The president won’t get a blank check on illegal spying today.

The Senate just adjourned and now both houses are in recess until 11/9–they’ll come in that day for bills to be introduced, but there will be no votes that day. The Senate returns for votes starting at 2 p.m. on 11/13 for the “lame duck” session.

The Senate did NOT vote on the NSA bill (Frist or Wilson). They passed several conference reports which we believe did not include any bad warrantless wiretapping authorization or immunization provisions. Thanks to you!! Thanks to all of your efforts!!

This is a major victory, especially with the election so close and so much political pressure to push these bad ideas into law. Together, we’ve managed to hold off passage of legislation that would give the administration a blank check and a free pass on warrantless NSA spying on Americans.

The president’s illegal wiretapping continues, but the law has not been changed to legalize warrantless spying on ordinary Americans. The country is indeed better off with the status quo than with legislation that would whitewash and ratify this spying. As you know, the president already has ample legal authorities to track and wiretap suspected terrorists–what he and no president should have is the power to unilaterally, secretly, and indefinitely wiretap Americans without court oversight of individual warrants to safeguard our fundamental rights to privacy, liberty and due process of law.

It has been a pitched battle, but today we have prevailed! And Congress has left town without gutting the statutory protections that preserve our Fourth Amendment rights. The vote on the Wilson bill was closer than on the Patriot Act reauthorization, and friends of the Fourth Amendment in Congress have resisted efforts to make these NSA bills into law this week. We’re seeing a growing recognition of the need for checks and balances, and now we must build on that.

We have work to do later next week and in October before Congress’s lame duck session to make sure people understand what blank checks the White House-Wilson and Frist bills are.

But for now we should savor this. And rest.

With deepest gratitude,

Lisa

Many thanks to everyone in the coalition who has been working so hard against the White House-Wilson bill. Last night our bipartisan allies in the House spoke out in defense of the Fourth Amendment with passion and strength.

The majority denied any opportunity to offer the bipartisan substitute as an amendment we supported in order to force the only alternative to the bill to be a partisan motion, the Democratic right to move to recommit the bill. Despite this effort to intimidate both Republicans and Democrats and the inflated rhetoric claiming anyone who objects to the bill doesn’t want to protect the country from terrorism, the motion was very close: 202 in favor and 221 against (with 10 members not voting). Ten Republicans joined 191 Democrats and 1 Independent in voting to restore judicial checks and balances on intelligence wiretapping; only 4 Democrats voted against the motion.

On the final passage vote, Wilson’s bill to allow warrantless surveillance of Americans passed 232 to 191, with 13 Republicans joining 187 Democrats and the man running for Senate from Vermont; 17 Democrats voted with the majority. While this was not as close as the vote on the motion, it was still a strong showing just five weeks before the election.

Please do not be defeated - we are making serious progress in the national dialogue about protecting civil liberties while keeping the country safe. The bill plainly would give a blank check to the president and future presidents. And I know each of you is doing everything possible to make that check bounce in the Senate!

The Senate is in session today debating the fence bill. Both the Senate and House of Representatives are expected to recess late Friday night/early Saturday morning. Please continue your efforts over the next 24-36 hours to prevent the bill from passing the Senate.

Thank you for all your help and hard work!

On Thursday, September 7, the Senate Judiciary Committee met to mark up the Cheney-Specter bill, S. 2453. Instead of showing any desire to reassert their constitutionally established powers to hold the executive branch accountable to the rule of law, the Republican majority chose instead to lie down and grant the president a “blank check” to trample our rights as he sees fit.

The most striking example of this willingness to bow down to the president occurred when Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) sought further clarification of S. 2453. He repeatedly asked his Republican colleagues to elaborate on the meaning and scope of the bill, but it soon became clear that his colleagues could not clearly explain the meaning of a bill the majority was ready to approve. The members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were willing to approve a bill granting the president unprecedented authority to spy on his fellow citizens without any clear understanding of the scope of the bill or a rational explanation of its necessity. They had the opportunity to strike some of the bill’s most problematic provisions, and failed to do so on party line votes.

