One of our Founding Fathers is behind telco immunity

(3:30PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

In all of this talk about telco immunity in the FISA bill, the same question keeps popping into my mind:

How is it that such an arcane, obscure provision that benefits almost no one gets approved by Congress? It absolutely mystifies me when this stuff happens. I mean, back in 2005, there was no obnoxious, insistent group of voters pounding down congressmen’s doors to express their desperate need for a new bankruptcy bill, right? And yet, there it was.

And where were the rallies and signs and marchers over the past year demanding that the telephone companies get off the hook (bad pun intended) for their criminal wiretapping of law-abiding Americans? Was that groundswell somehow missed by the corporate media? Mmmm – no.

No, that was not it at all.

No, I think I’ve finally figured out who exactly has been strongly pushing for this arcane provision that almost no American voters want. And when I uncovered the identity of this telco crusader – the source of this strike at one of our most fundamental unalienable rights – I was, to say the least, shocked.

I was shocked (SHOCKED!) because it appears that the person most responsible for this travesty of a bill, the man who will be forever associated with this degradation of one of the signal rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, is the man who penned these words:

Those who would give up ESSENTIAL LIBERTY to purchase a little TEMPORARY SAFETY, deserve neither LIBERTY nor SAFETY.

You read that correctly:

The person most responsible for the current execrable version of the FISA bill that just passed the House of Representatives, the bill that gives up ESSENTIAL LIBERTY ostensbily – though not really – to purchase a little TEMPORARY SAFETY, is none other than Benjamin Franklin.

In fact, Benjamin has been making thousands of appearances around the Capitol recently, finding his way into the offices of virtually every member of Congress.

He has adopted the Pentagon’s propaganda strategy of flooding the zone with “message force multipliers,” as they like to call them, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of little Benjamins.

His voice is being heard, evidently. Unfortunately, it’s not the same voice he spoke with 200-plus years ago.

So those of you who would fight this provision of the FISA bill, remember: You’re going up against a heavyweight, an O.F. (Original Founder), the dude who invented bifocals and wooden teeth.

And you’re not just going up against one of him, you’re going up against a whole army of him:

So – good luck with that.

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