This is how the issue of giving legal immunity to rogue telecoms who spied on customers looks today.
This morning the Senate decided to "advance" the bill which would give immunity. A bunch of Democrats joined in that vote. Senator Dodd's effort to stop the bill from going forward was canceled out by Harry Reid's treachery (this guy has to go) and that of about half the Democrats in the Senate who voted against Dodd.
The House has, of course, passed a bill which does not include immunity. It will have to be reconciled with whatever the Senate comes up with. The New York Times reports this afternoon:
What happens next is not immediately clear. A different bill, which would not grant immunity to the companies, was also expected to be introduced by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who heads the Judiciary Committee. And whatever bill emerges from the Senate may have to be reconciled with a House version that does not include immunity.
The measures are meant to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, legislation that has deeply divided the White House and Capitol Hill and members of the House and Senate. Some action is necessary fairly soon, because the current FISA law expires in February.
In his unsuccessful bid to block the legislation, Senator Dodd urged his colleagues not to immunize the telecommunications industry for cooperating with the National Security Agency’s secret program of eavesdropping without warrants. The program was disclosed late in 2005 by The New York Times.
“For the last six years, our largest telecommunications companies have been spying on their own American customers,” Mr. Dodd said. “Secretly and without a warrant, they delivered to the federal government the private, domestic communications records of millions of Americans — records this administration has compiled into a data base of enormous scale and scope.”
“I have seen six presidents — six in the White House — and I have never seen a contempt for the rule of law equal to this,” Mr. Dodd asserted.
Any measure which doesn't include immunity will, of course, be vetoed by Bush.
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