The Senate voted 60-36 yesterday to table (kill) the Judiciary Committee’s (SJC) version of the FISA bill. Then things got interesting. The Republicans repeatedly refused to grant unanimous consent to consider amendments to the underlying Senate Select Intelligence Committee’s (SSCI) version of the FISA bill. Then Minority Leader Mitch McConnell filed a cloture motion to cut off debate and force a vote on the SSCI version. The vote on cloture is scheduled for 4:30 on Monday, only a few hours before the president’s State of the Union speech. As I understand it (via Tagaris), there would be one pending amendment if cloture is successfully invoked (by prior agreement) and that would be a Dodd-Feinstein amendment related to blanket warrants.
A couple of points here. First, the Republicans got 60 votes to table the SJC bill, so they can presumably get 60 votes to override Senator Dodd’s filibuster of the SSCI bill. In fact, as both John McCain and Lindsay Graham did not vote yesterday, the Republicans can presumably get 62 votes to override Senator Dodd’s filibuster. But things are not so simple.
Yes, it is true that twelve Democrats crossed the aisle to kill the SJC bill, but they didn’t agree to cut off all debate (and amendments) on the SSCI bill. I don’t think the Democrats anticipated that the Republicans would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Had the Republicans allowed up or down votes on the various amendments, they had the votes to kill any amendment that stripped telco immunity from the bill and to override any filibuster. In other words, they could have won. But, apparently, they do not have faith that they can defeat other amendments that are unacceptable to the administration. Therefore, they objected to letting those amendments come to the floor.
When McConnell filed for cloture he went far beyond getting some Democrats to agree to telco immunity. Even Arlen Specter has an amendment that he wants introduced. It should not be too difficult for Harry Reid to keep his caucus from invoking cloture under these particular circumstances. Of course, nothing is certain and we will have to exert pressure on Sens. Inouye, Rockefeller, Salazar, Carper, Bayh, Pryor, McCaskill, Johnson, Landrieu, Lieberman, Mikulski, and the two Nelsons.
Reid seems to have a strategy. He’ll allow a vote on cloture on Monday afternoon. As soon as that vote (hopefully) fails, Reid will pull the SSCI bill and introduce a bill to extend the old FISA law for another month. Reid will then call for a cloture vote on the extension. If the Republicans refuse to agree to the extension, then the bill will lapse on February 1st.
All of this will unfold in the shadow of the State of the Union speech, where Bush can be expected to distort the facts and make it sound like Congress is endangering the country.
So, we will see what actually happens, but we haven’t lost our rights yet. We need to spend the next few days trying to make sure the Dems will not invoke cloture on the SSCI bill on Monday afternoon.
It’s pretty clear at this point that the president is desperately trying to cover up his crimes. We need to make sure he doesn’t succeed.
I’ve been reading about this in several places and just scratching my head, wondering what it all means. This is the best write-up I’ve seen yet. Thank you.
Bush has the credibility of a hooker taking a vow of chastity. Who cares what he says ?
why can’t the Democrats vote along party lines or else tell us why telecoms need “blanket Immunity.” Because, something is out there that makes them liable for violating our laws.
That is the only reasonable explanation at this point, even though there are conservative
(and deluded) democrats who are voting idealogically to create a police state.
As far as I’m concerned, they are traitors and usurpers.
I don’t know, super. I think we need to broaden our perspective on things like this and stop limiting ourselves to looking for “reasonable” explanations. I don’t think “reasonable” is a reasonable standard, any more.
I’m thinking that the explanation probably falls more into the “how do they and their contributors benefit?” category; neither the laws nor the welfare of the country weigh in at all. They’re not traitors at this point so much as they are trans-citizens owing no loyalty to any group other than their financial supporters. (I’m not even terribly certain they’re human at this point.)
