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July 9, 2008 7:55 PM

The Democrats in the Senate, led by Barack Obama, reinforced, yet again, what it means to be weak when they voted to pass the new FISA bill, giving Bush and his supporters everything they've wanted:

Under the new law, the attorney general and the director of national intelligence can authorize "surveillance directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States." The surveillance could take place inside the U.S., and there is no requirement of any connection with al-Qaeda, terrorism or criminal behavior. The requirement that the AG certify there is no substantial likelihood a U.S. person will be overheard has been eliminated.

And what kind of court review of these warrantless wiretaps does this new law require?

There is a provision for judicial review of the procedures the Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence establish to make sure they are reasonably designed to ensure communications of U.S. persons are not overheard. But that requirement is also specious. They must submit their procedures to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court 120 days after the effective date of the act. The court doesn't have to respond to their submission until 180 days after the effective date of the act, and the standard of review is appallingly low. It's limited to whether the government's determination is "clearly erroneous." Even if the court were to find the proffer clearly erroneous, the AG and DNI have another 30 days to fix it. That takes the entire review process beyond the 6 month sunset period. Meanwhile, the surveillance can continue.

This bill give Telecoms retroactive immunity for laws broken - although as Russ Feingold points out, over 70% of the members have no idea what laws were broken since they don't know what went down in the first place! In fact, what this bill does, as Jonathan Turley so aptly points out below, is cover up the crime committed by Bush when he authorized warrantless spying on American citizens. In essense, the Fourth Amendment has been eviscerated and this bill codifies that fact. But to call Bush out as a criminal is just politically impossible four months before the election. It's that simple.

Finally, Glen Greenwald over at Salon.com has a complete summary of this farce. Read it and weep for your country.

P.S. Hillary Clinton voted against it. And yes, there will be lawsuits filed by the ACLU and other organizations as soon as Bush signs this into law:

"This fight is not over. We intend to challenge this bill as soon as President Bush signs it into law," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. "The bill allows the warrantless and dragnet surveillance of Americans' international telephone and email communications. It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment."