The mainstream news media are calling it a compromise, the House bill just passed on a vote of 293-129 which officially ends America’s 232-year experiment with democracy. Hey, look on the bright side: 232 years is a pretty nice run. We should be grateful.

The House vote, which is designed to retroactively legalize widespread criminal violations by the Bush administration and the telecom giants, is a ‘compromise’ in the sense that it contains the priviso that AT&T (“Your world, delivered –– to the government”) and friends are immune for prosecution or lawsuits of any kind if they can show a court a letter from the feds saying that what they’re doing ain’t illegal.

They already have the letter. The “show a letter” fig leaf is designed to cover the large number of Democrats, including majority whip, Steny Hoyer, who are in bed with the telecoms but want to pretend they’re not. Hoyer and the other swine who voted for this bill wanted their own immunity –– from pissed-off voters. Hence the fig leaf.

I suppose one really could call the thing a compromise along the lines of: hey, we only wiped out the remains of the Fourth Amendment. There are plenty of other ones left.

The constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures is, along with freedom of speech and assembly, the cornerstone of the nation. Without it, we may as well be the Soviet Union.

The ostensible reason for the legislation was the government’s claim that it could not fight the “war on terror” within the confines of the Fourth Amendment. It was too unwieldy, maybe even archaic, perhaps even “quaint,” as a former Bush Attorney General described the Geneva Convention rules against torture. We are in a “new kind of war,” the propaganda goes, and we live in a “post-9/11 world.”

Left out of the mainstream media has been any discussion of this fact: the government has applied to the already-existing FISA courts for thousands of warrants. All but two were immediately granted. Current law permits the government to wiretap for a week without a warrant anyhow. In other words, there was no actual need for the law.

Not unless your goal is not wiretapping but the removal of any constitutional restraints to spying on everyone. One nation, under surveillance.

The telecom immunity creates a situation where corporations, if the government authorizes them to do so, may break the law, any law which formerly prohibited any sort of spying on you, with impunity. If enacted by the Senate, which seems likely, the government will henceforth be legally permitted to open your mail, read your e-mail, track your internet usage, bug your phones, and traffic in your personal information, including tax returns, medical record, and more.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution is about to become obsolete. I should not have to point out that, historically, rights lost are never regained. It is not hyperbole to say that the country’s flirting with death right now. No Supreme Court would ever before have countenanced this. Never. But this one will.

And all of the hucksters and phonies and useless assholes taking up space in the Congress can pin flags to their lapels now that it doesn’t mean anything anymore.