So today was an important one with regards to the remaking of the FISA legislation. With only a week to go before the current legislation expires, those legislators that swim in the pockets of telecom lobbyists are desperate to get retroactive immunity passed for the companies so they won't have to be held accountable for their crimes. It is a sweet deal for AT&T, Verizon and the like, but a sour proposition for the U.S. Constitution. Thankfully there are some elected representatives who are on our side, you know, the people and are fighting tooth and nail to make sure those companies that violated the law are forced to be held accountable in a court of law.
From The Huffington Post:
In an interview with the Huffington Post on Thursday morning, Sen. Russ Feingold, who opposes granting immunity to those companies, expressed disappointment that his party's leader, Sen. Harry Reid, was not doing more to help strike the provision from a newly considered version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
"Of course I have great respect for the Majority Leader," said Feingold. "He is a good friend of mine. But I really do disagree with his way of proceeding."
At issue is the likely passage of a version of FISA that contains retroactive immunity over one that doesn't. Reid has said he supports the former, but legislatively, the path has been paved for the passage of the latter. In addition, there is debate over an amendment offered by Sen. Chris Dodd, to strip immunity from any FISA bill. If that fails -- and it seems likely -- Dodd has threatened to filibuster the whole bill. On Wednesday, Reid was interpreted as saying any such filibuster will be the standing and talking variety as opposed to an agreed-upon 60-vote minimum threshold. Feingold, who supports Dodd's stance, took slight issue with that approach.
"We should have a normal process were this is debated based on a majority vote in the senate," said the Wisconsin Democrat. "That's the way it should have been done and I regret that it's not being done that way. Of course, I support Senator Dodd. He and I were principally involved in making sure this didn't get jammed through before the holidays and I will be supporting him again. But this decision does make it harder."
Now Reid supports Feingold and Dodd on principle, but he could have made the cause a lot easier to attain. Instead we are caught in this mess where a dozen Democrats capitulated to corporate America (specifically Senators Rockefeller, Bayh, Mikulski, Pryor, Salazar, McCaskill, Nelson (FL), Carper, Nelson (NE), Landrieu, Inouye, and Johnson).
If you want, make sure to tune into C-SPAN next week before the State of the Union and see if enough Democrats stand up against the telecommunications industry and the idiot-in-chief that will be delivering his fairy tales to the Congress and the nation that evening.
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