There’s no good reason why Democrats should stand idly by while Sen. Harry Reid helps to push a terrible FISA bill through the Senate early next week. It is Sen. Rockefeller’s bill granting retroactive immunity for telecoms, a grant that Reid admits is “unwise” and one he opposes, but one Reid has found parliamentary reasons for preferring over the better Judiciary Committee bill that excludes telecom immunity. And this despite the fact the House has passed a bill that excludes immunity.

It’s a sellout.

And it’s a pretty strange week for Reid to be endorsing Sen. Rockefeller’s judgment. Just a few days ago Rockefeller revealed that he can’t even remember what he was told and when about the CIA’s videotaping of torture sessions. This is the man whom Reid wants us to follow off a cliff?

The Senate needs to dump the Rockefeller bill. We should leverage the outrage that many people feel about this betrayal, and bring it to bear on the Senate.

There’s more background here on the FISA scandal, and here on what Reid has done in leading with the worse, rather than the better, bill.

It would be an understatement to describe Rockefeller’s bill as a disgrace. Retroactive immunity for the telecoms is an appalling precedent as legislation. It also represents an abject surrender by the Legislative Branch to the “right” of the Unitary Executive to commit crimes and then legalize them ex post facto.

Rockefeller’s bill also will obstruct a current lawsuit against the telecoms that might otherwise succeed in extracting from the Bush administration actual information about whom it is spying upon without warrant, how, where, and why. The lawsuit threatens to expose the kind of information that Congress so far has signally failed to get from the Unitary President.

That, surely, is why the Bush administration is so determined that Congress must grant retroactive immunity to the telecoms. The corporations would not need immunity if they had not broken the law, and if they broke the law, it was because they preferred to take orders from the Executive Branch.

It’s hard to escape the impression that Bush is calling the tune here.

Notice that once again the Senate is being rushed into an unnecessary vote. It is one of the Bush administration’s favorite tactics to hold back highly controversial bills and then bring them forward all in a rush and right before a major recess.

That was exactly the way the appalling PPA bill, which sunsets in February, was pushed through this summer. Reid recessed the Senate before the House had even voted upon its own version of the bill, forcing the House to accept the totality of the Senate bill or leave town with no bill in place—with Bush hyping all manner of supposedly imminent threats of terrorist attacks. Reid deserves a lot of blame for that fiasco.

A similar game is afoot now. Reid sat on the FISA bill for months. Now with the Christmas holiday fast approaching he rushes out in capitulation, leading with the worse bill, Rockefeller’s bill. Does Reid want to force the Senate, on its way out the door, to swallow Bush’s demands for telecom immunity? If not, then this maneuver is inept in the extreme.

The stunt has to be blocked. Perhaps the best way to put Sen. Harry Reid and the Senate capitulators on the defensive is to use their fecklessness against them. The plan is this:

Contact your Senators and ask them to investigate whether or not the federal government has been surveilling you without a warrant. Tell their office to take your name and address, and ask how and when the Senator will begin to investigate the matter.

This is meant to drive home two points:

The Senate still has obtained little specific information about how this program works in general, much less who the actual targets are. The strong suspicion is that, given the nature of electronic communication, the federal government is in fact scooping up information about millions of citizens.

The Senate damned well ought to find out basic information like that before trying to paper over the problem on behalf of the Bush administration.

You don’t need to give your Senator any particular grounds for suspecting that the government is spying on you without a warrant. The fact that the President stated he is proud of violating the FISA law is sufficient reason to want to know whether he is targeting you.

The fact that the Senate is about to offer retroactive immunity to telecoms is sufficient evidence that somebody’s rights have been violated. How do you know that it’s not your rights?

More to the point, if the Senators don’t know for a fact that your rights have not been violated, then why are they proceeding with this bill? Shouldn’t they wait to act until after they have gotten full information about the nature of the abuses? Why the rush to legalize those abuses?

Tell your Senators that you’re not in a position to know anything about what the Bush administration has been up to, and ask them whether they are. If they don’t know (and of course they don’t), then they ought to explain why they’re moving forward with this bill in ignorance of absolutely basic facts.

What the Senate is about to do is a national disgrace, and this is a straightforward way to nail that point down.

You can be certain that Senate offices will not want to receive any requests like this. I speak from experience.

Late in 2005 I wrote to Arlen Specter’s Chief of Staff, Bill Reynolds, about the FISA scandal and asked him if Specter’s office was prepared to investigate whether I had been spied on illegally by the federal government. Reynolds was taken aback. Sure, he said, we can investigate that if you want but it’s going to tie up our resources. What if every one of his constituents asked the Senator to investigate on their behalf?

And, indeed, that’s the point. What if every concerned American did ask the very reasonable question: “Is my government spying on me illegally?” I don’t think the Senate can handle that question.

Senator Specter couldn’t. Nearly two years later, his office still hasn’t told me anything.

So inundate the Senate on Monday with calls and emails about the FISA bill that will be going up for a vote. And don’t hesitate to demand to know whether your Senator knows how many and which residents of your state have been surveilled without warrant by this administration.

They’ve had two years to figure that out. What do you want to bet they can’t answer such questions?

Here is a gateway for contact information for all Senators.

If your Senator is a Democrat, mention that the major presidential candidates have come out against the Rockefeller bill and in favor of a filibuster of any bill that grants retroactive immunity.

And don’t forget to contact the presidential candidates to let them know you expect them to abide by their promise to fight retroactive immunity for telecoms.