Dodd Announces He Will Delay Vote on FISA Until Immunity for Telecoms is Removed.
Senator Chris Dodd discusses his opposition to telecom immunity on October 20, 2007.Senator Chris Dodd announced today that he will place a hold on a bill to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) if the Senate Judiciary Committee does not remove language granting retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies who turned over customer records to the Bush administration without a court order.
Speaking to the press in Iowa, Dodd called the Bush administration’s intrusion into the private lives of Americans “shocking and reprehensible.”
“The right to privacy and the constitution do not belong to any candidate or any political party,” he said. “And it’s incumbent upon us all to stand up when those rights are being jeopardized.”
Amen to that.
And what a way to put Obama and Hillary against a wall. If they join Dodd in taking a stand on telecom immunity—which, by the way, should be a no-brainer—they look like followers rather than leaders. If they succumb to fears of looking weak on national security, they walk right into the same old trap of enabling an administration they vehemently oppose.
And our friends at Talking Points Memo have this twist on the tale: MoveOn is joining with top bloggers to put pressure on Obama and Clinton to step-up and back Dodd.
MoveOn spokesman Adam Green told TPM correspondent Greg Sargent today that the group will send out an email to "thousands of its members tomorrow morning, and thousands more throughout the day, asking them to call the offices of Hillary and Obama and demand that they publicly affirm their support for Dodd.”
Green also said that top bloggers such as the DailyKos would ask their readers to do the same.
This is going to be interesting. . . .
veracifier, Kevin Brannon, FISA, Immunity, DailyKos, Senator Chris Dodd, Telecommunications, MoveOn, Bloggers
