Carol Shea-Porter: “the President and his followers are telling the American public that the fight about the Foreign Intelligence…”

“the President and his followers are telling the American public that the fight about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, is endangering America; but the reality is that FISA is still fully in effect and administration officials have acknowledged that. What this fight is really about is the President wants to give telecom companies retroactive immunity for turning over private information about Americans to the executive branch without a court order. Now, some companies refuse to go along, so obviously there could be a problem here. We should not and cannot give immunity until we know what we are giving immunity for. This is like a defendant coming into court saying to a judge, I may or may not have done something wrong. I don't want to tell you about it, but I want you to say that I am not liable, and then the judge agrees. We would not accept that for an individual, and we must not accept it for corporations or for the government either. As John Adams said, we are a government of laws, not men, and we must honor the Constitution.”