Harry Reid Supported Coburn’s Racist Hold
Via firedoglake, when when Chris Dodd introduced the Emmet Till cold case bill, which called for more money for unsolved civil rights crimes, Tom Coburn put a hold on the bill — and Reid just let it go..
But when Dodd tried to protect out fourth amendment rights by making sure the telecommunications companies that collaborated with the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program by putting a hold on legislation, Reid took the unprecedented step of trying to shut down the hold. Odd isn’t it: Reid allows a right-wing Republican to put the kibosh on a civil rights bill, but tries to block a senior member of his own party from stopping right-wing Republican legislation?
Maybe that’s because, as both FDL and I have pointed out, that Harry Reid is in the pocket of the telecommunications industry.
Harry Reid himself took $22,000 in contributions from AT&T between 2001-2006. OpenSecrets reports that he also owns between $15,001 and $50,000 worth of stock in Dow Jones U.S. Telecommunications Sector Index Fund, the largest holdings of which are AT&T and Verizon.
Here are the remains of Emmet Till, whose killers never paid any consequences. Just like Harry Reid’s friends and funders at Verizon and AT&T.
Some leadership: no wonder they call it the DemocRAT Party.
October 19th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Realize that immunity for telcos isn’t just to protect telcos- it’s to protect the secrecy of warrantless wiretap as well.
If you can’t sue because your phone company’s immune to suit, you can’t get discovery for the matter, therefore less information of who was wiretapped.
I love how the powerful protect the powerful, no matter what name they call themselves- Republican, Democrat, AT&T or Blackwater. Protect your interests and those of those who protect your interests. Other people can pound sand, even if they supported you in the past.
If the Democrats in power were any less self-serving than their Republican counterparts, I’d volunteer to help. Unfortunately, they’re not.
October 19th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
[...] More here. [...]
October 25th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
[...] Last week, Senator and Presidential Candidate Chris Dodd said he would put a hold on any legislation that gives retroactive immunity to the telecoms that helped Bush carry out his illegal warrantless wiretapping program. Harry Reid (who is in the pocket of the telecom industry) responded by saying he would disregard that hold, even though it was proposed by a senior member of his own party: this simply isn’t done, and it’s worth it to note that Harry Reid permitted a hold by GOP nutball Tom Coburn that stymied funding investigations into the m…. [...]
November 5th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
[...] checks, Mr. Reid?) but his frequent complicity with the administration’s worst excesses (no one has forgotten FISA or the way you screwed Dodd to bring that bill to the floor sir). And with a new progressive champion in the White House, who has openly advocated “spreading [...]
January 7th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
[...] on top of refusing to honor the holds of fellow democrats while upholding the holds of racists like Tom Coburn, doing the GOP’s bidding on FISA in return for campaign donations from Verizon and AT&T, [...]