Harry Reid Forced to Table FISA-Telecom Immunity Bill

Coverage on today's action on the FISA bill on Countdown

I'm amazed. And relieved, at least for now. The pressure from voters on the Dem Senators, as well as the pressure applied by certain Dem Senators on Harry Reid, seems to have made a dent in the process. Following up on my previous post. As reported on the . Excerpt:

Majority Leader Harry Reid has just pulled the FISA bill from consideration in this session. It will be brought up at some point next month. Without Senator Dodd's leadership today, it is safe to assume that retroactive immunity would have passed.

This is a great victory for the American people. His outspoken opposition to retroactive immunity and the Intelligence Committee's FISA bill made it impossible to move forward now. From a process standpoint, that took the persistent shadow of a Dodd filibuster on this legislative process, a "hold" against any legislation that included retroactive immunity, and today, a refusal to grant unanimous consent to rules of debate that would have made it harder to strip retroactive immunity from the Intel Committee's bill through the Dodd-Feingold Amendment. He brought along some of the Senate's most passionate voices -- Senator's Feingold, Kennedy, Boxer, Wyden, Brown and Bill Nelson joined him to stand up to the President today.

You can watch a video of Dodd speaking at Crooks and Liars. They also have video and a transcript of Ted Kennedy's speech. The lion roars once more. Sen. Feingold also gave a superb speech and you can read the text or view the video (wmv) at his website. As usual, Glenn Greenwald has the nitty gritty.

Bottom Line: Reid obviously wanted the process of passing what Bush wanted to be an easy and quiet one. If Dodd and the others hadn't stood their ground, that's what would have happened today. Chalk one up for the people.

Of course the fight has just begun. Both sides will be strategizing and gathering more info between now and January. We have to stay engaged. Reid himself has reportedly admitted that the massive number of contacts from the public on this were a major factor in his tabling the bill. Literally thousands and thousands of people contacted various Senators, including Reid. Many blogs, as well as Democracy for America and other progressive group,s urged people to express their views in no uncertain terms to our Senators. For once, it worked. For now.

Remember, Bush tried to set up domestic spying within two weeks of taking office. Read this for details, as reported in the New York Times. Quote:

Nearly 1,300 words into Sunday's New York Times article revealing new details of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, the lawyer for an AT&T engineer alleges that "within two weeks of taking office, the Bush administration was planning a comprehensive effort of spying on Americans’ phone usage.”

So I guess Bush's claims that the warrantless wiretapping was an emergency response to 9-11 are just more smoke from his blowhole. Clearly, powerful forces were behind the data mining and domestic spy programs. The only way we'll ever learn the full extent of this lawbreaking is to keep the pressure on Washington from the hinterlands. This means you (us).

I think we should all also contact our presidential candidates from the Senate, who didn't think it was important enough to be at their jobs today, to express our disgust: Senators Clinton, Obama and Biden, where were you?