I thought retroactive laws were unconstitutional..

[sendero]

... so how can the senate give the Telecoms retroactive immunity?

[NMMNG]

1. Nothing is unconstitutional under Bushco

The Constitution is just a GD piece of paper, after all.

[TwilightGardener]

2. My understanding is that you can't make something ILLEGAL retroactively, but

you can change the law and then make it retroactively legal, giving someone immunity--but you'd have to hear it from someone who knows something about law, because I don't.

[lateo]

3. You are correct.

And they can't.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/article01/

Section 9
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

[MonkeyFunk]

5. The ex post facto provision

only applies to criminal cases, not civil cases (Calder v Bull, 1798). The immunity being discussed here is for civil cases.

[Warren Stupidity]

6. and ex post facto means you cannot punish somebody

for doing something legal in the past by making it illegal now. The reverse case: not punishing somebody for past deeds by legalizing something now does not apply.

[MonkeyFunk]

8. correct

for example, the congress wants to LESSEN the penalties for crack cocaine possession - there's no reason they couldn't make that retroactive to lessen the terms of people already in prison.

[mmonk]

4. Retroactive laws passed to try to bring immunity from the

legal ramifications of unconstitutional acts are.

[Kucinich4America]

7. As far as I'm concerned, NO law passed after December 12, 2000 is valid

so what else is new?