California Conservative

Senate Democrats reached a ‘compromise’ today with the White House, giving the White House everything it wants with regards to a new FISA bill. According to this article, Senate Democrats have agreed to giving telecommunications companies immunity for assisting the Bush administration’s NSA intercept program:

The Senate voted by a margin of 76 to 10 to limit debate on a new wiretapping bill Monday, all but ensuring that the Senate will approve amnesty for telecoms that helped the government spy on Americans without court orders and greatly expand the government’s ability to spy using American telecom facilities and communication services.

This is a tremendous victory for the Bush administration. It puts House Democrats in the unenviable position of either arguing with their Senate colleagues or going along with President Bush’s wishes for FISA reform. I suspected that the Nutroots would be upset with Reid’s decision so I checked out Kos. Here’s what I found:

Today I watch the news, awaiting the inevitable conclusion of the battle over telecom immunity. Dodd and Feingold have tried to head this off, but with one decision on Friday of last week, Reid sealed our fates. Simply put, he sold us out and I feel really personally betrayed by it.

I’ll still give him the benefit of the doubt to an extent. I believe Senator Reid thinks this is for the greater good. I’m sure he thinks that getting other desired reforms for FISA voted in is worth this sacrifice. He is, in a word, wrong. Giving the telecom companies this kind of protection sets the precedent for the future that breaking the law and playing ball with an abusive executive is in their benefit. Why worry about the legal consequences if it gets you a fat contract and your lobbying dollars will save you in the long run?

I’m disgusted. Totally disgusted.

Senator Reid, you have betrayed all of us and I feel just a bit embarrassed for having thought so much of you back then. I’m definitely glad I did it in spite of you, but now when I talk about why I joined the organization I’ll have to defend myself. I’ll have to sit there and explain why I thought it would be so good to see you speak when you’ve since done so much damage to our nation. I’ll just plead youthful naivety and work to remove you from your position of power.

One commenter is even calling for Feingold to be the next majority leader:

I was heartbroken when he cancelled his Presidential bid. But given his reasoning, I have to forgive him. He reminds me of what intergity in politics is all about. He would make a great majority leader.

The Agenda Media has called President Bush a lame duck president since just after his 2005 inauguration. Still, he keeps winning legislative victories such as this one. These aren’t tiny, symbolic victories, either. Reforming FISA is one of the biggest victories of his two-term administration.

Here’s the key portion of the article:

The bill under debate is the Senate Intelligence version, which grants immunity to telecoms and wide spying powers to the Administration. A competing bill from the Senate Judiciary omitted immunity and included more oversight over new spying powers.

Though Majority Leader Reid said he opposed immunity, he chose to override a hold on the Senate Intelligence bill and to virtually guarantee its success by choosing it over the Judiciary bill as the base bill.

Reid didn’t have much choice in choosing the Intelligence Committee’s bill. The majority of Americans will grant the government power to protect them. This legislation is proof of that. They don’t like the legislative branch’s restrictions, though that doesn’t mean that they don’t want oversight conducted.

I love seeing President Bush gain an important national security victory but it’s doubly sweet seeing Democrats split and discouraged, too. That’s what happens when they pay too much attention to the MoveOn.org/Daily Kos crowd.

Technorati Tags: Harry Reid, FISA, Reform, Daily Kos, MoveOn.org, President Bush, National Security, Lame Duck, Russ Feingold

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Foreign Policy, Intel, W. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.