The government will simply have complete access to the personal overseas communications of every single American.

Feingold continues to say, "It's a vast power that has no limits. There's no regulation of it."

Obviously, the new FISA bill was created to help the government "track down terrorists"....just like the Iraq War was orchestrated to find weapons of mass destruction. It all makes perfect sense.

It's angering that the government has instilled so much fear in the minds of Americans, that many are ready to hand over precious civil liberties in the name of "protection." In fact, it's sickening. All the Republicans who are avid gun owners and want to protect their constitutional right to bear arms have NO RIGHT to say an American's right to privacy is not as important. This proposed FISA bill simply violates the right to privacy. Fear tactics should not trick Americans into giving up their freedoms. The Senate needs to wake up.

The more the Bush Administration remains in power, the more the United States mirrors the image George Orwell illustrated in his book 1984. Big brother really is watching, and members of our own Senate are allowing it to happen.

Feingold admits that many of the Senators have not completely read the bill and do not know the logistics of it. By holding off on the bill until after July 4th, hopefully the Senate will have the opportunity to think things over and not just hand the Bush Administration exactly what they want.

If you want to watch TYT's interview with Senator Feingold, please check out the video below:




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