Telecoms Rely on Special Favors and Deception; Dodd to Filibuster Telecom Immunity

There is one question that is dogging me lately. So, why do they need guaranteed immunity from prosecution if none of the telecoms broke the law?

The Democrats--in the majority, mind you--blinked first and then caved to the Republicans' demand that their corporate cronies at big telecom be given immunity from any prosecution. Besides signalling that the Bush Administration fears what could happen to its wiretap program in the judicial branch, it also shows that the Democrats lack the slightest semblance of a set of kahunas.

The Democratic exception is Presidential Candidate, Chris Dodd, who is promising to filibuster the legislation that would cover the telecoms. At least one of the Democratic Candidates cares enough about authoritarian corporatism to fight special legal privileges for the telecoms.

Every once and a while, Chris Dodd does something that just clouds and delays my decision to settle on the Democrat I could support in 2008.

The other lumbering telecom in the fight to control communications, Comcast, has started interfering with internet file-sharing by disguising its company computers as those of its users and blocking file uploads. Comcast defends its practice by arguing that it has to keep file-sharing traffic from chewing up bandwidth and slowing down other customers. But now I'm struck by another question: why do they need to masquerade as a customer themselves in order to do so? What have they got to hide?