FISA reform bill angers the far left – Chris Dodd vows to filibuster

The NYT reports that telecoms won a small victory today in the Senate regarding the FISA reform bill:

WASHINGTON — Telecommunications companies won a skirmish in the Senate on Monday as a bill to protect them from lawsuits for cooperating with the Bush administration’s eavesdropping programs easily overcame a procedural hurdle.

By 76 to 10, with Democrats divided, the Senate voted to advance the bill for consideration. A measure to block it, which was led by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut fell short, as those who wanted the bill to reach the floor got 16 votes more than the 60 needed to achieve that goal.

What happens next is not immediately clear. A different bill, which would not grant immunity to the companies, was also expected to be introduced by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who heads the Judiciary Committee. And whatever bill emerges from the Senate may have to be reconciled with a House version that does not include immunity.

The measures are meant to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, legislation that has deeply divided the White House and Capitol Hill and members of the House and Senate. Some action is necessary fairly soon, because the current FISA law expires in February.

In his unsuccessful bid to block the legislation, Senator Dodd urged his colleagues not to immunize the telecommunications industry for cooperating with the National Security Agency’s secret program of eavesdropping without warrants. The program was disclosed late in 2005 by The New York Times.

“For the last six years, our largest telecommunications companies have been spying on their own American customers” Mr. Dodd said. “Secretly and without a warrant, they delivered to the federal government the private, domestic communications records of millions of Americans — records this administration has compiled into a data base of enormous scale and scope.”

The Nutroots are flippin’ out at what they see as the Senate leadership’s weakness on this bill, and are accusing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of being “pro-[Bush] administration” – LOL.

For a more rational explanation of this bill, we now turn to Captain Ed, who writes:

The immunity in this legislation has clear restrictions. They have to have agreed to the assistance after receiving assurances from the Department of Justice that the programs complied with the law. It leaves other telecoms open to lawsuits without that positive assurance of a lack of liability for cooperation.

This makes sense, especially going forward in finding and ending terrorist plots against the nation. The NSA and other federal agencies need the cooperation of the telecoms in that mission. If the private sector cannot rely on the Department of Justice’s word on legality, then it cannot provide any kind of assistance without risking lawsuits — and the NSA would also then have to expose classified programs and damage our ability to prevent attacks. We will once again leave ourselves on a course to have another self-flagellation session about not connecting dots after the next terrorist attack.

Sheesh – after reading that, it’s no wonder the far left opposes the FISA reform bill. The last thing they want a Republican administration to be able to do is to connect the dots in an effort to prevent other terrorist attacks. Much easier – not to mention politically beneficial – to play the “(S)HE KNEW!!!!!!” game afterwards.

Can these useful idiots possibly be any more clueless?

Dodd’s blog has an update on when he’ll start the filibuster. This was posted at 6:43 PM ET:

Right now, Senator Dodd remains on the Senate floor, speaking out on FISA and retroactive immunity whenever he has had the opportunity. This is not the filibuster.

Earlier today a cloture vote on the motion to proceed passed, as expected. We’re now waiting for the Senate majority and minority leadership to establish the ground rules for debate on amendments to the underlying FISA bill by the Intelligence Committee.

Once those rules are established, we expect the Senate to begin by debating the Dodd-Feingold Amendment, which would strip retroactive immunity from the underlying bill. If that Amendment fails to pass, Senator Dodd will seek to hold the floor and filibuster the underlying bill. He will speak for as long as he can.

Keep watching C-SPAN 2 to follow the debate about FISA and retroactive immunity. We’ll keep you posted with updates – there’s still a long way to go in this process and contrary to reports by the New York Times and CQ Politics, the telecom companies have not yet won anything.

Dodd is, of course, the far left’s newest hero, and I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that Dodd is putting up such an impassioned fight over this bill with just a few weeks left before the primaries …

And speaking of elections, Chris Cillizza the WaPo’s Fix blog has a post up on how the Democrats’ hopes of winning a super-majority in the Senate are dwindling. John Hinderaker at Powerline breaks it down:

Cillizza attributes the GOP’s improving prospects not to anything Republicans have done, but to the Democrats’ failure to entice top-drawer candidates into races in Nebraska, Kentucky, Texas and Mississippi. Still, he foresees a Democratic pick-up of between one and six seats. That’s not great, but, given the odds the Republicans faced at the beginning of the election cycle, it could be worse.

Read more speculation on what the 2008 elections may hold for the Senate here.

Tue AM Update: Reid has tabled the bill until January – the Nutroots are celebrating their temporary victory on defeatism, while Karl at Protein Wisdom wonders why all the celebrating:

Apparently, it has not occurred to these brilliant political tacticians that Sen. Reid’s cave-in was due less to the whining of Kos and Ellers than it was the political necessity of passing various bills before leaving DC for the holidays — including funding the troops in Iraq to the tune of $70 billion or so.

Given the filibuster-proof margin for the FISA bill, the nutroots have expedited funding the mission they despise in return for meaningless yammering in the new year.

How long until they blame this on Karl Rove?