Obama = Bush

I had been saying from the beginning that Obama was not much different than Bush and other Republicans, such as McCain, in regards to foreign policy and domestic issues. What did I hear from his suppporters? Just crap. More crap. Nothing but crap. Can't really defend someone when his actions speak louder than his rhetoric. But Obama is now actively defending the old Bush regime. Ain't that a mutha.

From the Democracy Now! interview with Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com on the effects of the FISA bill over our freedom to be free from government intrusion.

Where are the Dems and Republicans who are real patriots and will stand up against this? (crickets). Why not have a tea-party over this, something more serious than the bailing out of big companies who ran themselves into the ground? (crickets).

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn, can you talk about the significance of the Jewel v. NSA case?

GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, that was—that is an amazing case, because what happened was, in 2008, when the Democrats voted for that FISA bill, part of what the FISA bill did was it immunized the telecoms from the lawsuits that were pending based on this illegal spying. And what the Democrats said at the time was, “Well, don’t worry about the fact that we’re immunizing the telecoms, because we’re not immunizing government officials, the Bush officials who ordered the illegal spying. You can still impose accountability on them.” And so, the organizations that have brought the lawsuits against the telecoms took the Democrats at their word, like EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and they commenced lawsuits against the Bush officials who ordered the illegal spying. And that was a lawsuit commenced in October of 2008 called—that’s the Jewel case that you just referenced.

And in October 2008, the Bush administration said to the lawyers who brought the lawsuit, “Well, we don’t really have time to answer the lawsuit, because we’re going to be on our way out the door in January, so we’d like to extend the time to answer into April of 2009, so the new administration can be the ones who handle this lawsuit.” And, of course, the plaintiffs’ lawyers were ecstatic. They thought, well, of course we’d rather have Obama answer the lawsuit than Bush.

And yet, last Friday, the Obama administration, the Justice Department, filed the first response to this lawsuit, one claiming that the Bush administration illegally spied on Americans, and what Obama said was, number one, that the program that the lawsuit is alleging occurred. The activities that it’s alleging are too secret, and grave national security harm would result if the court looked at this program and ruled on whether it was illegal, and thus demanded its dismissal.

And then the Obama administration invented a brand new radical argument that not even the Bush administration had espoused that says that the government is completely immune from any lawsuits for illegal spying, unless they deliberately or willfully disclose to the public what it is that they learned. So they basically said government officials are immune, when they break the law, from lawsuits, except in the narrowest of cases. And so, the Obama administration sought to bar any lawsuits against Bush officials for illegal spying, after they spent the last eight months assuring the public that Bush officials would still be held accountable even though telecoms were immune.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain more, Glenn Greenwald, about this issue of sovereign immunity.

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, the idea of sovereign immunity actually is one that comes from the British king. The idea was that the king is too important and too elevated, he’s the sovereign, and therefore is immune from being sued by his subjects. And when the Constitution was written, essentially the idea of sovereign immunity became the government can’t be dragged into court by citizens, unless it agrees in advance to waive its sovereign immunity.

And what the Congress has done in many, many cases was pass laws that essentially say that if government officials do certain things, the immunity is waived, and they can be sued. And in the wake of the eavesdropping abuses that were discovered and documented in the mid-1970s as a result of the Church Commission, the Congress passed numerous laws, that the president signed into law, that said exactly that. They passed FISA and the Wiretap Act and amendments to the Stored Communications Act, which explicitly said that if the government illegally engages in surveillance on Americans, they can be sued, that causes of action exist on the part of the victims of the illegal eavesdropping to sue the government officials who are responsible. And the laws say that as explicitly as possible.

And what the Obama administration is claiming is that there are provisions of the PATRIOT Act which secretly or implicitly repeal those laws and that the intent of the PATRIOT Act was to immunize government officials, to expand the sovereign immunity so that government officials can no longer be sued for illegal eavesdropping, notwithstanding these explicit laws that say that they can, in the absence of claims that they willfully disclose to the public what they learned. In other words, government officials, according to the Obama administration, can sit there and read your emails and listen in on your phone calls, even when doing so is illegal and even when they know that what they’re doing is illegal, and you can’t sue them unless they willfully disclose to the public what it is that they learn.

It is an extraordinarily extremist claim of government immunity that, as I said, not even the Bush administration espoused. And it’s designed to protect government officials, including Bush officials, from any consequences for having spied illegally on Americans.