Crooks and Liars » Dodd To Filibuster FISA Bill.
It's pretty sad that the nominally Democratic Senate leadership has
- Refused to recognize Dodd's “hold” on the FISA bill with full retroactive blanket amnesty for telecom companies that we now know abetted illegal spying on US citizens starting before 911.
- Scheduled the vote just before the Iowa caucuses to make it harder for candidates to take part, and shortly before the recess — creating pressure to vote.
I would have hoped that some other Senators would share Dodd's conviction that this issue is worth going to the mat on — one Senator can't keep up a filibuster forever. Three can. Where are the others on this issue?
Thank you Senator Dodd for picking this issue and taking it seriously. (This is Dodd's first filibuster in a 27-year career).
Dodd does have help from Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold. This is the first real filibuster in 15 years.
This is not hyperbole: The people NOT standing with Dodd, these people support the right of the government to spy on you without any judicial oversight whatsover. At the risk of evoking Godwin’s Law, these were the scare tales of the radical rightwing National Socialist Party in Germany and the radical leftwing Soviets in Russia that Americans above a certain age grew up with.
Torture, spying on citizens, unfettered executive power – this was what America was ‘fighting’ against. Now I’m not naive enough to believe in that happy naive time when we had benevolent leaders, but at the very least we pretended to uphold these values.
But, hey, people choose their path.