As we remember the brave and visionary life of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., we can think of his civil rights and workers' rights legacies. Much of our progress in civil rights has only been possible because of the contributions of Dr. King. Yet, we have a great many things left to do in order to fully realize his vision. His civil rights legacy is invaluable, and unfinished. In addition,

Rasmussen Reports, a polling firm, found that the percentage of voters who say Congress is doing a good or excellent job stood at 9 percent in July -- the lowest rating in the history of the company's tracking poll.

The Senate voted 69 to 28 this afternoon to make it easier to spy on Americans and let the government circumvent courts in collecting information without warrants. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) voted against the bill that also will shield telephone companies and Internet providers from lawsuits accusing them of turning over private communications without a warrant.

The Senate on Tuesday debated legislation that would undercut the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Adopted in the wake of government abuses of citizen rights, the Watergate- and Vietnam-era law makes the government get a warrant to intercept communications between someone in the United States and someone outside our borders. In the three decades since the law was enacted, a special court it created has approved nearly 20,000 warrants. A handful of requests were rejected. Moreover, if there is what the government deems to be an emergency, the existing law has a loophole. Wiretap first, get court permission later.

The Senate on Thursday continued to debate legislation that would overhaul the government's wiretapping powers and grant legal immunity to telephone companies that took part in President Bush's eavesdropping program. While many in Congress fell in line with a White House compromise, Senator Bernie Sanders and others were mounting an effort to strip the immunity provision out of the bill. "Every American understands that we have got to do every single thing we can to protect the American people from terrorist attacks," he said. "There is no debate about that. Some of us believe, however, that we can be successful in doing that while we uphold the rule of law, while we uphold the Constitution of this country."

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) spoke out today against legislation that would overhaul the government's wiretapping powers and grant legal immunity to telephone companies that took part in President Bush's eavesdropping program without warrants.

There are roughly 270 prisoners being detained by the United States at a military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; some have been there for more than six years.

The Supreme Court on Thursday delivered its third consecutive rebuff to the Bush administration's handling of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, ruling 5 to 4 that the prisoners there have a constitutional right to go to federal court to challenge their continued detention.

For years, with the help of compliant Republicans and frightened Democrats in Congress, President Bush has denied the protections of justice, democracy and plain human decency to the hundreds of men that he decided to label "unlawful enemy combatants" and throw into never-ending detention.

Burger King and a farm workers organization reached agreement to boost wages and improve conditions for Florida tomato pickers. The fast-food giant joins McDonald's and Taco Bell owner Yum Brands, which already have similar deals with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Senator Bernie Sanders, who visited Florida last winter, hosted a Capitol press conference to announce the agreement. "What I saw shocked me," he said. "I saw hopelessness among workers that I had never seen before in the U.S. I saw people making pathetically low wages. I saw people living in terrible housing conditions paying extremely high rents, while others were unable to access health care. Ironically, on the day that I was in Immokalee, another indictment on slavery charges was issued. In a nation where millions of workers are seeing their wages decline and where we are involved in a tragic race to the bottom, I saw that bottom."

Senator Sanders, who chaired a Senate labor committee hearing on the subject, hosted a press conference at which Burger King Corp. announced it had agreed to pay the farm workers of South Florida an extra penny per pound of picked tomatoes. The announcement was a major victory for the farm workers and followed similar agreements by McDonald's and Yum Brands.

The Senate labor committee scheduled a hearing Tuesday on working conditions for farm workers in southern Florida. In extreme cases, federal prosecutors in the region have brought slavery charges related to working conditions on the farms that produce about 4 billion fresh tomatoes a year. The most recent slavery indictment was handed up last winter on a day when Senator Bernie Sanders was touring the tomato fields with representatives of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. "At a time when millions of American workers are very tragically involved in a race to the bottom, as far as longer hours for lower wages, I think that it's probably fair to say that the working conditions in Immokalee are the bottom," Sanders told Congressional Quarterly for an article in advance of the Senate committee hearing.

Speaking to a standing-room-only crowd of some 350 people in City Hall last night, Senator Bernie Sanders thanked Ambassador Pekka Lintu of Finland for visiting Vermont to discuss what Sanders called "one of the best economic and social models in the world." The ambassador met with students and faculty at the University of Vermont, where he focused on education. He lunched with business leaders, and in the evening appeared at the packed town hall meeting.

The troubled American economy continued to dominate the headlines during the past week, as an economic stimulus bill approved by Congress was signed into law. Vermont senators fought the Bush administration over a warrantless eavesdropping program and whether to grant legal immunity to telephone companies that provided phone and email records. Senators continued to pick apart the last Bush budget with the focus turning to proposed cuts in assistance for veterans. And the spotlight was on physician shortages at a Capitol Hill hearing chaired by Senator Bernie Sanders.

The Bush administration will continue to lose the battle to nurture democracy abroad as long as it wages war against democracy at home.

The Senate voted 51 to 45 for an intelligence bill that would bar harsh interrogation techniques by CIA agents. The legislation puts intelligence agencies under the same restrictions that already apply to military interrogators. The Senate vote came in the wake of a White House acknowledgement that the CIA used simulated drowning, also known as waterboarding, on suspected leaders of al Qaeda. The aggressive pursuit of terrorists and respecting Americans' civil liberties are not incompatible, Senator Bernie Sanders believes. "The lack of esteem that countries all over the world have for the United States today is probably now at an all time low," he said. "This is a tragedy for a number of reasons, not least of all that it limits our ability to bring together the international coalitions that we need to fight terrorism. One of the reasons that disrespect for us is so high is because of the Bush administration's willingness to condone torture. To my mind this is unacceptable, and it's not a policy that the United States should not be a part of."

The Senate this week takes up legislation that would overhaul the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act before the current law expires on February 16. "We can fight terrorism without undermining the Constitution," Senator Bernie Sanders said. Sanders has been a leading opponent of Bush administration proposals to grant retroactive legal immunity to telephone companies that turned over records of phone calls and emails of law-abiding Americans. An amendment to be offered by Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, and cosponsored by Sanders, would protect communications between a U.S. citizen and a person abroad who is suspected of no wrongdoing.

Even by the dismal standards of what passes for a national debate on intelligence and civil liberties, last week was a really bad week.

The Senate debated a bill that would make needed updates to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — while needlessly expanding the president's ability to spy on Americans without a warrant and covering up the unlawful spying that President Bush ordered after 9/11.