Thank you Senator Klobuchar.
Some left wing bloggers give Amy Klobuchar a hard time because she doesn’t always pass the progressive purity test. My frustration with these people is that they are quick to critisize and slow to praise. For instance, I have yet to read one blogger commend Sen. Klobuchar for her votes on FISA today. So let me be the first. Amy voted to strip telco immunity from the FISA bill, voted against cloture, and when both of those efforts failed, voted against the final bill. Amy voted to uphold the rule of law despite the fact that her votes might very well be used against her in the next election. If there are people out there that believe that Amy won’t stand on principle, her actions today prove them wrong.
Here here.
The reason I won’t be happy with her vote is because the important vote was last week. Last week’s cloture vote was really the only chance we had to block this disastrous FISA bill. Today’s votes against are merely fig leaves.
I’ve certainly criticized her before but I’m still quite proud of our Senator Klobuchar. If we had to pick a lifer to occupy one of our seats, well I’m damn happy it’s her.
Here, here! She’s covered because she voted for it before she voted against it…
it’s nice she voted against it, but the right thing to do would have been to support the filibuster.
spin spin spin. Sad.
Last week’a cloture vote was the vote that mattered! The rest is way too little too late. I guess retroactive immunity for breaking the law is ok. So now any corporation can simply flex their political muscle and our federal government will simply give them retroactive immunity. Never mind that Exxon was able to delay payments on the epic Exxon Valdez oil spill nearly two decades until 3,000 claimant had died. Now we have one more out for corporations!
Call me “left wing” just for caring about law and civil rights makes you sound like a Republican, or Republican lite, or merely willing to cave on principles, or simply “uncaring”. Want to continue on the branding, the namecalling - a very Republican tactic being used on your fellow Democrats? If you want to go with namecalling and line terminology, how about the line of string that is holding on your blindfold when comes to holding Democrats accountable for upholding Democratic principles. Actually there is no line, there are only two flavors, those uphold civil rights, the law and the constitution and those who don’t. What flavor are you picking? Obviously, you picking the flavor that says that when Minnesota senator did not hold the line with cloture vote when it REALLY mattered, that we can PRETEND that some later vote that FAILED mattered.
Well said Grace. Last I checked a spade is a spade. MN deserved better than the smoke and mirrors surrounding this SIMPLE issue regarding criminal corporate behavior. I hate to be disappointed in one of my own, but I am and I am not alone.
I must admit I would have preferred our Senator to have voted pure but I’ll take what I can get… Coleman voted lockstep with the Whitehouse from the very start of this travesty. I suppose the action now is to let Senator Klobachar know we are disappointed in her efforts and lack there of and hope for better in the future. She is the pride of Minnesota right now when you consider the Senior Senator.
Sad how our Constitution has suffered under Republicans Bush and Coleman.
Amy voted FOR cloture, not against as you stated. You should correct that in your post.
I just shake my head in disbelief that today’s Democratic party proudly believes that people on foreign soil, including terrorists, suicide bombers, enemy combatants, et al. have the same rights as American citizens. The FISA law from the 1970s is sadly outdated and continued to be outdated in the aftermath of 9/11. To vote against fixing the problem under the grounds that people overseas have the same rights as Americans is truly shocking.
So is “purity” supposed to be an insult? That seems to be the buzz word by the “compromise first” caucus of Democrats when describing people with principle. You’re only encouraging the Democratic politicians to not be courageous, as if they could get any weaker. Thanks for always over celebrating when any Democrat does the bare minnimum and looking the other way or apologizing for them when they don’t stand up and do the right thing, which is often. Barack voted yes today. Should have been a no brainer. Looks like an ambitious career politican vote to me. What exactly is the point of having a majority when Democrats have no intention to use their power, to end the occupation of Iraq, or stop Bush’s warrantless wire tapping? Can’t even get the Democratic nominee to vote no on the FISA Bill today? Even calculating Hillary voted no. Then they’re going to ask the base to condone that kind of behavior by knocking on doors and donating money? How much longer can they take the base for granted and continue to disenfranchise people? The Democrats are letting Bush run out of the place a free man when he should be in handcuffs. Spineless. Things are not going to get any better Zach as long as you keep singing the praises of the mediocre, while marginalizing the courageous ones who have a long term vision about our future. If somebody wants to strive for purity, that’s the right thing to do. Don’t put them down to justify the behavior of cowardly politicians.
I am so disgusted I don’t know where to begin. This guy has it about right: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/07/writing-not-as-my-alter-ego-pa-1.php
Praise, hardly! Sen. Klobuchar should be roundly condemned! As an attorney and former prosecutor to have so throughly tossed aside the rule of law is unforgivable! So what if today she finally came to her senses, the damage was done with the cloture vote. Everyone knew that was the vote that counted and she failed that test. Today they were just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. I honestly will never send her another penny and voting for her will be an enormous Jobian test of my democratic faith.
The passage of this bill is simply abhorrent. While the Republicans led the charge the Democrats could have but failed to do anything but assist it along it’s way. Smokescreen votes like the one Klobachar took should make anybody interested in basic rights apoplectic with anger.
The idea that this bill was simply an update to FISA in order to keep it technologically up to date is laughable. Immunity is given when a crime has been committed.
Democrats have become every bit as guilty as Republicans for the disintegration of our laws and rights. This bill is the perfect example. That there are some who’s heads are so twisted that they can praise Amy K for her effort in covering her own ass is sad. Only with useless political hacks is how the game is played more important than the results.
Good for Senator Klobuchar. Face it, this bill was going to get voted on; and Senator Klobuchar voted the right way yesterday, not just once, but repeatedly, on all amendments, on cloture, and on the main bill. She could have just tagged along with her presidential candidate, but she went a different way, which shows some guts, as well.
