Dodd must fight against spying bill

6/25/08
Sen. Christopher J. Dodd made a promise. He should stick to it.
No, not about his VIP mortgage deals, which continue to raise eyebrows across the state. Mounting a fight on behalf of homeowners in need while receiving special treatment from targeted lenders will get people talking.
But the promise in question concerns the Democrat’s vow to fight a provision in a bill on warrantless eavesdropping that is headed for the Senate. During his short-lived presidential run, Connecticut’s senior senator made a great show of opposing a clause that would retroactively forgive telecommunications firms for helping the government spy on Americans without a warrant.
It was the right move then, and would be again, now that the House of Representatives has revived the language and, once again, sent it on to the upper chamber. Dodd should pick up the fight where he left off, and do all he can to see that this bill does not become law.
The basis for opposing this bill is simple: The United States is not a tyranny. The president, even in times of emergency, must follow the law. And everyone, including corporations, even when asked by the government, must themselves uphold the law.
There is ample evidence that many telecommunications giants — mostly after but apparently even before 9/11 — allowed the government to listen in on conversations that should have required a warrant. A number of consumers have filed lawsuits, trying to hold the companies responsible for abetting this unwise action, clearly violative of the Fourth Amendment guarantee against “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
But instead of allowing those suits to proceed, and letting a court decide whether violations occurred, the bill before the Senate would
pre-empt the debate, and declare the companies’ actions beyond the power of the courts.
That, quite simply, is not how we do things here. Dodd was smart enough to know it when he was running for president, even if most of his fellow Democrats did not. He promised to do what he could to see that the retroactive immunity clause was stripped from the otherwise necessary legislation. (Incidentally, Sen. Barack Obama made a similar pledge.)
Maybe it wouldn’t be enough, maybe the bill would go through anyway, after which President Bush would sign it posthaste. But Dodd — and Obama — should try to stop it.
The law has to mean something. The executive branch can’t simply direct a person or company to break laws — that’s the stuff of tyrannies.
And a promise, too, should mean something. Dodd must fight this bill with all he has.