If you want to think about great American traditions, there’s no tradition more central to the tradition of being an American than the Bill of Rights. The guarantees of freedom established in the Bill of Rights are what made America great. Among the amendments in the Bill of Rights is the fourth amendment, which reads,

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Every single aspect of the fourth Amendment is violated by the FISA Amendments Act, H.R. 6304, which was passed by the House of Representatives a week and a half ago and will be voted on by the Senate a week from now.

- The FISA Amendments Act retroactively legalizes gigantic dragnet searches of millions of personal communications by Americans, not particularly noting the places, persons or things to be targeted.
- The FISA Amendments Act supports searches and surveillance of Americans’ papers and “persons” without any search warrant
- The FISA Amendments Act removes the requirement of probable cause, allowing government spying and physical searches without any proof that the people being searched and spied upon are even suspected of a crime

The FISA Amendments Act is an insult to the American tradition of constitutional freedom. Yet, many members of Congress have already voted in favor of the proposed law.

One of those members of Congress is Mike Pence of Indiana. Pence represents the 6th congressional district in his state, but he hasn’t accomplished much for his home district over the last couple of years – unless you count giving a speech praising Garfield, the cartoon cat as an accomplishment.

Pence is being opposed in the election this year by Barry Welsh, who is running a campaign founded upon respect for the American tradition of liberty rooted in the Constitution. Would Barry Welsh have voted for the FISA Amendments Act?

I spoke to Mr. Welsh on the subject yesterday, and here’s what he had to say:

I would not have been able to vote for the bill in its current configuration. A couple of things really troubled me, and the telecom immunity is probably the main troubling spot.

It’s not a situation where I want to necessarily be prosecutorial towards the telecoms. My concern deals with the attempted acquisition of immunity. My concern is that the immunity is not so much for the telecoms as it is possibly as a cover for the current administration.

The reason I say that is that I go back to the Nixon years in Washington D.C., and in the Nixon White House. When Nixon resigned, everything was forgotten, if you will. There were few investigations after that, and it seemed that once the President left town, everything was rosy, and that wasn’t the case. We didn’t do due diligence during the Nixon Administration, and several of those players popped their heads up again throughout the Reagan and this, the George W. Bush Administration.

So, I don’t want to see the same thing happen again. I want to make sure that we’ve got all the people that have bent the law for their own benefit and taken advantage of the people, I want to make sure that we don’t allow those people to slip away again. Quite honestly, I have a feeling that the immunity through the telecom is more of a potential cover for the Administration than necessarily for the telecom community.