Let’s not let anger about telecom immunity turn into an attack on a good senator who voted against telecom immunity.
I just shake my head in disbelief that today’s conservatives, when confronted with the reality that they are on the wrong side of yet another issue, simply make up a completely fictional position that the liberals supposedly have.
Of course I am not shocked that they do this-they have been doing it for years. I am just amazed that anyone with a small modicum of intelligence would think that they could actually get away with it.
What is with the Right Wing talking points, Zack? “Some” “Left Wing Bloggers” “Progressive Purity Test”?
These are words and phrases (especially the harmless sounding “Some”)
that the right uses to make wild accusations without having to back them up with troublesome facts.
“Left Wing Bloggers” - A handy way to say the the opinion of some involved citizen that you disagree with
is far outside the norm of political discourse, and therefore irrelevent.
“Progressive Purity Test” A way of discounting someone elses deeply held belief.
I haven’t studied the detail of her votes. Sometimes I like what she does, and sometimes I don’t.
Praise is never spread as widely as criticism. We expect people to do the right thing.
We don’t run up and hug them every time they do.
You should feel free to argue your opinions, and even to use meaningless characterizations if you
wish, but please invent your own, and leave Carl Rove’s alone.
’
You can criticize people for insisting on “purity” if their purity leads them to do something stupid like voting Green. None of the above comments criticizing Klobuchar allude to anything of the sort. There is absolutely nothing wrong with criticizing her for a lousy vote. She certainly isn’t going to change her behavior if you pat her on the back for it.
Amy Klobuchar: Shame. on. you.
Kerosene Hat,
Sometimes I agree with you and sometimes we disagree, and sometimes we really disagree. Your comments that immunity was given when “a crime has been committed” is quite simply absurd. This past February, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take a case, which challenged the legality of the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. No crime has been committed period, but certainly not by the telecommunications companies. The telecom companies did the right thing, post 9/11, by cooperating with the government to protect Americans. The wiretapping which took place involved international phone calls. Yes, some of those calls occurred between a target overseas and someone in the U.S. But the wiretapping also involved international phone calls that get routed through the U.S. even though both parties are on international soil.
The Democrats and the so-called civil libertarians screamed bloody murder that we were listening to these calls without going to FISA. Now that FISA has been updated to reflect technology like disposable cell phones and satellite phones, the same people who said we should go through FISA are opposing this bill. It makes no sense, unless you just don’t think we should be listening in on terrorists’ phone calls.
SeanH,
I beg to differ that conservatives are on the wrong side of this issue. This is yet another issue where liberal Democrats are on the opposite side of an issue of most Americans. How can you oppose modernizing FISA? Do you really just not think we should be spying on al Qaeda? Many on the left think that we should not have a “war” on terrorism and that we should use “law enforcement” tactics to fight terrorism “just like we did after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.”
The problem with those arguments is that they just don’t work. When we put Ramzi Yousef on trial for being the mastermind of the 1993 truck bombing of the World Trade Center, he had all of the rights of an American citizen or anyone else standing criminal trial in U.S. courts. Those rights included discovery. During the discovery, our government had to reveal the names of every target and every unindicted co-conspirator of the crime. Our government also had to reveal the information that was collected about those individuals so Yousef could mount a fair defense. The problem was that we revealed the name Osama bin Laden and we revealed what we knew about bin Laden, including the fact that we were listening in on cell phone calls he was making. As soon as that information was revealed to Yousef’s counsel, bin Laden’s cell phone calls ceased. Now you might think that’s a good thing. I personally think it’s a travesty. I am in favor of continuing the nation’s surveillance program as we had before. The compromise between having it and ending it altogether was this FISA update. I can’t believe anyone in Congress would vote against this commonsense measure which continues surveillance of international terrorists while having a judicial check on the process.
The old FISA law did not prevent the tapping of foreign terrorists. IT DID NOT REQUIRE “UPDATING”. The new bill isn’t an “update” unless “update” means “let the government do whatever it wants simply because it says “national security”” This new bill REMOVES judicial oversight in many instances. Under the new law the judicial “oversight” is little more than confirming that the government filled out the forms properly. It allows the government to tap anyone as long as the government said they “believed” that the communication wasn’t in the US-there is no mechanism for them to have to prove it.
BTW, the Supreme Court refusal to take the case in no way shape or form indicated no crime had been committed. They refused to take it because the parties bringing the suit could not show that they had been wiretapped. If they had been able to show it the case would have proceeded. Of course they couldn’t prove it because who was tapped is a secret. Nice catch 22.
On July 3rd a Federal Judge ruled that Bush DID NOT have the authority to disregard FISA meaning that his warrantless surveillance was illegal
You also seem to forget that Bush was implementing these taps BEFORE 9/11.
U.S. Intelligence was still intercepting calls from Bin Laden after Yousef was convicted.
I was asked to clarify “did not hold the line with cloture vote”. Supporting the filibuster, supporting law and supporting civil rights would have a NO on closing off debate - cloture, allowing the filibuster. Amy voted supported closing off debate - cloture, thus allowing immunity for telecoms to come up for a vote. The most votes were available on the cloture vote which everybody knew. Therefore that was the moment of truth was on the cloture vote, not on later votes. The later votes are nice, yet that was not the most important vote that counted.
We see this with Norm Coleman votes all of the time. The real question should always be what votes could the senator have really made a difference? When did the vote matter?
She got my letter!
Chris, do you have a source (or a link) for your claim about what got produced in discovery for the Yousef trial?
> If there are people out there that believe that Amy won’t stand on principle, her actions today prove them wrong.
>Thank you Senator Klobuchar.
What do you have to say, Zack, in response to these 24 comments that seem to pretty roundly refute your argument?