Democratic Disappointment

The two party system only works when the opposition party acts as the loyal opposition. A large part of the Democratic party is saying they will fail to do this on the impending FISA bill. One of the people who has failed on this matter is the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama. His failure however is a more nuanced one than that of many as he has said that he plans to fight to get telecom immunity removed from the bill. However, at the moment he’s not one of the heroes of this story. The heroes of this story would be the two Senators who are willing to fight to defend the bill of rights. Those are Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. They released a joint statement about the bill:

“This is a deeply flawed bill, which does nothing more than offer retroactive immunity by another name. We strongly urge our colleagues to reject this so-called ‘compromise’ legislation and oppose any efforts to consider this bill in its current form. We will oppose efforts to end debate on this bill as long as it provides retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies that may have participated in the President’s warrantless wiretapping program, and as long as it fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans. If the Senate does proceed to this legislation, our immediate response will be to offer an amendment that strips the retroactive immunity provision out of the bill. We hope our colleagues will join us in supporting Americans’ civil liberties by opposing retroactive immunity and rejecting this so-called ‘compromise’ legislation.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has that he will join Dodd and Feingold in opposing the bill, though he used far less powerful language:

“Unfortunately, the FISA compromise bill establishes a process where the likely outcome is immunity to the telecommunications carriers who participated in the President’s warrantless wiretapping program. Sen. Reid remains opposed to retroactive immunity, which undermines efforts to hold the Bush Administration accountable for violating the law. Thus, he will cosponsor the amendment offered by Senators Dodd and Feingold to strip out the immunity provision, and support their efforts to strip immunity on the floor. “

Senator Dodd has delivered his prepared remarks which can be found here and Senator Feingold reiterated his position today on Democracy Now!

As for Senator McCain, as has been outlined previously, he has been in favor of telecom immunity as long as they apologize for what they had done. However, Senator McCain has changed his position again and is now favor of unconditional immunity for the telecoms.

The photo used was uploaded to Flickr by marcn who licensed it under a Creative Commons Attribution License and my use of the photo in no way indicates an endorsement of the article from marcn.