Facing a looming deadline, the Senate is poised to take up the Bush administration’s surveillance bill, again. The sticking point is over providing retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with Bush’s warrantless-surveillance scheme, again.
With time running out, the landscape appears discouraging.
Senate Democrats concede that they probably lack the votes needed to stop a White House-backed plan to give immunity to phone utilities that helped the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping, and they are seeking to put off the vote for another month.
The Senate delayed a vote in December, and it is scheduled to take up the issue again in a debate beginning Thursday. […]
The immunity issue has splintered Senate Democrats. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who leads the Intelligence Committee, has received approval from his committee for a plan that includes immunity.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has won passage of a competing plan that leaves it out.
“In the end, I think something like the Intelligence Committee bill would pass — with the immunity,” said a senior Democratic official who opposes the immunity plan and insisted on anonymity. “I don’t know that it’s possible to get anything through the Senate that doesn’t grant the telecom companies immunity.”
Not surprisingly, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is facing quite a bit of criticism for allowing the retroactive immunity provision to progress. “If Senator Reid wanted to win, he would have put the judiciary vote on the floor first,” Caroline Frederickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the ACLU, said. “It seems as if he wants to lose.”
It’s a common sentiment right now.
Glenn Greenwald explains:
Harry Reid — who has (a) done more than any other individual to ensure that Bush’s demands for telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping powers will be met in full and (b) allowed the Republicans all year to block virtually every bill without having to bother to actually filibuster — went to the Senate floor yesterday and, with the scripted assistance of Mitch McConnell and Pat Leahy, warned Chris Dodd, Russ Feingold and others that they would be selfishly wreaking havoc on the schedules of their fellow Senators (making them work over the weekend, ruining their planned “retreat,” and even preventing them from going to Davos!) if they bothered everyone with their annoying, pointless little filibuster.
To do so, Reid announced that, unlike for the multiple filibusters from Republican colleagues, he would actually force Dodd and company to engage in a real filibuster.
I certainly like the idea of introducing real, live, talk-the-bill-to-death filibusters to the Senate, but it’s not at all encouraging that Reid would start with a retroactive immunity measure he claims to oppose, and force a Democrat to do the filibustering.
For what it’s worth, Chris Dodd, who’s shown real leadership on this bill for months, is poised to follow through.
Speaking to reporters today, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) said that he would again filibuster any bill that a provision in it granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms — or as he put it, “use every tool at my disposal as a Senator” to stop it. So if you were wondering whether anything has changed since Dodd dropped out of the presidential race, nothing has.
There was talk in some circles that Dodd’s position in this debate a few months ago was a tactic to gain support for his presidential campaign. I always found these accusations silly — anyone who’s watched Dodd knew this was a bogus charge — but in case there were any doubts about Dodd’s commitment, he’s proving his mettle now.
The next question, of course, is which Senate Dems are prepared to stand with him (and the rule of law, and administration accountability, and corporate accountability) on this?