In addition to Senator Feingold’s concerns, Ranking Member Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) noted that this bill would essentially “pass a law to break a law.” It would grant the administration powers a federal court has already ruled unconstitutional. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) questioned the hastiness of the decision to approve a bill, the most important legislation the committee will produce all year, when the program can easily fit within the parameters established in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) with “modest modifications.” As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Feinstein has been briefed on some of the specifics of the program, making her well qualified to make that assessment. Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) noted that FISA had originally been approved with only one objection, due to the careful consideration between the competing concerns of security and civil liberties. He further questioned why the executive branch has been so unwilling to work with Congress on such an important issue.

Rather than engaging in substantive discussion, supporters of the president’s warrantless wiretapping program used their time to continue their superficial and off-point rhetoric. Senator John Cornyn (D-TX) sought to criticize Judge Anna Diggs Taylor’s recent NSA decision and complain about the “judge shopping” that allowed the case to end up in her court. Yet he failed to point out, as the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Jack King did in his Washington Post letter to the editor (www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090501192.html), “the ACLU and its plaintiffs filed exactly one suit, in exactly one forum, in which cases are randomly assigned. The fact that Judge Taylor’s name came up when the wheel was spun was pure chance.”

In the end, the two-hour rule was invoked and the committee adjourned without taking a vote. While it seems likely that they will revisit the issue next week, Chairman Specter has also indicated that he may seek to bypass his own committee and bring the Cheney-Specter bill directly to the floor. With a bipartisan group of Senators already objecting to the legislation, we are hopeful that the Senate will stand firm in its commitment to the rule of law and reject this appeasement of the president.

President Bush has announced that he will transfer 14 detainees from secret CIA facilities to Guantánamo. According to news reports, the men will "stand trial" there.

Call me superstitious, but it’s a fact that certain places are cursed by bad spirits. Example: Guantánamo. From the Haitian refugees who languished there in the 1990s to the orange-suited, blackout-goggled, shackled detainees of the War on Terror, abject souls have sat in cages and waited for … who-knows-what. As bad as GTMO might be - and it seems pretty bad in the reports we’ve heard from those who were there - some places must be worse. For someone emerging from one of our secret CIA facilities, GTMO might be an improvement.

How terrifying must it be, to be snatched off the street, blinded, deafened, probed, tied up like an animal, and whisked away to who-knows-where. Do you try to figure out what country you’re in? By smell? By sounds? By the quality of light, if there is any? What is it like to be told by your captor that no one knows where you are, or what has happened to you? To be beaten, tortured and humiliated, not knowing what will come next, whether you will die or face something maybe even worse. To think of your family, worrying and wondering what has happened to you. From that hellish half-existence, President Bush will bring these 14 men to the relative oasis of GTMO. There, at least you know you still exist.

But what then? What will happen to the 14 men at GTMO? The news reports have said the men will stand "trial." But the administration does not plan "trials" in any American sense of the word, whether we’re talking about civilian trials or military courts-martial. At trials and courts-martial, we don’t use secret evidence. We don’t use coerced evidence. We have due process. This is the rule of law. It makes our country a beacon of freedom and justice the world over. People from the Founders to the men and women who fought (and fight) for civil rights thought hard, sweated, and bled so that we would live by the rule of law, established by the people, and not by the rule of force or kings. It’s not just an abstract principle, it’s the foundation of the house we live in.

President Bush wants to throw the foundation out and create a new system of military "tribunals." What for? Maybe these 14 men committed acts of terrorism. If they did, what do we have to fear from giving them fair trials based on rules recommended by experienced JAG officers of the U.S. military and pressed for by U.S. Senators Warner, McCain and Graham? President Bush may not have faith in the U.S. justice system, but some of us still do.