Steny's Telco Deal: Time for Obama to Step Up and Stop It

There is a deal for telco immunity going that Steny Hoyer is shepherding through congress, and as American Civil Liberties Union says, it stinks.

The court review consists of only verifying that the telcos got a letter from Bush and His Evil Minions^™. Glenn Greenwald has the skinny on what is going on, and it's Hoyer who is at the center of passing a law that will cover up for the Bush's illegal wire tapping (and probably spying on political opponents).

If you want to do something, check out the Blue America PAC vs Retroactive Immunity, which has raised about $180K in the past 24 hours to target someone.

This betrayal goes beyond party politics, so if you live in Hoyer's district, MD-5, don't vote for him in the general election.

One bit of bright news in all this is that the New York Times came out against the Telco immunity deal today. What's more they called for Obama to do something more than just vote against it.

Word up on that. Obama is now the de facto leader of the Democratic party, and he needs to make it clear that this deal is not good for the country.

[Update] I just checked Greewald's latest, and it now appears that Hoyer is trying to pretend that he hasn't been working for this for months, but instead it's all those Bush Blue Dogs that are making him do it.

Bull sh$@!

FWIW, we now know that the targets of the campaign, and the nearly two hundred thousand dollars raised for it, will be Steny Hoyer, Chris Carney, and John Barrow, the latter two having been the most prominent of the Vichy Democrats on this issue.

Note that the primary for Barrow is not until July, and he has an opponent with a lot more progressive cred, Regina Thomas, who I have added to my act blue page so money spent against him could defeat him in July.

No surprise, all of them are big recipients of telco largess by way of campaign contributions.

Your best place for updates is Glenn Greenwald's blog.