They get a lot of money from the telecoms and the transnationals; it’s probably about time for the D’s to start establishing that the “reform” and “oversight” talk doesn’t actually mean anything. Elections are approaching fast and they want to establish clearly that no matter what they have to say to fool the serfs, they’ll be looking after their peeps.
I put less and less stock in humaness being a quality that one can fall away from :o)
If it’s more about individual greed then I think they are seriously biting the hand that feeds them because they are driving this country off a cliff and when that piggy bank hit’s bottom and burts it’ll be empty. So, I guess that makes them more like organized criminals who strong arem businesses and bleed them for every penny that they’re worth, only to torch it at the end in an effort to milk that last drop of insurance money. And if they are transnational with no allegiance to America while they bleed it and undermine it’s strengths, then that’s the definition of a traitor to me.
I don’t know…
I do know that I want out, eventually, like you. But the way things are going I’ll be sunk before I can make my escape.
It’s ugly…and frightening.
I was working the phones yeaterday, they were so busy that when I finally got some of the aides they were so exhausted from the amount of calls it was obvious they were being overwhelmed.
As a side not GMA had a pic of Clintons with “slumlord” Rezko. The Clintons are such hypocrites, I am sure that we will see he gave them money, you don’t get a pic like that with a Prez without a contribution.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=132&topic_id=4193801&
amp;mesg_id=4193838
Hypocrisy is the word.
I don’t why telco immunity is even being discussed.
US Constitution, Article I, Section 9; Clause 3 is:
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
Any passage of an after the fact immunity is clearly a violation of the aforementioned article.
So?
Just a goddamned piece of paper.
Don’t mean a thing.
It damn well should.
You know that.
I know that.
Unfortunately, the guys with the money and power don’t CARE about that.
It will not be a significant part of the decision process until there are major changes, and maybe not after.
Merci beaucoup, BooMan.
Maybe I will still encourage my daughter to join the MNHS young democrats next year. Maybe I’ll even buy cookies for them.
Benny the ‘do is back in my sights. (I have a few bones to pick with him anyway over his perceived need for the hunters in our state to have assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons.)
Remind the Dems that Bush is unpopular, should he rail against them in his speech, he is unlikely to score any points.
Very good summary.
But as some people have commented that they are scratching their heads it seems to me that this summary still leaves out the most salient point. No one expects that the final bill that is passed will be acceptable to us in the progressive community. It will give away our constitutional rights. Many Democrats will vote for it nonetheless.
This strategy has the support of the progressive community only (I assume only) because the progressive community is relying on President Bush to keep his word and veto any bill that does not have Telco Immunity. It seems likely he will. But if the bill that is passed is unacceptable and Bush doesn’t veto it – we’re screwed.
I don’t see what is so hard about making this disclosure. Progressives who read blog posts about this strategy deserve to be fully informated since they are being asked to take some actions and put their names into this strategy. They should not be misled into thinking that if all these procedural shananigans work there will be a bill that protects our constitutional rights that they should support. There won’t be.
(Note: I won’t even call we the readers the “netroots” since the elite bloggers seem to have hijacked the term netroots to themselves. I’ll just call us readers.)
Hello Mary,
Has Bush ever vetoed anything? I think I recall having read somewhere that he hasn’t used a veto, even once. Only threats. A track record that adds to the Democrat’s identity as useless and spineless.
Maybe I’m wrong, now that I think of it. Did he veto a spending bill that drove Pelosi to tears in a press conference? Either way, the democrats are not just weak. They are complicit. I can’t get started on the bullshit we hear about the power of the “netroots”.
S-CHIP and Stem Cell Research and the Defense Spending Authorization (because it allowed Saddam’s victims to sue Iraq).
Sueing Iraq is the same as sueing the U.S., and they obviously need to protect their assets.
Thanks
Bush vetoed the bill to extend health care to more children. But don’t feel bad for forgetting: neither the press nor the Dem candidates felt it was worth discussing.
