tryvge has an entry going in to as much detail as I could hope to about the situation. Essentially:

• Telecoms perform illegal wiretaps for government
• public finds out about said wiretaps, gets angry
• government grants immunity to telecoms for said wiretaps

Does anyone else see a problem with this? What the heck happened to by the people, for the people?

I don't know how anyone with a shred of a conscience could vote Nay for this bill. And Republicans opposed it, 0-49.

I'm ashamed of our government.

And as eirias pointed out, the voting on this bill by the presidential candidates:

McCain: No (grant immunity for illegal activities)
Obama: Yes (deny immunity for illegal activities)
Clinton: Not present ( argh! )

This is a big plus for Obama in my book.

I finally figured out a way to post links directly to reviews of books I make on Goodreads.com, so I can start posting links of them here. The 3 reviews I posted earlier today:

My reivew of "Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy!", by Bob Harris

My review of "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream", by Barack Obama

My review of "Less Safe, Less Free: The Failure of Pre-Emption in the War on Terror", by David Cole & Jules Lobel

All my reivews in the past (been doing the site about 6 months) can be found on my goodreads.com page. It also shows what I'm currently reading.

There are RSS feeds for by "read" and "currently reading" lists too, if you're in to that kind of thing.