So this is how liberty dies...

Andrew Sullivan's blog mentioned this excellent Salon.com article, "The Lawless Surveillance State." It comments on the ongoing revelations about the telecom industry's role in the government's domestic spying operations and pending legislation that would grant the the telcos immunity for past and future lawbreaking (background here and here). From slate.com:

More than anything else, what these revelations highlight -- yet again -- is that the U.S. has become precisely the kind of surveillance state that we were always told was the hallmark of tyrannical societies, with literally no limits on the government's ability or willingness to spy on its own citizens and to maintain vast dossiers on those activities. The vast bulk of those on whom the Government spies have never been accused, let alone convicted, of having done anything wrong. One can dismiss those observations as hyperbole if one likes -- people want to believe that their own government is basically benevolent and "tyranny" is something that happens somewhere else -- but publicly available facts simply compel the conclusion that, by definition, we live in a lawless surveillance state, and most of our political officials are indifferent to, if not supportive of, that development....

Ultimately, what is most significant about all of this is how the most consequential steps our government takes -- such as endless expansion of its domestic spying programs with literally no oversight and constraints of law -- occur with virtually no public debate or awareness. By contrast, the pettiest of matters -- every sneeze of a campaign aide and every trite, catty gossip item from our moronic travelling press corps -- receives endless, mindless herd-like attention.

The very nature of our country and our government fundamentally transforms step by step, with little opposition. We all were inculcated with the notion that what distinguished our free country from those horrendous authoritarian tyrannies, both right and left, of the Soviet bloc, Latin America and the Middle East were things like executive detentions, torture, secret prisons, spying on their own citizens, unprovoked invasions of sovereign countries, and exemptions from the law for the most powerful -- precisely the abuses which increasingly characterize our government and shape our political values.

To take action, call your Senators and urge them to vote against any FISA bill that includes immunity for telecom companies.