Open Letter to Rep. Drier

[Rep. Drier is my Congressman, here in Pasadena. He voted for the new FISA authorization "compromise" (read: capitulation) that will effectively grant immunity to the telecoms who broke the law on warantless wiretaps because George Bush passed them a note saying it was legal.]

Dear Congressman,

I was surprised and dismayed to see your vote effectively granting immunity to telecoms for their illegal unwarranted wiretapping and other crimes. If your position is that a secret court can grant immunity for secret crimes as long as the President secretly told the telcos it was "okay" to break the law (never mind their own corporate counsel who would have known better), then I assume you are now going to hold the President to account for the same crimes in their place.

That’s the only sane position you can now take, Congressman — that crimes were committed  and you will now support Impeachment with all your energy — even if we know Bush will never be removed from office except by his voluntary acquiescence next winter.

In the final analysis, no matter what we do to protect ourselves out of fear, there is nothing that any terrorist can do to destroy us as a nation — nothing we could not recover from, God forbid. But we can (and presently are) doing a bang up job of destroying our hard-won way of life without any help from them.

A living, respected, honored Constitution is the most important security we have, especially after the last 8 years of abuse, so as to deter any future American despots, fascists, and criminals in suits from following in George W. Bush’s ruinous footsteps. There is nothing else that could stop them, other than the Rule of Law, once they ascend to power as he did in 2000. And the Rule of Law is truly "use it or lose it."

There is nothing more important for you to address as my representative than to help keep us free from tyranny. Right now, that means making the strongest possible statement that lawlessness in the Executive Branch will not be ignored.  I urge you to support Impeachment proceedings, regardless of the short-term political benefit or harm and take a stand on the right side of history.

Sincerely,

Avi Bar-Ze’ev

In related news, Barak Obama is supporting this bill, but with a promise to strip the Senate version of the immunity provisions. Good luck doing that without a Filibuster, Senator. But this is no time to capitulate, assuming your plan is to actually change things.