Telecom immunity — next issue for Dems to cave on?

Since telecom immunity from lawsuits over warrantless wiretaps wasn’t made part of the ridiculous Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act expansion, it’s now coming up on its own. Glenn Greenwald expects Democrats to roll over, given the number of Democratic as well as Republican lobbyists involved in the immunity effort.

I’d have to agree with Glenn. Unfortunately, too many progressive bloggers, even in the face of this, still aren’t ready to ask when to stop supporting Democrats as a party and look at the Greens, or local social democratic candidates, or whatever options they have.

SCOTUS upholds North Dakota no-robocall law

Should impact political robocalls elsewhere, depending on state laws

The Supreme Court, by not hearing an appeal, upheld a North Dakota law banning robocalls by telemarketers — and others, such as political advocacy groups.

The Supreme Court turned away an appeal today from a northern Virginia political-polling firm that had sought to challenge a North Dakota law that bars telemarketers from making prerecorded interstate calls to that state's residents.

The North Dakota Do-Not-Call law says callers cannot use robo-call machines unless a live operator first obtains the subscriber's consent before a prerecorded message is delivered.

FreeEats.com, the company filing to overthrow the North Dakota law, is also the company behind “Swift Boater” robocalls in Indiana.

Indiana has a law similar to North Dakota’s, and FreeEats recently took it into federal court. A summary judgment in the Indiana case should result, I would think unless the Indiana law has any major differences from North Dakota’s.

Hopefully, this ruling should cut down on such nonsense in general; I hope it inspires states that currently do not have no-robocall laws to adopt them.