{"id":14557,"date":"2008-02-12T12:50:56","date_gmt":"2008-02-12T17:50:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14557.html"},"modified":"2008-02-12T12:50:56","modified_gmt":"2008-02-12T17:50:56","slug":"senate-backs-retroactive-immunity-for-telecoms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/senate-backs-retroactive-immunity-for-telecoms\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate backs retroactive immunity for telecoms"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seemed like a modest hurdle. The FISA bill currently under consideration in the Senate includes a ridiculous measure that extends retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that apparently broke the law in turning over information about Americans’ communications to the Bush administration. An amendment would have stripped this provision from the legislation. All we needed was a simple majority of the chamber.<\/p>\n

We didn’t even come close<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Let there be no doubt: a majority of senators, and a large number of Democrats, think the telecoms should not suffer the hazard of accountability for cooperating with the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) took to the floor last night to give a speech asking, “This is our defining question, the question that confronts every generation: The rule of law, or the rule of men?” The resounding answer: the rule of men.<\/p>\n

The Senate voted on the Dodd\/Feingold amendment, which would have stripped retroactive immunity from the surveillance bill just now. The final tally was 31-67; crossing over to vote nay were Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Evan Bayh (D-IA), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Tim Johnson (D-SD), Herb Kohl (D-WI), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Ken Salazar (D-CO), Tom Carper (D-DE), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Jim Webb (D-VA), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Kent Conrad (D-ND), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). <\/p>\n

Presidential candidates Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Barack Obama (D-IL) were present for the vote \u2013 voting nay and yea, respectively.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hillary Clinton and Lindsey Graham did not vote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It’s hard to overstate how disappointing this is.
\n
\nFor the 18 Dems who went along with this nonsense, I’d love to hear an explanation. For the Republicans, not even one GOP senator was willing to take a stand for the rule of law. Not one<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Chris Dodd can’t be faulted for failing to make the case.<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

And what arguments were presented by the other side? Not much — a few lies about the cooperation coming in the immediate aftermath of 9\/11, and a basic understanding that Republicans had to go along with the wishes of Mr. 28% at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.<\/p>\n

Just to add insult to injury, senators also rejected<\/a> a weak compromise amendment.<\/p>\n

This one was an amendment by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Ben Cardin (D-MD). It went down 41-57.<\/p>\n

The amendment was another attempt at compromise over retroactive immunity for the telecoms. Under the amendment, the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court would have reviewed the telecoms’ participation in the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program to determine whether that participation “complied with the legal requirements of FISA or was legal or undertaken in good faith with an objectively reasonable belief that such assistance was lawful.” If the court found that the companies should have known that what they were participating in was illegal, the pending lawsuits against the telecoms would have been allowed to continue.<\/p>\n

Once again, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), unwilling to compromise, voted nay along with a number of senators who’d also voted down the attempt to strip retroactive immunity from the bill, Sens. Tom Carper (D-DE), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Tim Johnson (D-SD), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mark Pryor (D-AR), and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) among them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kagro helped explain<\/a> how basic this amendment really was.<\/p>\n

In rejecting the Feinstein “exclusivity” amendment to the FISA revision considered on the Senate floor today — an amendment that failed by a vote of 57 Ayes to 41 Noes, thanks to another “painless filibuster” of precisely the type we were promised would not be tolerated on this bill — the Senate has voted to say that although they were passing a law governing surveillance, it was OK if the President decided that he really didn’t like the law very much and wished to make up his own instead. <\/p>\n

Exclusivity — the purpose of the amendment that “failed” — meant simply this: that the law they were passing was the law, and it was the governing authority for how surveillance could be conducted in America. <\/p>\n

The Senate just rejected it, so that means that they’re passing a law, but if a president decides later on that he thinks there’s really some other controlling authority besides the law, that’s OK.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The mind reels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seemed like a modest hurdle. The FISA bill currently under consideration in the Senate includes a ridiculous measure that extends retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that apparently broke the law in turning over information about Americans’ communications to the Bush administration. An amendment would have stripped this provision from the legislation. All we needed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}