BREAKING: Get FISA Right endorses special prosecutor as an Idea for Change in America

January 14, 2009

Update: please see Act now for ways you can help advocate for both ideas!

With less than 36 hours to go in change.org’s Ideas for Change in America competition, Get FISA Right has voted overwhelmingly (30-2) to endorse Bob Fertik’s Appoint a Special Prosecutor for the Crimes of the Bush Administration.

Please advocate for Bob’s idea, which has climbed to 14th place with 6370 votes, as well as our own Get FISA Right, repeal the PATRIOT Act, and restore our civil liberties (currently in #7 with 9565).  Please also consider joining the Facebook group Appoint a Special Prosecutor to Investigate Bush Administration War Crimes.  I’ll include more details in the “24 hours to go” last-minute instructions later today.

Members’ opinions, on both side of the issue, are in the voting thread and earlier discussion thread  (here and here) for members’ opinions … a few highlights from “yes” votes:

Sally G:

We must defend the Constitution; whereas we must move forward, we cannot allow the Bush-administration precedents to stand. Nixon’s misconduct led to the passage of FISA; current attempts to short-circuit the Constitution must be followed up similarly.

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48 hours left, six ways to help

January 13, 2009

Update, January 14: please see Act now: 30 hours left in Ideas for Change in America for updated instructions.

The momentum shift I hoped for yesterday may be starting to happen.  After dropping to #9 last night (“Will you still love me if we don’t make the top 10?” I asked Deborah),  Get FISA Right, repeal the PATRIOT Act, and restore our civil liberties is now back up to #8 with 8050 votes.  Even more importantly, the cushion of votes keeping us in the top ten* — probably the most important number to watch — climbed from 1200 to 1500.  Go us!

We got several blog posts, endorsements, and mailings from Facebook group admins.  Thanks all!  We are still trailing badly in endorsements, with only 22 so far — Pass the DREAM Act – Support Higher Education for All Students, which is right behind us at #10 has 67, and some ideas have over 300.  So let’s redouble our blogger outreach efforts** — and at the same time, not rely on this changing and continue to reach out via email on Facebook.  Mail your family and friends!  Change your status!  Change your image!***  Post this link!  Instructions here!

Our voting thread on whether we should endorse Bob Fertik’s Appoint a Special Prosecutor for the Crimes of the Bush Administration has gotten 22 votes: 20 yes, 1 no, 1 present (me, since I voted first and didn’t want to bias things).  If you haven’t weighed in yet, please do.

More ways to help below, but first a few paragraphs about strategy.

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Voting thread: should we endorse the Special Prosecutor idea?

January 13, 2009

Update, January 14: Final vote 30 yes, 2 no, 1 present.  Get FISA Right has officially endorsed the special prosecutor idea.  Thread locked.  Thanks to all for participating!

We’ve had two good discussion threads so far (here and here) on whether or not Get FISA Right should endorse the Bob Fertik’s idea Appoint a Special Prosecutor for the Crimes of the Bush Administration in the change.org Ideas for Change in America competition.

Sam Stein’ Obama Leaves Door Open To Investigating Bush, But Wants To “Look Forward” gives an overview of President-elect Obama’s position as well as Bob’s.  I’ve invited Bob (whose a long-time Get FISA Right member) to post here on why he thinks this makes sense, and also asked Ari Melber (who’s been working with Bob and covering this at The Nation) for his perspectives, but haven’t heard yet whether they’re interested.

So with the Thursday 2 PM Pacific time deadline for Ideas for Change, let’s get the voting started now.

Please remember that we’re voting on whether Get FISA Right should endorse the idea, not on whether each of us as individuals supports it.

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Help get the word out on Facebook! (UPDATED: 48 hours to go)

January 12, 2009

facebook logo

Update, January 14: please see Act now: 30 hours left in Ideas for Change in America for ways you can help in email, blogs, digg, and Twitter.

Voting in change.org’s Ideas for Change in America competition closes Thursday at 2 p.m. Pacific time.  When I first posted this, Get FISA Right, repeal the PATRIOT Act, and restore our civil liberties has just fallen to #8 (with Appoint Secretary of Peace in Department of Peace and Non-Violence now a few votes ahead of us), and a couple of the ideas just out of the top 10 have been climbing rapidly.  Now would be a very good time to start increasing our momentum.

