Looks Like We May Win A Round

Jay Rockefeller today announced on the Senate floor that he would not support cloture on the FISA bill without more amendments voted on. It looks to me like we have more than a showdown, we have a minor victory.

But it's important to understand what that victory means. It could be that the State of the Union is already written and the President doesn't want to take out all the attack lines:

The GOP hopes to use FISA as an electoral cudgel. Allow me to detail their groundwork: the Rove strategery for using national security for partisan political gain; planting this with Beltway press -- The Hill, Time, and Newsweek, for starters (who miss the fundamental point that telecom immunity is bribery to keep the Administration's lawbreaking secrets, undercutting the threat of economic sanction as hush money); trotting out Dick Cheney to sow the seeds of fearmongering; and the obstructionist GOP failure set-up just in time for the State of the Union.

Add in a press which does not comprehend the details, you have a recipe for confusion -- which is exactly the set-up for the SOTU that the Bush WH wants.

Except yesterday, the GOP overplayed their cocky, cowboy legislation act. From Sen. Russ Feingold:

"The conduct of Senate Republicans yesterday was shameless. After weeks of insisting that it is absolutely critical to finish the FISA legislation by February 1...they obstructed all efforts to actually work on the bill. Now they want to simply ram the deeply flawed Intelligence Committee bill through the Senate. They refused to allow amendments to be offered or voted on....

...Monday's cloture vote will be a test of whether the majority is willing to stand up to the administration and stand up for our rights."

Exactly right. The President can have his moment of national security-bashing on FISA, but the Congress cannot just give up their fundamental rights as an institution by failing to have substantive discussion and amendments to this bill. They must vote no on cloture, and everyone who voted to table the Judiciary Committee version of the bill must hear from their constituents. Furthermore, the public actually doesn't want the President to be able to spy on Americans without a warrant. Only Mr. "L'etat, c'est moi" and his band of followers believe that. This could backfire on Bush in a jiffy; nobody trusts him.

Bayh (202) 224-5623 (202) 228-1377
Carper (202) 224-2441 (202) 228-2190
Obama (202) 228-4260 (202) 224-2854
Inouye (202) 224-3934 (202) 224-6747
Johnson (202) 224-5842 (605) 332-2824
Landrieu (202)224-5824 (202) 224-9735
McCaskill (202) 224-6154 (202) 228-6326
Mikulski (202) 224-4654 (202) 224-8858
Nelson (FL) (202) 224-5274 (202) 228-2183
Clinton (202) 228-0282 (202) 224-4451
Nelson (NE) (202) 224-6551 (202) 228-0012
Pryor (202) 224-2353 (202) 228-0908
Salazar (202) 224-5852 (202) 228-5036
Specter (202) 224-4254 (202) 228-1229

We're still in this fight, and the deadline could be the Republicans', not the Democrats'.