We need Senator Byrd to come to the rescue

by: Carnacki

Tue Jun 24, 2008 at 13:09:44 PM EDT

The House passed a version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) last week that included retroactive immunity to the telecom companies that conspired in Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. And now, as the bill heads to the Senate, it looks like we have one last chance to stop this massive erosion of the rule of law.

Thankfully, we have a few champions, like Russ Feingold and Chris Dodd, who look poised to fight this to the very end, but they can't do it alone. They need both strong support from progressive senators and the vote of those senators currently sitting on the fence. This is where you come in.

Sen. Byrd could be the deciding voice and vote on stopping retroactive immunity. Please take a minute right now to give him a call and ask him to strip the retroactive immunity provision of FISA.

You can call either by dialing the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121, or by using our list of direct number for target senators.
After you are done with the call, please take a moment to let us know how the call went.
Senator Feingold effectively summed up the insanity of retroactive immunity yesterday by saying, "It doesn't simply have the impact of potentially allowing telephone companies to break the law. It may prevent us from ever getting to the core issue...which is the president ran an illegal program that could've been an impeachable offense."

I hope that you'll join me and do what you can to help prevent this from happening.

Thank you,
Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake