Tomorrow — Monday, January 28 — the Senate will take up the question of cloture on the FISA Amendments Act (S. 2248). Now before your eyes glaze, this is important! Ever say anything on the phone or in an e-mail that you would rather not share with loyal Bushie operatchiks? Believe Bush administration should keep its grubby mitts off the Bill of Rights? Well then, this legislation is important to you.

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) backgrounder:

“For at least six years, President Bush has authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct dragnet surveillance on our domestic telecommunications networks, vacuuming up the private communications of millions of ordinary Americans with no warrants or other meaningful oversight.

Yet instead of reining in this illegal activity, congressional leadership handed the president even more authority to violate your rights by passing the so-called “Protect America Act” in August 2007. Now the Administration wants to make its power grab permanent and prevent any court from stopping the illegal spying. Proposed immunity legislation could let telephone companies off the hook for their role in the program and block lawsuits like EFF’s case against AT&T.

So Monday, the administration and its minions are going to try to close down debate on the bill — killing efforts to strip telecom immunity out of the FISA re-authorization — effectively granting reverse immunity to the telecom giants for handing over our private communications to the government without a warrant. The Bush administration wants this to happen so that the extent of their illegal spying will never be exposed in court.

What to do? Contact you Senator now. This is especially important for our Louisiana readers, because Sen. Mary Landrieu is voting the wrong way on this issue. [TPM] And there is no excuse not to do it, because it is really effortless. Follow this link to the EFF’s contact page, enter your address, type in a message of your own or use the one that’s there, click send and off your message goes to the appropriate Senators. EFF will also give you your Senator’s phone numbers and notes on the bill and amendment names. (I will be calling Senators Boxer and Feinstein tomorrow morning.)

Tell your Senator: “I’m a constituent, and I want to urge my Senator to oppose cloture on S. 2248, the FISA Amendments Act. I also want the Senator to support the Dodd-Feingold amendment to strip retroactive amnesty from the bill.” [EFF]

If you’re feeling creative, you can join the EFF’s photo/video petition drive. That’s what Val and I did this morning. Learn more about that at stopthespying.org.

Read editorials from all over the country on this issue here.

Read the text of the Fourth Amendment here.