Yesterday, the Senate approved surveillance legislation that grants immunity to telecommunications companies for their role in the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. Yesterday on MSNBC’s Countdown, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) — who voted against the bill — remarked, “This is a sad moment,” calling the bill a “black mark” on “the history of our country”:
This is a terrible piece of legislation. It’s one of the greatest assaults on the Constitution I think in the history of our country. We are going to have to fix it, but it is a dark hour for the Constitution.
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“Even more serious” than the immunity clause is that the legislation gives the administration the “ability, potentially, to suck up all bulk communications, all international calls, all e-mails, all text messages, that any American might make,” he added.
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