Well, Duh! FISA Bill

Anyone that pays any attention to national news knows that Congress is in the process of passing a bill which will grant immunity to the telecom companies that helped the Bush administration run illegal wiretaps on US citizens. The purpose of the bill is to provide reforms to the FISA court system. Bush has, several times, proclaimed that the FISA reforms in this bill are absolutely vital to the security of this country and must be passed.

However, I read a very interesting point on this subject just now.

From user Smidge204 on Slashdot:

Bush is unwilling to sign FISA without telecom immunity and has actually pocket-vetoed the same bill before because it lacked that immunity.

And yet Bush and most Republicans cry out that FISA is absolutely vital to protecting our country.

This leads us to one of two possibilities:

1) Bush feels that protecting the telecoms are more important than protecting the country, since he is willing to let us go without a revised FISA bill unless we give the telecoms what thy want.

2) The FISA bill is not actually that important for national security, but is more or less a trojan horse for covering their collective asses.

I suppose both are possible, and not mutually exclusive, but faced with this choice I find it far to unsettling that Bush would literally put our whole country at risk (as he himself claims FISA is that important) for the sake of a few dozen CEOs.
=Smidge=

That thought process smacked me in the face as "Well, Duh!" If those FISA reforms really are that vital to the security of our country then the first bill that Congress passed should have become law as quickly as possible. Instead Bush pocket-vetoed it and demanded that immunity for the telecoms be added. As Smidge points out this means either that protecting the telecoms is more important than our national security or/and the FISA reforms aren't really that important.

That's just disgustingly sad.