Another chance to stand up for law

7/7/08
For months, Congress has been debating a bill that would legitimize illegal spying on Americans. It remains just as bad an idea today as ever.
The Senate, scheduled to vote Tuesday on a measure that would immunize from civil lawsuit corporations that may have helped the government break the law, must stop this disaster. The legislation would dismiss all cases pending against telecommunications companies that helped abet these programs, forestalling any chance of the extent of the lawbreaking from coming to light.
More basically, this bill would put to lie the notion, deeply rooted in American history, that this is a nation of laws, and not people. It simply won’t do to argue that people or companies can knowingly break the law just because the government said it was allowed.
If the suits are baseless, and the companies did not break the law, there is nothing to lose by allowing them to proceed. If there was no lawbreaking, surely these firms can prove that in court. That Congress is pushing for such extreme action as providing retroactive immunity surely implies there were darker motives at work.
Connecticut’s Sen. Christopher J. Dodd has led the fight against this bill, and continues to do his constituents proud in this matter. It’s too much to hope that his colleague, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, would join him, but likely Democratic nominee Barack Obama can make a decisive stand. What is to be lost by standing up for the Constitution? He, more than anyone else, can put an end to this disaster.
America will never know the extent to which their rights have been violated if those lawsuits are thrown out. And, if this bill passes, the next time anyone talks about such quaint notions as equal protection under the law, try not to laugh too hard.