So let’s supplement our blogosphere outreach with attention to Facebook.*  I’m pretty sure at least half the Get FISA Right members have Facebook accounts, and while there are a lot of challenges to doing Facebook activism, it’s a great platform for person-to-person contact.   As you get a few moments of time over the next few days, here’s how you can help.   If you’re new to Facebook, more detailed descriptions are available on the Advocating on Facebook page on our wiki.

  1. Post the idea to your Facebook profile and Share it with your friends.   The URL is http://www.change.org/ideas/view/get_fisa_right_repeal_the_patriot_act_and_restore_our_civil_liberties
  2. Change your status, Thomas’ is currently Thomas hopes you’ll vote for “Get FISA Right” at change.org. Mine is Jon is fighting for civil liberties! http://tinyurl.com/8ovtnt
  3. sign up for the Facebook event Get FISA Right in Round 2 of “Ideas for Change” and invite your friends! We’ll be using this as a communication channel over the last 72 hours, with one or two messages a day to let people know what the priorities are.
  4. reach out to groups, causes, and pages by writing on Walls and contacting admins.  Advocating on Facebook has some sample messages and lists of likely allies.  (Don’t try to do more than two or three groups in a day!  And if you start getting warned as a spammer, please see How to respond when Facebook censors your political speech.)
  5. change your profile picture.  There are a lot of different images to choose from in our photo gallery.

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Endorsements and blog attention!

January 11, 2009

The outreach to bloggers we’re doing is starting to have an impact … here’s our current list of endorsements:

I’m pretty sure these are listed in chronological order …

The list is shorter than some other ideas but the quality is incredibly high, surprisingly diverse, and with a great mix of original Get FISA Right organizers,* people who are just starting to step forward, our longtime partner SaysMe, and some folks I don’t even know.  There are at least two endorsements by other ideators in the final round: DreamACTivst, whose Pass the DREAM Act – Support Higher Education for All Students is in 13th place, and Bob Fertik of Democrats.com, whose Appoint a Special Prosecutor for the Crimes of the Bush Administration is in 26th.**

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Continuing the discussion: endorse the special prosecutor?

January 10, 2009

It’s been a spirited discussion so far on whether or not Get FISA Right should endorse the Bob Fertik’s idea Appoint a Special Prosecutor for the Crimes of the Bush Administration in the change.org Ideas for Change in America competition.  Currently, our Get FISA Right, repeal the PATRIOT Act, and restore our civil liberties is in 7th with a little over 6000 votes, and Bob’s is in 21st at 2136, so the decision could have a big impact on which ideas make it into the top 10.  We’ll be voting on this starting on Monday (details TBD) and so I wanted to continue the discussion in a fresh thread.

Something to keep in mind from a strategy perspective is that an effort spearheaded by Ari Melber propelled Bob’s special prosecutor question to the top of change.gov’s recent Open for Questions; we should expect something similar here.   Wiretapping had significant support as well (#2, #9, and #10 in National Security) without any promotion … but nobody seems to have covered it.  For whatever reason the “special prosecutor” angle seems to be hotter right now than “policy and legislative changes”.  So right now, despite the relative difference in our votes, the special prosecutor idea probably has as good a chance to make it into the top 10 as ours.

There were a lot of good opinions on both sides about whether or not we should endorse the special prosecutor idea.  I’ve also had discussions with various people in email, on the phone, and in-person, and overall it seems to me that opinions continue to be split: roughly 1/3 “we should endorse”, 1/3 “I personally support a special prosecutor but Get FISA Right shouldn’t endorse”, and  1/3 “I don’t support a special prosecutor at this time”.  The discussions are changing minds in all directions, though, and a lot of people haven’t weighted in yet, so that’s not necessarily an indication of how the vote will come out.  I’ve invited Bob to do a guest-post here to present his case.

So now’s a great time to reread the earlier thread.  Which points do you think are especially compelling?  Has your opinion changed?  Are there aspects we’ve overlooked so far?  Please let others know what you’re thinking!

