Last week, Senator Russell Feingold introduced the JUSTICE Act to the U.S. Senate for consideration. It has implications for both Section 215 of the Patriot Act (national security letters) and the FISA Amendments Act (electronic and physical search and seizure), both of which unconstitutionally permit warrantless searches of Americans, their communications and their effects. The JUSTICE Act places restrictions on these activities. Read the bill, then tell us what you think about it. Is this the silver bullet we’ve been waiting for, or is it just another disappointment?

People who care about the privacy of their papers and their persons may remember the furor that arose during the early years of the presidency of George W. Bush about the development of Total Information Awareness in the Pentagon by Iran Contra conspirator John Poindexter. The Total Information Awareness program was intended to design a super database into which the government would pull all kinds of private information, using the powers of the Patriot Act. Everything from medical records to book purchases would be taken from commercial databases and compiled, so that the government could keep files on the details of every American’s private life.

Congress acted then to end the Total Information Awareness program. So what did the Bush Administration do? They just gave it a new name, and moved it to the National Security Agency, and thus was born the program to seize information and spy without a search warrant.

New revelations by former NSA employee Russell Tice confirm earlier reports by a former employee of AT&T: The NSA was gathering ALL electronic communications into a gigantic computer database, using the Patriot Act as a justification. That electronic spying dragnet was further justified by the passage of the FISA Amendments Act.

Your telephone calls, your emails, your text messages, your credit card use, your Internet habits are all being watched by the government. Secret physical searches of homes and offices without a search warrant are also allowed under the FISA Amendments Act. Big Brother is here. Total Information Awareness is alive.

The funny thing that very few people have bothered to mention is that this search and seizure of Americans’ persons and papers is completely unconstitutional. Read the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Warrants are absolutely required for government searches and seizures, and the government has to be specific in applying for warrants about exactly who and where it wants the searches and seizures to apply to. The new Total Information Awareness program gives no such specification – it searches the electronic communications of the entire United States of America!

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that this is just a problem of the past, and that with the Bush Administration gone, the problem is solved. No, as a senator, Barack Obama voted to approve the FISA Amendments Act, and as President he is administering the program without acting to end the warrantless electronic spying at all. Barack Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, confirms that the Obama Administration’s intention is to keep the NSA Total Information Awareness program in place.

If you care about freedom, you need to act now to put pressure on Barack Obama to change course, and to put an end to the Big Brother NSA spying program being used against the American people.

Since the FISA Amendments Act in the summer of 2008, the 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution is essentially a suggestion. The prohibition on searches and seizures of you, your property and your communications used to be a mandate, but now it is just a suggestion to be followed if the President feels like it.

Is that acceptable to you? If not, consider that our next President, Barack Obama, not only voted for the FISA Amendments Act, but declared his intention to employ it as President.

Do you believe dissent is the highest form of Patriotism unless the object of dissent is a Democrat?
Do you believe that an administration must adhere to the Constitution or pay political costs… so long as the administration is a Republican one?

Or do you believe the United States Constitution applies in all seasons? Do you advocate all presidents, Democratic or Republican, should be held to account for their policy decisions?

If you find yourself in the latter camp, then please join us on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009, in Washington, DC. We have secured a permit for a spot on Pennsylvania Avenue. Our purpose: to courteously, quietly but pointedly stand along the route, holding signs that ask our new president Barack Obama, as he passes us by on Pennsylvania Avenue, to fulfill his Oath of Office “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Here are the details, from the Inauguration demonstration web page:

President Barack Obama:
Fulfill Your Oath
Preserve, Protect and Defend the Constitution

Pro-Constitution Demonstration in Washington, DC
Outside the Department of Justice
SW Corner of Pennsylvania and 9th
on the Inauguration Parade Route

January 20, 2009 (presence maintained through the day until the end of the Inaugural Parade)

Support the Constitution by exercising it! Exercise your First Amendment freedom to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievance. Ask President Barack Obama to keep his Oath of Office to “Preserve, Protect and Defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Demonstration web page:
http://irregulartimes.com/dcoathofofficedemo.html

Will you carry your principled activism into the Obama Era? Will you be there?

Will you spread the word?

This blog seems to have gone dead. Have people moved on to the next issue? Does it matter not so much that by law a president can search through your home, your office, your car and your communications for periods of 67 days… because the law was passed in the summer and now it’s fall? Has the presidential election distracted you?

Well, heck, regardless of who is elected on November 4, you’ll have a FISA Amendments Act supporter in the White House. The organization Columbus for Peace has announced a November 5, 2008 protest at the State Capitol Building at the corner of Broad Street and High Street in Columbus, Ohio — no matter who wins the presidency. If you live in Ohio, meet there at 10 AM.

If you don’t live in Ohio, organize something similar in your neck of the woods. It’s not just time to vote. It’s time to agitate for a better world.

Rumors are buzzing around town that Barack Obama may choose Evan Bayh as a running mate in the 2008 presidential elections. Only a resident of Bayh’s state of Indiana would have the conservative cluelessness to call Evan Bayh a “far-left liberal Senator”. On substantive policy matters, Evan Bayh has failed to support legislation to shut down Guantanamo, sat on his hands and let legislation to counter the use of child soldiers wither on the vine, passively permitted government databases to balloon out of control without government oversight, blocked stem cell research, refused to support contraceptive distribution, sat on his hands (yet again) and passively (yet again) obstructed greenhouse gas regulation, refused to support the repeal of the Military Commissions Act, continued to support civilian-blasting cluster bombs and resisted action against loan sharks. When it comes to substantive policy, Evan Bayh is no liberal. He is a block of wood.

