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It's indisputable that I'm a blow-hard. Nobody will argue.

But it should be hard to stomach this FISA vote by a man who (badly) invokes Benjamin Franklin, "a country willing to sacrifice its freedom for security will get neither." This bill didn't actually do a lot to change things; it didn't rein in any Bush administration behaviour and it didn't make it more difficult to do wire-tapping. It did, however, give large telecommunications companies immunity from criminal and civil actions that they may (or may not) have taken at the request of the Bush DOJ.

This is a huge problem. If these companies did something illegal and were prosecuted, they would likely face some (I'd say major, but who would I kid?) fines. It's unlikely that anyone would get prosecuted for helping the White House fight terror, but the companies might get fined. Might.

Instead, the Bush administration demanded immunity from prosecution, not to protect the companies from reprisal related to their patriotic assistance in the war on terror, but to protect the Bush administration from having to disclose and defend the things they asked (and got) the telcos to do.

This immunity was not about protecting telecoms. It was exclusively about protecting the Bush White House from sunlight.

In supporting this bill, Mark Udall reinforced the idea that the President can do anything he wants, regardless of possible legality. In essence, Udall threw out centuries of legal tradition that ensures that in our country, no one is above the law, from the Magna Carta to Bill Clinton.

If that don't make you utter profanity, then what does?