Nation editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel's recent post explained why The Nation has joined with the ACLU in a lawsuit filed in the US District Court of New York challenging the constitutionality of the FISA Amendments Act.

Moments after President Bush signed the bill into law, the ACLU filed suit challenging the law's constitutionality. Congress has not only legalized the Bush administration's secret NSA spying program, it has given the government even more power to listen to our phone calls and read our emails than even the administration itself claimed for itself under its secret program. And, by granting telecom companies immunity, it has made it highly unlikely that we will ever learn the extent of the administration's lawless actions.

Watch this brief clip of Senator Russell Feingold, one of the Senate's foremost Constitutional defenders, detailing the ramifications of the new FISA bill.

If you want to stand up against the act, add your name to the ACLU's ad campaign aimed at overturning the new law and join the growing online movement spearheaded by leading bloggers like Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher to hold politicians accountable on the issue.

Comments (8)

1. I really hate this new website design... ugh...

   Posted by jorcheim at 07/15/2008 @ 12:39pm

2. This is becoming a very tired argument. Neither side is ever going to convince the other. If you do what the enemy wants you to do, you are objectively pro enemy. The terrorists do not want us listening in on their communications... And yes, the website design hurts!

   Posted by pyeatte at 07/15/2008 @ 12:57pm

3. The "terrorists" are so few, the rest of us are so many.

   We don't need warrantless surveillance of everyone to keep track of the few. There exists a court that will issue specific warrants within minutes of a showing.

   However, intell gathered from these warranted searches, we have learned, was ignored by the CheneyBush govt prior to 9/11.

   No explanation for this gross dereliction of duty, for this criminal negligence -- impeachable -- has ever been given.

   Posted by sloper at 07/15/2008 @ 1:09pm

4. 'Obama is standing not with Feingold, but with Bush ... He says he'll vote for a White House-backed FISA rewrite -- which is likely to be taken up by the Senate this week...' -- http:// www.thenation.com/ blogs/thebeat/ 334933#pid335019

   'No explanation for this gross dereliction of duty' -- Sloper

   '... for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country...' -- Michelle Obama

   Posted by HonestLiberal at 07/15/2008 @ 1:17pm

5. Glenn Greenwald's "growing movement" to hold "politician's responsible" is just another inside-the-box sham. In the teeth of all his kvetching about the sterility of the Democratic opposition, his strategy presupposes support for Obama and continues to hold out the vain hope that somehow, someway, the system is reformable. In the meantime Greenwald, one of the web's most accomplished self-promoters, sells books and does television interviews, a kind of leftish Tom Friedmann.

   Any scheme to hold politicians responsible for the horror that has been and is likely to be visited upon the American people that fails to come to grips with the structural pathologies poisoning this nation and to deal with them first is just so much palaver. Greenwald is a system synchophant, the willing stephin fetchit of those who have made slaves of our "public servants". The solution will not be found in quixotic, fix-the-system, gestures, but in serious attempts to dismantle it. Progressives should vote for Nader.

   Posted by john lowell at 07/15/2008 @ 1:51pm

6. The FI in FISA means "Foreign Intelligence" which means unless you are talking to someone in Pakistan or some similar place, no one is interested. As for missing pre 9-11 intel...please! There was no intel that said a plane, let alone multiple planes, was going to by hyjacked and flown into buildings. There is another element to human behavior about expectation. The government has a long history and memory of events. If something has never happened the probability is that it will not happen and plans are made accordingly.

   Posted by pyeatte at 07/15/2008 @ 8:29pm

7. Progressive adventurous journalism is one benefit of maintaining a nation like yours. For example, investigative journalism in Britain, USA, Canada and Australia helped to uncover global eavesdropping programs like Echelon and Carnivore. Because a lot of these countries exchange (a lot of) information gathered from previous and current versions of such surveillance, AND because a lot of such info is used for select 'on-side' corporation benefit or suppression of (nonviolent) progressives across the planet, your crazy spying laws affect other countries.

   Misuse of data is the issue here. Having the likes of Cheney, Ashcroft, and their ilk keeping an eye on proper use, due diligence, impartial objective and fair use...well, that would be a faith-based initiative; not good enough.

   Good luck to the ACLU, Nation and others...long live the country that produced Mark Twain, Paul Robeson, Dorothy Day, Woody Guthrie and the new brew of free Americans (music: Ani Di Franco, Michael Franti...).

   More intelligence, less terror; more slop-warrant Intelligence, more "CoIntelPro" killings of left-wing activists.

   Posted by bazdicoot at 07/15/2008 @ 10:42pm

8. The "foreign" in FISA is bullshit! I have a friend who was held for 30 days for refusiong to reveal a membership list--yes, I'm a member of Sea Shepherd! I'm also a member of SP-USA, AFSC, etc. I had my pic taken at WPAFB, protesting this gawddam war! I spent a year abroad (NO i'm not rich--I went ot a Quaker College and I'm a social worker)but i'm NOT "foreign". Neither were the Muslims picked up as US citizens. Nor citizens of our allies. You are all a bunch of cowards. If "safety" means having Dubya, Obama or McSame's head up my arse--I'l take my chances--oh, that's right--I dont have that choice!

   Posted by kdelphi95 at 07/20/2008 @ 5:04pm