And if you haven’t already voted for our idea, please do!

jon

* The comments in Once again Open for Questions: the pilot continues have more details on this.  Ideally we will benefit from these effects in the change.org competition as well: the progressive bloggers like digby, Open Left, and Daily Kos who support a special prosecutor care about FISA and the PATRIOT Act as well.  We shall see …

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Ideas for Change from Get FISA Right members

January 9, 2009

At least four other Get FISA Right members have ideas that made it to the finals of the Ideas for Change competition.  That’s pretty impressive if you think about it, accounting for over 5% of the ideas in the second round … so I wanted to take a moment and highlight them.   Here’s the list I have so far:

Are there any others I missed?  If you’re a Get FISA Right member with an idea in the finals, please reply in a comment and/or an email thread.

And I’d also like to give the ideators* a chance to advocate the idea to their fellow members.  To be clear, this is not an endorsement of any of these ideas by Get FISA Right.   Still, the ideas are likely to interest at least some of the members in the group , so I wanted to send them on.

jon

PS: Several people have told me that they’ve had a hard time voting on change.org, so please double-check that you’ve voted successfully and that the blue button with the number of votes has turned brown.  (The word “vote” also turns to “voted”.)  If you run into problems, the instructions here seem to work for most people.

* yes, that really is a word

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Posted by jdp23

Outreach to bloggers

January 9, 2009

Get FISA Right, repeal the PATRIOT Act, and restore our civil liberties idea is hanging toughat #7  in change.org’s Ideas for Change competition with over 5200 votes, but it’s clear that other groups are doing a more effective job of outreach than we have so far.  newsrackblog.com and Beyond the Matrix have blogged about us, Moon in Cancer has our widget up, Michael Connery linked to us on Future Majority … but overall our blog prence is miniscule.  And our list of endorsements on change.org’s site pales in comparison with ideas like Save Small Business From the CPSIA — which has moved into fifth overall with what must be a couple of hundred endorsements.  So there’s ample room for improvement.

One straightforward thing to do is contact bloggers who write about FISA and the PATRIOT Act and tell them about what’s going on and ask them to help us.  For example, here’s some mail I just sent to security expert Bruce Schneier:

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Two pieces of good news on the legal front

January 7, 2009

Stephen Aftergood reports on the Federation of American Scientists’ Secrecy News that a hearing has been scheduled for February 9 on the goverment’s appeal of District Court Judge Ann Aiken’s September 2007 ruling that declared FISA unconstitutional:

That ruling came in response to a challenge by Brandon Mayfield, who was erroneously arrested in connection with the Madrid bombings in 2004 based on a false fingerprint match and subsequent surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.  The FBI later apologized for his mistaken arrest and provided a financial settlement.  But Mayfield continued to challenge the legal foundation of the arrest.

He successfully argued that FISA, as modified by the PATRIOT Act, violates the Fourth Amendment because it eroded the requirement of probable cause as a pre-condition for obtaining a search warrant, and because it permitted warrants to be issued under FISA without a showing that the “primary purpose” of the search is to obtain foreign intelligence information (as summarized by Judge Vaughn Walker in a July 2008 opinion [pdf], at pp. 39-41).

And David Kravets reports on Wired’s Threat Level that Judge Walker has ruled against the government’s Kafkaesque motion to dismiss the Al-Haramain case:

The suit involves two American lawyers accidentally given a Top Secret document showing they were eavesdropped on by the government when working for a now-defunct Islamic charity in 2004. Their suit looked all but dead in July when they were initially blocked from using that document to prove they were spied on….

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Draft agenda/dialin info for Tuesday conference call

January 6, 2009

We’ve got a conference call on Tuesday at 5 PM Pacific time/8 PM Eastern, discussing the Ideas for Change in America competition — and our latest cable TV ad, President Obama, please Get FISA Right.  It’s a packed agenda, so please take a few minutes to prepare ahead of the meeting by looking over the links … and if you get a chance, leave some feedback ahead of time here or on the wiki.

If you can’t make it to the call, we’ll be recording it and writing up notes.  Our next call is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, January 10.

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