Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He's a little angry Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the Intelligence Committee Chairman, has struck a deal with the Bush administration that grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies for helping the White House spy on Americans without a warrant after 9/11.

This bill would effectively throw out a May 2006 ACLU class-action lawsuit against AT&T and Verizon. The Bush administration tried getting the lawsuit tossed out of court for "national security" reasons and failed, but that may change with the helpful obstruction of Senator Jay Rockefeller.

Wired has a story on telco donations to Rockefeller. Rockefeller received token donations from AT&T and Verizon employees for years. Donations jumped sharply after the ACLU took the telcos to federal court. In March 2007 alone, Rockefeller received $23,500 from Verizon's CEO, president and top executives.

Then vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee in 2006, Rockefeller wanted to investigate the illegal NSA program three months before the ACLU filed the class-action lawsuit. At the time Rockefeller complained bitterly about rank partisanship derailing oversight within the committee. Just as the discussion of investigating the NSA program started, former Intelligence Committee Chairman Patrick Roberts (R-KS) decided not to investigate and struck a secret deal with the Bush administration to draft legislation "modernizing" FISA. Now it's Rockefeller's turn. He has secretly drafted another FISA amendment granting the telcos legal immunity from prosecution with Mike McConnell, the same intelligence director who likes to lie to Congress about success stories against terrorist plots through the SAFE Act (yet another FISA amendment).

Rockefeller is a rich man, but he has vowed not to tap into his personal assets for reelection. Instead, he has promised to raise campaign money the traditional way—by selling himself out to business interests.

Chris Dodd (D-CT), ironically, has placed a hold on the bill and appears ready to filibuster the bill if he must. Senate Majority "Leader" Harry Reid (NV), also a telco beneficiary, is going to simply ignore Dodd's hold on the bill, according to some reports. In response, Dodd has threatened to filibuster.

If you want to email Rockefeller a piece of your mind, click here.
If you want to email Reid a piece of your mind, click here.
If you want to donate to Dodd's presidential campaign, click here.
If you want to donate to Joe Biden's presidential campaign (he's backing Dodd on the filibuster), click here.

On a related note, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin wants to speed up the media's race to the bottom for the bottom line by relaxing ownership restrictions in local markets. StopBigMedia explains:

Bush's chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has initiated a scheme to radically rewrite media ownership rules so that one corporation can own the daily newspapers, the weekly "alternative" newspaper, the city magazine, suburban publications, the eight largest radio stations, the dominant broadcast and cable television stations, popular internet news and calendar sites, billboards and concert halls in even the largest American city.

This "company-town" scheme, which would be achieved by lifting current limits on media cross-ownership, is the long-held dream of media moguls such as NewsCorp's Rupert Murdoch and Tribune Company-buyer Sam Zell. With one FCC vote, media billionaires will be able to become media multi-billionaires by controlling the entire communications landscapes of major metropolitan areas—and by extension whole regions and states.

If you want to sign an online petition against further deregulating rules on media ownership, click here.

This year may turn out to be the best year for media conglomerates yet and Democrats don't seem fazed that Congress' approval rating is lower than Bush's.

The above is cross posted from my blog.