Harry Reid determined to bring FISA bill with retroactive immunity to the floor

[madfloridian]

next week. He is equally determined it will pass. According to Glenn Greenwald, there is really no 18 month waiting period before trying for a new bill.

I am so disappointed with Harry Reid.

Reid determined to give lawbreaking telecoms immunity.

He does not appear to care what we think. He is making Chris Dodd's hold on the bill totally irrelevant. Reid has honored GOP holds on bills, but he is ignoring a member of his own party.

Over the past several months, Democratic Senators Jay Rockefeller and Harry Reid have been the two most valuable instruments in the Bush administration's efforts to obtain vastly expanded warrantless eavesdropping powers and immunity for lawbreaking telecoms. As the Senate returns to Washington next week, Reid is apparently now more determined than ever before to ensure that the Bush administration's FISA demands are complied with in full.

Contrary to the completely erroneous claims by the Wall St. Journal Editorial Page that Senate Democrats intend to enact an 18-month extension of the Protect America Act without telecom immunity (false claims that produced some premature blogospheric declarations of victory last week), Reid has spent the last two weeks making abundantly clear that his intention is to bring to the Senate floor as early as next week the Bush-compliant Senate Intelligence Committee bill, and has further made clear that it's his expectation that that bill -- complete with warrantless eavesdropping powers and telecom immunity -- will pass. Because the Protect America Act is scheduled to expire in early February, it will be necessary to extend it by 30 to 60 days, but that is seen by the Senate Democratic leadership only as a tool to enable them to work out a deal with the House to ensure that a bill acceptable to the President is sent to the White House promptly.

From all appearances, Sen. Dodd is as committed as ever to doing what he can to stop telecom immunity (thus giving the lie to the jaded claims from Reid and others that he was doing this only to help his presidential bid) -- including full-scale filibusters and other forms of procedural obstructionism. But thanks to Reid's decision to bring to the floor the immunity-providing SIC bill (rather than the immunity-denying SJC bill), it will be exceedingly difficult for Dodd and his allies to strip immunity out of the bill by amendment (60 votes would be required to overcome a certain filibuster of any such amendment). Thus, Bush and Cheney -- with the subservient loyalty of their key allies, Rockefeller and Reid -- appear, at least as of right now, highly likely to prevail in their twin goals of warrantless eavesdropping and telecom immunity.

This is the type of thing I meant when I said there was too little time left to fix the party.

By the time they keep passing things like this, the administration will have such a hold on our party that there will be no way to break it.