“In the lower courts, according to a study Professor Long published in the Washington & Lee Law Review last year, Mr. Dylan is by far the most cited songwriter. He has been quoted in 26 opinions. Paul Simon is next, with 8 (12 if you count those attributed to Simon & Garfunkel). Bruce Springsteen has 5.“
With great lawyers, you have discussed lepers and crooks: By way of Ted at the Late Adopter, the NYT examines Chief Justice Roberts’ use of Dylan in court opinions. “Mr. Dylan has only once before been cited as an authority on Article III standing, which concerns who can bring a lawsuit in federal court…The larger objection is that the citation is not true to the original point Mr. Dylan was making, which was about the freedom that having nothing conveys and not about who may sue a phone company.”
Hey Kevin,
Any thoughts on the FISA question and the (from my perspective, justified) grumbling in the Obama ranks?
Ugh. Just wrote a long response. Got eaten. Let me try again. Short answer: I’m conflicted.
To be honest, I’ve always sorta ignored the telecom immunity question here on purpose, as [a] I can see both sides of the issue, and [b] I think it’s become a bit blown out of proportion. I know we can’t choose our fights, but I do wish we on the Left had collectively devoted as much outrage on the issues of torture, Gitmo, suspension of habeas corpus, and warrantless wiretapping in the first place as we seem to on this relatively narrow question of retroactive immunity for telecoms.
Mind you, I’m not saying this because I’m trying to defend Sen. Obama here. To be honest, given his earlier statements on the subject, I find Obama’s recent stance a bit of a chickenshit move, the type of triangulation-to-the-“center” pandering we were told not to expect from him, and, frankly, a disappointment. But that doesn’t make me any more or less vested in this issue, which I’ve considered something of a sideshow since well before Obama weighed in (again).
I dunno…maybe I’m just a WIB kinda guy, but I think private companies should err on the side of following the requests of the government, particularly in a time of war or crisis (and particularly if they’ve been given good faith assurances by the Justice Department that what they’re doing is legal.) If we’re going to basically give private corporations the rights of individual citizens, they should be held to the obligations of citizenship as well, which means coming to the aid of the nation when asked.
Of course, one could argue — correctly — that the preeminent obligation of citizenship is following the law. Don’t get me wrong: I understand that the telecoms basically capitulated to a criminal act here, that one telecom (Qwest) even had the cajones to tell the Feds to stuff it, and that “just following orders” from Dubya is basically a modern-day variation on the Nuremberg defense. It’s not gonna hunt.
So, if pressed, I come down with Sens. Dodd and Feingold. Retroactive anything usually sets a terrible precedent, and there’s no reason the telecoms should be let off the hook for their spineless lack of judgment here. Hey, perhaps billion-dollar lawsuits is the only thing that’ll make them straighten up and fly right next time. So, on an up-and-down vote, I’d vote to deny immunity to the telecoms.
That being said, I feel the real problem here is the extra-constitutional crimes perpetrated by Dubya and his band of goons, and that getting into a firefight over the spinelesness of the telecoms kinda misses the forest for the trees. (I mean, it’s not like Congress or the media showed any backbone either. If rank capitulation to the dictates of this regime is now a criminal offense, we’re going to have to turn pretty much all of downtown DC into Escape from New York.)
As such, the answer that’s made the most sense to me on this question is the Specter amendment, which would make the government rather than the telecoms the defendant in these lawsuits. It doesn’t let the telecoms off, morally speaking, but it does place the burden of the crime back where it really belongs — on the Dubya administration.
Either way, I don’t see this particular issue, or the most recent capitulation by Hoyer and the House Dems, as the death knell for the republic. Compared to Gitmo and especially torture, the question of whether or not Ma Bell ends up footing the bill for Dubya’s crimes is, to my mind, basically kids’ stuff.
What do you think?
More or less I agree with you, at least on the telecom immunity part. Ideally, they would get their butts broken for this, but when it comes to all the civil liberties violations over the past eight years, there are much bigger fish to fry.
I did join the anti-FISA group over at MyObama, mainly because this kind of clumsy flip-flopping triangulation is bad for Obama and not his style. We all know that he has to appear to move to the center and do what’s necessary to show he’s not “weak on national security,” yadda-yadda-yadda. But up until now his campaign has shown great intelligence and creativity in its approach, and the dude was categorical about opposing immunity before. It’s like he’s taking advice from Mark Penn or something. He’s got to be smoother than this.