For the Record with Russ Feingold

"Well the idea that this [FISA bill] is somehow a compromise, where we got a few things and they got a few things is just false. Senator Kit Bond is one of our worst opponents on this, is basically doing a jig. He's so happy, bragging that the White House is shocked at how it got everything it wanted, basically. There's two huge problems. One is the one you mentioned. This retroactive immunity for telephone companies, whether or not they followed the law in giving out this private information to the government. That is a terrible precedent in terms of the rule of law, and one that's generated a lot of attention. We got like a thousand calls in the last couple of days in my office against this deal. The other piece that I think is even more important, that you hear less about, is the way in which this is going to allow the government to basically suck up all international communications between Americans and anybody overseas, even Americans overseas, in a giant data bank if they want. And this is an amazing intrusion into the freedom of the American people. There's no court review of it. There's no requirement showing that there's anybody doing anything wrong. So these two things together make for just an awful piece of legislation that nobody should be voting for, especially a Democrat."--response to questions at Young Turks.com 6/26/08