Keep the Pressure ON

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Just a note of encouragement for everybody.  Well, I found it encouraging: Finally checked my in-box today and there’s an email from Sen. Bob Casey–apparently a bunch of his constituents contacted him regarding FISA and telecom immunity, and our actions worked:

After careful deliberation, I voted in favor of legislation to revise and update the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance (FISA) Act of 1978 to provide our intelligence community with the tools they need to target terrorists. This bill is not perfect, but it does improve on the legislation hurried into law last summer by the White House when it comes to strengthening civil liberties protections for Americans and enhancing judicial oversight.

In updating the FISA legislation, however, we did not need to extend retroactive immunity for those telecommunications firms that may have cooperated with the administration in warrantless surveillance programs. I proudly voted for the Dodd-Feingold amendment that would strip immunity from the bill, and I am disappointed the Senate did not agree to this important change. I believe that the retroactive immunity provision is inconsistent with the protections afforded every American by our Constitution. It is my hope that, when the House and Senate conference meet to reconcile the two different bills, they will agree to narrow and limit the immunity provisions for telecommunications firms.

I have been gratified to hear from so many of my constituents on this issue. Please be assured that I kept your concerns in mind as I deliberated and casted my vote.

[emphasis added]

Now, I’ve been contacting the senior Senator from PA, Arlen Specter, on a fairly regular basis–he’s an old nemesis from before I left for NYC and I do not trust him, although I believe that his constituency can occasionally shame him into standing up for the Constitution.  But you have to stay on his ass or he’ll sell you out in a heartbeat.

Casey, on the other hand, is a cipher to me.  I was not impressed by his (lack of) campaign, even though it worked: well, statewide enough people hated Rick Sanctimonious that all Casey had to prove was that he was not Rick.  But I basically missed all of Casey’s prior career while I was in New York focusing on my own life and career.

So I don’t know whether his vote was truly from his heart or because of pressure from the netroots and elsewhere.  But what I think is this:

When enough of us yell and scream and make our point loudly enough, the pols seem to notice. At least the ones who want to be reelected.

Budhy is right:  Yell louder!

My representative, Joe Pitts, is a hopeless case–he’s proud of voting in lock-step with the Shrubbo administration and I don’t see any hope of netroots influence; he will have to be booted out of office, because the religious nuts around here (who view “Freethinker” as an insult because they represent the alternative: the great brainwashed) and getting a Dem into office will be extremely difficult because while the Amish and Mennonites supposedly are anti-war, they are pro-GOP at every turn.  It makes no logical sense–hell, it doesn’t even make emotional sense–but there you go.

Still…I’m proud of the netroots community and while we have much work ahead of us to restore democracy, we are finally getting some traction.

Gore Vidal touches on some of these issues in this YouTube clip.  The technical production is not very good, but what Vidal says is compelling.

And at least part of his message echoes Budhy’s: Yell louder!