Thanks,
I don’t feel bad. I do try to keep up though, and it’s frustrating sometimes when I feel oversaturated with info. Trying to decipher all of the proceedural manouvers going on in the Senate is tough for a layman, too. I’ve come to the conclusion though, that no matter how much effort I put into trying to understand, it really matters very little because the end result is invariably the same. Bush steamrolls us again. Same tyranny, different day. For someone who, more or less, gave up on the democrats willingness to make a stand at least a year ago, I’m still stunned at how utterly comfortable they are in thier role as enablers and co-conspirators. I suppose it is because they really have little to fear from the people.
As far as I’m concerned, the entire monolithic lie of American democracy needs to fall, and hard, before anything resembling our empty creed will ever have a chance to rise.
If you feel that way then the blogs you are reading haven’t done a good enough job of explaining why they think their strategy will work to get us back to the old FISA.
Kind of my point.
He started vetoing legislation once the Democrats came into control. He vetoed a spending bill in December (there is controversy whether it was a regular veto or a pocket veto, but it was a veto).
Everyone expects he will veto this because without Telco Immunity his own misdeeds will come to light. That’s probably true. But there is no guaranty.
My only point is that people need to understand what the strategy really is and what the risks are. They need to understand that when Democrats vote in favor of this bill they may be doing so because they don’t have a problem giving away our constitutional rights OR because they believe Bush will veto it and that’s a way to protect our constitutional rights. It’s a complicated issue.
The mainstream bloggers seem to have decided to intentionally not cover these issues and instead focus only on the strategy that they have decided on. I think that’s misleading. You can mislead by overtly false statements, by language that implies something that isn’t true (i.e. that our constitutional rights will be protected if this bill is passed) or by omission.
Lots of misleading by omission going on in the blogosphere. The fact that it is for a good cause is irrelevant to me. I support Dodd. I support the strategy. I think the bloggers blogging on these issues are misleading their readers.
Thanks,
I’ve never payed much attention to the so called A list bloggers. From what I do see though, I’m inclined to think most are using their access to (readers) as a vehicle for their own personal enrichment. I don’t consider BooMan one of those, though I disagree more and more with him.
So, either the democrats are walking into a trap, or they are smarter than they come off and have found a more complicated way of procedurally snatching failure while simultaneously appearing to have put up a fight, and therein covering their asses with their people.
What do you see as the motivation for the “A list” blogger’s misleading of their readers?
I think they believe that they want to protect our constitutional rights and that they think their strategy will work to do that. I think they think the issues are too complicated for the average reader or member of the public to understand. I think they think their strategy depends on mobilizing a lot of people to call to support the components of the strategy including Dodd’s filibuster. I think the believe it would be easier to mobilize people if they stick to an issue that is easy to understand rather than confuse the public with the gray areas. I think Telco Immunity is an easy issue to understand and that’s why they chose it. I also think they think it is an easy issue to work up outrage about because it is outrageous.
It’s all politics. As a political strategy I’m not objecting to it. I hope it works.
But my point is that there is an ethical disconnect here. They want their readers to trust them and find them reliable. That’s how they get readers to pick up the phones and make the necessary calls. But they have included in their strategy a component that seems to require them to be unreliable.
I believe that they are wrong in that part of their strategy and that they could include disclosure about the risks. Sometimes a strategy for good requires doing something misleading. But clearly that isn’t the case here. It isn’t necessary that this be a secret or that the risks never be mentioned – BooMan talked about it on line in comments.
For the record I don’t think personal profit is the motive of the great portion of people involved in blogging about this. And although I sometimes use the word personal glory I mean it in a very limited way. These are very smart people. They think they are smarter than most people. I think the biggest payoff for most of them is to be able to pat themselves on the back when it’s all over and, if they are proved right, to be able to say how smart they were.
btw – I encourage you to call to support the strategy.
