Stop the FISA bill. (We can, and we must.)

[PDittie]

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.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/12/14/165449/23/876/422214

If you're like me, with two Republican Senators who don't give a damn about representing you anyway, here's your excuse to call Clinton, Obama, and/or Biden and ask them to to represent you.

The vote is scheduled for Monday.

Here is the contact information for all US Senators.