Taking Advantage of Jello Jay Rockefeller

Jay Rockefeller doesn't understand basic evidentiary court rules.

And too many liberals who are on his case about FISA don't understand what retroactive immunity is all about. This is about Cheney.

First, retroactive immunity has very very little to do with the telecoms (particularly since they're cutting off wiretaps anyway, since the FBI isn't paying its bills).

Telcos will be indemnified for anything that they've done with AG approval (though there is that sticky episode in the period following the Ashcroft hospital incident, when then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales forced the approval of the illegal program of the body of ailing Ashcroft, but never mind). Nope, rather, any immunity is immunity for those who decided it was a swell idea to illegally wiretap Americans. And that list of people begins with Dick Cheney.

Dick Cheney is saying that it is impossible for telecoms to defend themselves against the "dozens" of court cases pending against them for breaking the law and compromising customers' privacy rights.

Dick Cheney has a way to eliminate the problem he says the telecoms have: he can take the advice he once gave Senator Patrick Leahy and fuck himself. Then he can stop declaring State Secrets for any freaking thing that comes into Cheney's field of vision.

The entire logic to Administration/Telco/Rockefeller claims that the telecoms need this magical immunity is because they can't defend themselves in Court.

Hey, Jay, stupid, that's Dick Cheney's fault, because he and the Administration have declared State Secrets even in the face of abundant public evidence that the telecoms did what they're accused of doing.