Today, the United States Senate voted to give the President of the United States permanent powers to use electronic networks to spy against Americans without having to give any explanation to anybody. Nobody, not even the United States Congress short of impeachment, will have the power to stop the President from listening to Americans’ telephone calls, reading their emails, and watching where they go and what they do on the Internet.

None of your electronic communications are private anymore. None of them. There is to be no judicial review of the spying, and no congressional oversight. No one outside the Executive Branch of the federal government will know who is being spied against, and no one, not individuals or businesses, will have the legal right to resist the spying. One of the core liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights is gone.

Yes, every single Republican who was present in the Senate today voted in favor of this terrible law. That includes Republican presidential candidate John McCain. The law could not have been passed, however, if those Republicans were not joined by 18 traitorous Democrats.

Yes, I call them traitors. They swore an oath of office to defend the Constitution of the United States. They broke that oath today. Their names are:

Max Baucus of Montana
Evan Bayh of Indiana
Tom Carper of Delaware
Bob Casey of Pennsylvania
Daniel Inouye of Hawaii
Tim Johnson of South Dakota
Herb Kohl of Wisconsin
Mary Landrieu of Louisiana
Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas
Claire McCaskill of Missouri
Barbara Mikulski of Maryland
Bill Nelson of Florida
Ben Nelson of Nebraska
Mark Pryor of Arkansas
John Rockefeller of West Virginia
Ken Salazar of Colorado
James Webb of Virginia
Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island

These Democratic Party senators have lost the support of progressive Democrats. Not only will we no longer support these senators for re-election, we will oppose them. We will do whatever we can, within the law, to make sure that they are not re-elected.

They have betrayed our trust. They no longer deserve the title of Senator.

Here are the years in which these senators are up for re-election. It’s time to start planning to find progressive Democratic replacements:

2008:

Max Baucus
Tim Johnson
Mary Landrieu
Mark Pryor
Jay Rockefeller

2010:

Evan Bayh
Daniel Inouye
Blanche Lincoln
Barbara Mikulski
Ken Salazar Slytherin

2012:

Tom Carper
Bob Casey
Herb Kohl
Claire McCaskill
Ben Nelson
Bill Nelson
James Webb
Sheldon Whitehouse

These ones getting re-elected in 2012 are hoping you’ll forget their treachery. Prove them wrong. Mark Election Day 2012 as the day of their well-deserved defeat.