The authoritarian plantation master, Squire Duncan has pronounced that we should just go along with the Master and let him protect us. After all unless the Master doesn't get everything he wants, we'll all be dead from a terrorist attack. Laws are for the masses not the Masters.... I digress... Parse on brother.... From the good Squire in today's editorial page.
The Squire is quoted:
Because there are more important things in life than the profits of trial lawyers, it is good news that a compromise may be worked out in the House of Representatives on the government's electronic surveillance legislation.
Conservative talking point: Trial Lawyers are bad, always looking to make a buck on a frivolous lawsuit. Using talking points in published work instead of actually doing the research is gross negligence and total lack of concern for anything other than standard right wing dogma. Here's what's happening as documented in the Washington Post:
Referring to the phone companies' need for relief, Bush said: "They're facing billions of dollars of lawsuits."
Five coordinated, class-action lawsuits are pending against the phone companies, but substantial damages would be awarded only if courts rule that they participated in illegal surveillance affecting millions of people, not just communications involving terrorism suspects overseas. If all the claims were added up, the statutory penalties could be $13,000 per person or $200 per person per day of violation.
* * *
Referring to the plaintiffs' attorneys, Bush said: "I don't want to try to get inside their head; I suspect they see, you know, a financial gravy train."
Two nonprofit groups are overseeing the five class-action cases: the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. But each case has at least one for-profit law firm assisting the plaintiffs. At least one law firm is seeking no compensation. There is no prospect that financial damages would be awarded soon.
Good Squire, please note that the trial lawyers you rail against are NON PROFIT GROUPS in CLASS ACTION cases. Not much gravy to be had there.
More from the Squire:
The contentious issue has been the federal immunity offered to telecommunications companies for helping the government. This should have been a no-brainer. In the wake of 9-11, those companies helped the federal government listen to conversations of possible terrorists who were planning additional attacks.
For this act of patriotism, they should be sued?
Actually, yes. I can feel a little sympathy for the telecoms getting caught in the middle of an Executive/Congress battle of separation of powers because the Executive Branch actually told the telecoms that what they were doing in '01 and '02 was legal. They get no sympathy from me though because any of them could have demanded a legal warrant before complying with Administration demands. Patriotism? Only if you believe the law is for the plantation workers and not for "Massa." Bush did not get legal warrants, the telecoms did not demand them, laws were broken, lawsuits are now the only means of retribution.
The Senate bill allowed such immunity, and the Senate legislation has majority support in the House. However, Democratic leaders are stalling the vote. It, of course, is just a coincidence that trial lawyers - who contribute huge sums of money to Democratic candidates - oppose the immunity. Taking a wild guess, it's likely those lawyers are opposing the bill due to their own financial interests, and care little about the security of the nation.
Comical and false. If this is support for the same talking point mentioned in paragraph one it's simplistic, untrue, and strictly partisan. Trial lawyers may oppose the immunity, but so do I and so do a majority of Americans. I guess we're in it for our "own financial interests" too.
Over the weekend, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, indicated a willingness to compromise. He said committee members had been talking to the companies because "if we are going to give blanket immunity, we want to know and understand what it is we're giving immunity for."
Fair enough.
Squire Duncan may smile at this next comment as well he's entitled to, but the biggest tragedy of all is the complicity of the Democratic majority in Congress. Glenn Greenwald has documented this extensively. The fact that a good portion of the Democratic majority doesn't believe that the wiretapping is dangerous, or worth the political capital expended is the single biggest factor in the trampling of the rule of law and the constitutional role of Congress. The saddest fact of all is that our Democratic congressman are enabling President Bush's fearmongering power grab.
There's very little point anymore in writing about how the Congressional Democratic leadership is complicit in all of the worst Bush abuses, or about how craven they are. All of that is far too documented and established at this point to be worth spending any time discussing. They were never going to take a stand against warrantless eavesdropping or the destruction of the rule of law via telecom amnesty for one simple reason: many of them don't actually oppose those things, and many who claim to oppose them don't actually care about any of it. That's all a given.
But what is somewhat baffling in all of this is just how politically stupid and self-destructive their behavior is. If the plan all along was to give Bush everything he wanted, as it obviously was, why not just do it at the beginning? Instead, they picked a very dramatic fight that received substantial media attention. They exposed their freshmen and other swing-district members to attack ads. They caused their base and their allies to spend substantial energy and resources defending them from these attacks.
And now, after picking this fight and letting it rage for weeks, they are going to do what they always do -- just meekly give in to the President, yet again generating a tidal wave of headlines trumpeting how they bowed, surrendered, caved in, and lost to the President. They're going to cast the appearance that they engaged this battle and once again got crushed, that they ran away in fear because of the fear-mongering ads that were run and the attacks from the President. They further demoralize their own base and increase the contempt in which their base justifiably holds them (if that's possible). It's almost as though they purposely picked the path that imposed on themselves all of the political costs with no benefits.
However, call us skeptical, but the shift in the Democratic position is probably because the party is losing the public relations battle about the bill. The only groups the Democratic leaders have on their side are the ACLU and trial lawyers, two groups not beloved or admired by the American people.
Finally from the Squire:
This is a needed bill. It will allow the government to eavesdrop on our enemies. For whatever the reason, let's be thankful the House Democratic leaders are edging ever closer to political sanity and sense.
Remember the sane, serious, plantation master says that only he can keep us safe. Not only must he be able to spy on our enemies, he must be allowed to spy on us. Our lives are at stake. Heil!
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