The Latest - Sigh - On FISA

It's actually depressing to give the news on the Senate's FISA bill, which should come to a merciful but unfortunate end tomorrow, coinciding with the Potomac primary so Obama and Clinton probably can't vote, and the headlines will be small and inside the paper. Over the weekend The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal had dueling editorials, the WSJ using the novel phrase "the anti-antiterror left" and the NYT using common sense.

So Mr. Rockefeller and other senators want to give the companies immunity even if the administration never admits they were involved. This is short-circuiting the legal system. If it is approved, we will then have to hope that the next president will be willing to reveal the truth.

Mr. Rockefeller argues that companies might balk at future warrantless spying programs. Imagine that!

This whole nightmare was started by Mr. Bush’s decision to spy without warrants — not because they are hard to get, but because he decided he was above the law. Discouraging that would be a service to the nation.

This debate is not about whether the United States is going to spy on Al Qaeda, it is about whether it is going to destroy its democratic principles in doing so. Senators who care about that should vote against immunity.

The problem, of course, is that this "debate" on FISA is all a big game of Kabuki. By unanimous consent, and that means every single solitary Senator agreed to it, voting on amendments to the Intelligence Committee version of the bill were set at a high enough level that they will not get the votes they need. Senator Leahy can send an email out to his list about how we all have to push our representatives about fixing a bad bill, but he could have objected to the absurd 60-vote standards for some amendments which had majority support. And he's claiming he will "filibuster" the final bill, but there aren't 41 votes to hold that filibuster, and they simply plan to talk for a few hours to raise their objection. What you saw coming out of the Senate Intelligence Committee is what will go into conference, that's the bottom line.

So really, this debate shifts to the conference report. And while some important members of the House, including John Dingell, are giving positive signals that they will resist all efforts to allow telecom amnesty in the final bill, there are enough Bush Dogs in the House to probably give the President whatever he wants. I find it really difficult to keep my hopes up that we can get amnesty out of this bill. But it's certainly dead in the Senate, so we have to shift our attention to the House.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald points to a question about FISA so ridiculous from Chris Wallace that even George W. Freakin' Bush feels the need to dial it back.