Depressing

It's sort of hard to communicate how truely depressing and distressing this is, and this.

Basically, the U.S. Senate seems to be on the brink of passing a complete get-out-of-jail-free bill for any and all illegal spying by the executive branch. This would not have been possible without the explicit cooperation of Sen. Harry Reid and a minority of Senate Democrats (including Diane Finstein from CA and John "Jay" Rockefeller IV), who all decided that the best thing to do would be to give the administration everything they wanted. It's upsetting and dispiriting and ... aaagggghhhh.

Look seriously, here are the words of the fourth amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
(complete Bill of Rights)

It's perfectly clear that for these rights to have meaning in the modern era they must extend to modern forms of communication. Secure in your emails, telephone conversations, text messages, and private IMs. The Senate is pretty much saying "well never mind all that, as long as you say you're looking for terrorists just go right ahead. Oh, and that part where the US Government and telcos broke the law, well never you mind that." This is, without exageration, the most horrid thing I've ever seen the US Senate pass.

For more on this see Glenn Greenwald here and here.

UPDATE:
Well you can see a partial results here. I don't know where they're getting these vote counts from. I only seem to be able to find reference to them on political blogs when I google for them, but it's all I have to go on for now so I'll assume it's accurate until proven otherwise.

From the list Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Herb Kohl (D-WI), Tom Carper (D-DE), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) are all pretty surprising. Particularly Inouye, Kohl, and Stabenow. Carper and Mikulski at least have lots of banking/telecom jobs in their district. Arguably they could be considering the interests of those industries more favorably. But the other three, I don't know. If you're a senator from the solidly Democratic state of Hawaii, why on earth would you vote for something supported by telecom companies but not constituents. I mean, it's not like "granting telecom companies immunity" would possibly garner lots of votes. Webb is predictable but depressing none the less. The others are all conservative Democrats.

Not that there is an adequate excuse for any vote for this bill ever. Really it's that bad. I'd talk more about it but I'm getting a headache (well, a heartache for my country, manifesting as a headache).