Monday, December 17, 2007
letter to Chris Dodd
Dear Senator Dodd,
I am spurred to write to you by a request at the Crooks and Liars web site, where there is an invitation to provide you with material to read on the floor of the senate today during your filibuster of the FISA bill with the section on immunity for the Telecommunications corporations which plainly broke the law by allowing the NSA to tap network communications wholesale, without a warrant, with no more than a verbal assurance that it was OK to do so.
I am an immigrant to the United States from the United Kingdom. I was drawn in no small part by the ideas embodied in the Constitution: the promises it holds for all mankind are not only Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, but the Bill of Rights, and a form of democratic government designed to keep tyrants' hands off the machinery of power.
I viewed the United States historically as a nation striving to make itself more perfect by bringing about the realization of these promises. I cannot think of a time in U.S. history when more of the promises have been broken, and so much of the progress undone.
You are standing today for the people, and for the promises of the Rule of Law, and the protection against unwarranted search and seizure. When the people's delegates take their oath to support and defend the Constitution, the purpose of the oath is to uphold these promises against those who would seize power from the people and their delegates: I commend you for your courage today in standing for these promises, and urge your colleagues to come to your side and rally to the cause of that which gives the nation its form and structure: that without which government of the people, by the people, for the people, might well perish from this earth. I give you the Constitution of the United States of America.
Do not let this bill pass today, or any other, with immunity for the Telecommunications Corporations. The Constitution should not be subjected to this assault in the Senate, and it is your duty, truly discharged today, to oppose it.
I am spurred to write to you by a request at the Crooks and Liars web site, where there is an invitation to provide you with material to read on the floor of the senate today during your filibuster of the FISA bill with the section on immunity for the Telecommunications corporations which plainly broke the law by allowing the NSA to tap network communications wholesale, without a warrant, with no more than a verbal assurance that it was OK to do so.
I am an immigrant to the United States from the United Kingdom. I was drawn in no small part by the ideas embodied in the Constitution: the promises it holds for all mankind are not only Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, but the Bill of Rights, and a form of democratic government designed to keep tyrants' hands off the machinery of power.
I viewed the United States historically as a nation striving to make itself more perfect by bringing about the realization of these promises. I cannot think of a time in U.S. history when more of the promises have been broken, and so much of the progress undone.
You are standing today for the people, and for the promises of the Rule of Law, and the protection against unwarranted search and seizure. When the people's delegates take their oath to support and defend the Constitution, the purpose of the oath is to uphold these promises against those who would seize power from the people and their delegates: I commend you for your courage today in standing for these promises, and urge your colleagues to come to your side and rally to the cause of that which gives the nation its form and structure: that without which government of the people, by the people, for the people, might well perish from this earth. I give you the Constitution of the United States of America.
Do not let this bill pass today, or any other, with immunity for the Telecommunications Corporations. The Constitution should not be subjected to this assault in the Senate, and it is your duty, truly discharged today, to oppose it.
# posted by anwaya : 8:01 AM