Well,
if they are as smart as they think they are they’ll get a refund on their college loans because nothing they’ve advocated has worked, let alone slowed down this march toward a police state. Last year’s elections, and the argument to elect a majority and working now toward a more secure and filibuster and veto proof majority, was a reasonable call on it’s face. But it’s clear now, or at least should be, that more democrats doesn’t mean good democrats. So, I wonder what the new call to action will be. Elect more democrats? Why? What’s the point, really? BooMan’s post yesterday about the demise of the party is the first time I’ve seen him come to grips with what a lot of us saw coming a while ago. But I don’t see where he goes from there, working within the system as it is.
I do support Dodd though, and will make that support known.
Thanks for taking the time to explain these things.
Yeah, Dodd is great. Thanks ss.
what you are missing is that the various amendments to the bill are not available for us to read, that we don’t have a list of which ones will be both germane and allowed, that parsing them out is the job of a constitutional lawyer, not a blogger, and that we are doing our best to get this information as it becomes available. I’m trying to get info from the ACLU right now.
You’re also admitting that the strategy is solid and that you support it, but killing us because there is a very low probability risk that we will succeed only partially, leading to a bad bill that has no immunity getting signed into law.
An honest look at the situation would lead YOU to disclose that the most likely outcome is that we don’t even have a partial victory.
The best we can hope for, realistically, is that the FISA bill lapses and the Dems are willing to fight over who to blame. So, best case scenario, none of the amendments matter.
The second best outcome is a merely and extension of the PAA. That also means amendments don’t matter.
It’s only if we cannot prevent the passage and signing of this bill that the amendments matter. And in that case, the most important amendment remains telco immunity, because it leaves open an avenue to expose the truth, which would give us the momentum we need to pass a good FISA law.
If you were being totally upfront, you’d acknowledge that your concern is about something that just isn’t that likely.
Do you even read what I write?
I have continually said that I support this. But No. That’s not why I’m criticizing them/you. I’m not criticizing them/you because there is risk. I’m not criticizing anyone for coming to the conclusions that you conclude that the risk is small. I’m willing to acknowledge that my concern isn’t likely – I think I said that to supersoling in another post.
I’m criticizing bloggers as bloggers for not putting this discussion in their blog posts so that everyone can come to their own conclusions about the risk and what their priorities are.
I do not have a criticism about the activism I have a criticism about the blogging. I firmly believe that they are not covering all the issues with FISA because they think their audience is too stupid. They are dumbing it down for their audience. I’m not asking for specific parsing of amendments – I’m asking for regular disclosure that there are OTHER problems with FISA besides Telcom Immunity and disclosure of the overarching strategy for dealing with them. I’m asking that the bloggers include their audience in the strategy as full participants – instead of treating them as numbers to be delivered.
As I said before I don’t respect them because they don’t respect me. I’ll make it clearer. I don’t respect them as bloggers on this issue because they don’t respect me as the audience on this issue.
By the way, it was you who opened up this entire discussion about bloggers as bloggers in your post the other day claiming they were the greatest patriots since … I don’t remember when. If you would have stuck to FISA I would have just continued to post comments supporting the strategy and putting in informational comments.
do you want to explain what the risk is that people are not mentioning? It’s like you resent it that bloggers strategize because it leaves you out of the process in some way.
Also, you’re saying that we’re treating people like they’re stupid, but as I have explained, we don’t have all the answers, staffers lie to us, staffers disagree, the ACLU gives us changing explanations, and it is generally difficult to master the procedure and not makes asses of ourselves. There isn’t any downside to trying to strip teleco, but the goal (now) is to prevent passage of anything. And that is not a strategy that can be stated on the record by any elected official, as it depends on blaming Republicans for the outcome. Bloggers are honest about the strategy, but staffers aren’t honest with us. So, we can’t even tell if they are stringing us along, or if they secretly have a plan to do what we want.
In any case, I totally disagree that I’m dumbing down things for an audience I disrespect, and I don’t see it from anyone else either.