But there is a more fundamental basis for us to fear the choice of Evan Bayh as Vice President — the Senator has emerged in active opposition to the fundamental basis for the organization of our political system, the U.S. Constitution. Last year, Evan Bayh voted for the Protect America Act, a bill which temporarily permitted the U.S. government to spy on its citizens and search their communications without the judicial warrant that the Fourth Amendment so clearly requires. This year, Evan Bayh cheerily voted for the FISA Amendments Act, its four-year extension.

By supporting the FISA Amendments Act, Barack Obama’s turned from someone who supported the Constitution in speeches into someone who undermined the Constitution in his actions. The selection of Evan Bayh by Barack Obama as his running mate would reiterate Barack Obama’s turn to the autocratic side of politics. That would be a deeply disturbing signal to me, and I hope it does not come to pass.

Now that the FISA Amendments Act, the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution just isn’t as important as it used to be. It used to be a mandate, but now it is just a suggestion to be followed kind of, sort of, if that’s OK with you, and if no, then you know, like whatever. Yes, the Constitution has been valleygirled into irrelevance. So why not just burn it?

The wind is blowing too hard in Washington. That’s why.

In spite of the passage of a FISA amendments bill that gives the government unprecedented powers to eavesdrop on citizens,  a lone gunman who was known to the authorities was able to enter a church in Knoxville, Tennessee during a children’s production of the musical “Annie” and kill two people.

According to a police investigator’s report, the shooter

“stated that he had targeted the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of the major media outlets.”

Can’t little kids perform “Annie” in America without having someone shoot up the performance?  Where was homeland security?  Must we now depend on Unitarians to protect us with their bare hands?

We have given up all our rights under the fourth amendment for this idiotic FISA Amendments Act.  Now where is our safety?

Bit by bit, day by day, one of the most important things we can do as activists against the FISA Amendments Act is to hold accountable the members of Congress who voted for the terrible law. Especially with the Democrats who turned coat and joined the Republicans to support the legislation, it’s important that we let constituents know what their representatives have done.

Think of it as a constant, low drumbeat of pressure. Keep it up for long enough, and it may have an effect.

One member of Congress who ought to be held in special contempt by his Democratic constituents is Mike Arcuri, who has the seat in the House of Representatives for the 24th District in upstate New York.

Michael Arcuri not only voted in favor of George W. Bush’s program of government spying against Americans – he led the effort to shove the FISA Amendments Act through the House of Representatives just 24 hours after the text of the bill was made available, before most members of Congress had the chance to read it, and with just one hour of debate. Thanks to Arcuri, opponents of the legislation had less than ten minutes – total – to express their concerns with the law.

Given that the FISA Amendments Act attacks the Constitution of the United States of America, wrecking the fourth amendment and the system of checks and balances, and blatantly disobeying the prohibition on ex post facto laws, having less than 10 minutes to express objections was not enough. It was a move to willfully preserve ignorance, and Congressman Arcuri made it possible.

It’s a hot Sunday afternoon, and no one wants to hear a long-winded political lecture in these conditions.

Let me be brief, then, and offer some advice from Frederick Douglass about what citizens must do to preserve their freedom. Douglass said, “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.”

At Irregular Times, we’re persisting in writing about the danger American democracy is now vulnerable to under the FISA Amendments Act, though we have to acknowledge that the popular political mood is to try to just forget about the constitutional crisis and pretend that nothing happened.

Just yesterday, we started up an online hub for information about the FISA Amendments Act. Every day, bit by bit, we need to keep on creating the materials out of which a sustained movement against the FISA Amendments Act can be constructed.

Remember what Frederick Douglass said: Endurance is the key.

Let’s keep it going.

A few days ago I offered to make a side wager about the Netroots Nation Convention.  Some say the convention, which was started by DailyKos and is now underway in Austin, is just the informal Democratic Party Convention.  I was betting that impeachment would be off the table and FISA would be off the table. No one took me up on that offer.

Today I see that unfortunately I was correct. The two subjects voted on by participants to be considered by the convention were (1) impeachment and (2) FISA.  In a speech to the convention today, Nancy Pelosi said going after Bush or Cheney just isn’t going to happen, but she was willing to throw Karl Rove to the wolves, by considering a–gasp!!!–contempt resolution in the House. Then she said the final blame for FISA rests on the House of Representatives.

She was next asked about the wiretapping bill, detested by many progressives. She said the House version was better than the Senate’s and blamed Senate Democrats for approving a version that “enabled the Republicans to send that bill to the House.”

Wait a minute. The House approved the bill first and then sent it to the Senate.  What on earth is she thinking of?  Looks to me like what happened with FISA in the Senate is on its way down the memory hole.

Then they went on to discuss the really, really important and politically momentous blogging issues, like the use of profanity on blogs.

So much for the Netroots Nation holding Democratic party leaders like Pelosi and Obama and Reid accountable for their lack of leadership on FISA.

There are days when I wish I hadn’t listed my blog as child-friendly, and this is @#&*%#! one of them.