We have come full circle. Go back to my original comment in this thread.
Again I ask. Why would it be so difficult to include that concept when blogging about this issue? Not those exact words, but that concept? A concept that takes one paragraph to state and does not require any analysis. Why not include it in the interest of full and fair disclosure to the people you are asking to make calls and put their names and reputations on the line with their elected officials? So that people who have finally walked out of their eternal candidate diaries and realize that something else is going on can ask the questions and say – hey, what else IS wrong with the FISA bill? And how does focusing on Telcom Immunity fix those things?
I do not resent being left out of the process of coming up with the strategy. I am making a valid critique of the quality of the blogging on this issue. Not a critique of the strategy or the process that brought about the strategy but of the actual words that are posted in blog posts and the relationship between those words and the credibility of the blogger with his or her audience.
But I now see that we are never going to agree on this.
I will stop commenting in your FISA posts. I will, in fact, simply stop reading about FISA on the mainstream blogs. There are alternate sources and since they ask us to call and write too, nothing is lost from my point of view.
you’re assuming a lot.
First, you’re assuming that none of the proposed (salutory) amendments will pass, then you are assuming that the House/Senate conference will do nothing positive to the ultimate bill, then you are assuming that Bush will pass a bill, even though he obviously demands not only telco immunity, but much more.
But, yes, the bill, as it currently stands, is extremely bad. And it is unlikely that any bill will pass that doesn’t roll back our privacy rights. And it’s possible that Bush will sign a bill that includes things he has promised to veto.
If you’d like to do a diary on the legal issues involved in the bill, I’ll front-page it.
Thank you for the offer but I don’t do diaries on substantive matters as a matter of personal policy.
I’m someone who reads blogs for information and an occasional inspiration to take some action. And for entertainment. Sometimes I comment. At most blogs I lurk. I represent the largest part of what is called the blogosphere.
Reading critical comments can be difficult I’m sure for bloggers. But the elite bloggers claim they are reliable and should be trusted more than the mainstream media because their readers keep them honest. In order to keep making that claim of reliability they are going to have to continue to put up with criticism from commenters.
What I am noting is that none of the current bloggers is asking any of their readers to encourage the passage of the salutary amendments or are even writing about them as if they matter. From that I draw the conclusion that they assume, as I do, that the Democrats won’t pass any that make a difference. I very much hope that I’m wrong.
I’ll see what I can do.
Mary,
I’m sure the bloggers that you are referring to would like to do more than simply stop telecom immunity. I, for one, would like to revisit many of the laws effecting civil liberties. I think the best we can hope for is a small victory of ending telecom immunity and maybe keeping open the only opportunity left to figure out what Bush did.
I see the bloggers as trying to save their ammunition for one last charge (I’m getting heavy into the military analogies today). I think this political strategy is correct.
But it is good to remember how low were are setting the bar. Let no one forget that the Democrats don’t care at all for our civil liberties and won’t shed a single tear about it. They might shed a tear about the state of their campaigns but they will not do a thing about fully fixing FISA or any of the other excesses of the Bush administration.
So thanks for reminding us of what a small victory we are fighting for here.
Mary,
I’m sure the bloggers that you are referring to would like to do more than simply stop telecom immunity. I, for one, would like to revisit many of the laws effecting civil liberties. I think the best we can hope for is a small victory of ending telecom immunity and maybe keeping open the only opportunity left to figure out what Bush did.
I see the bloggers as trying to save their ammunition for one last charge (I’m getting heavy into the military analogies today). I think this political strategy is correct.
But it is good to remember how low were are setting the bar. Let no one forget that the Democrats don’t care at all for our civil liberties and won’t shed a single tear about it. They might shed a tear about the state of their campaigns but they will not do a thing about fully fixing FISA or any of the other excesses of the Bush administration.
So thanks for reminding us of what a small victory we are fighting for here.