Blue Mass Group

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Who’s with Dodd on the FISA filibuster?

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Chris Dodd, again, is out in front on an issue that is actually very important.

On a conference call with reporters just moments ago, Chris Dodd’s deputy campaign manager, Amos Hochstein, just vowed that the Senator will filibuster the Senate FISA bill containing telecom immunity later this afternoon for as long as he possibly can hold out.

“He will speak as long as he can,” Hochstein said. “He will speak until he can no longer.”

Asked how long he would be willing to stay away from Iowa, where he needs to be campaigining, Hochstein said: “As much as we’d love to be in Iowa, this is extremely important to the Senator.”

This isn’t the first time Dodd has led the pack on issues that actually matter right now, and about which some of the candidates (particularly those who are sitting Senators) can do something, instead of just bloviating.  The big question is whether the other sitting Senators — Clinton, Obama, and Biden — are willing to leave Iowa to support Dodd in his effort.

This, by the way, is apparently a real, old-fashioned filibuster — my understanding is that Dodd is planning to talk nonstop.  There’s only so long he can physically do that, so if the other Senators were there to back him up, it’d be nice.

By the way, you can watch the Senate debate on CSPAN.  

UPDATE: This excellent post on DKos tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the intricate Senate procedures surrounding this thing.

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    • this round, getting Reid to pull the telecom bill until after the new year. So that’s what leadership looks like.

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      p>All this talk about Hillary, Obama and Edwards, while Dodd is doing the heavy lifting.

      • I think Kerry actually left again on Friday… or not.  It turns out that Kerry doesn’t use my services as a travel agent.

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        p>Anybody got the real scoop, because I fear that I just might not on this one.

        • Some confusion about the Senator’s schedule is certainly understandable, though, because his last ten days have been extremely busy. (Just check out the last couple of Monday-morning newsreels from the independent gang of video bloggers over at KerryVision.net — he’s been keeping them plenty busy, too.)

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          p>His trip to Bali was cut quite short by the actions of the Roadblock Republicans who kept filibustering the energy bill, but he thought it was so important to speak up for the non-Bush voices of sanity there that he refused to let them force him not to go at all.

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          p>He voted in the Senate that Friday afternoon, flew halfway around the world that night and the next day, made a powerful presentation at the Bali conference on Sunday, then flew halfway around the world again so he could get back to the Senate in time to cast floor votes again on Tuesday.

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          p>He spent the rest of the week keeping very busy in the Senate and meeting with the media to make sure the critical elements of the Bali conference stayed in the public eye. He spent the weekend working in Massachusetts, but cancelled some pre-scheduled events here so that he could be back in the Senate this morning for the FISA votes.

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          p>Not exactly the relaxing vacation schedules and cushy travel perks that some folks seem to assume people like Sen. Kerry enjoy.  But hey, at least he did manage to squeeze in time to catch the Pats game on Sunday…

            • Peter Porcupine is playing off the Rethuglican narrative (keeping promise) that Democratic leaders are part of the elite or kowtow to it, Kerry is a member of the “elite” and elites take lots of vacations.

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              p>Our narrative has to be that Rethuglicans don’t care about government. That’s why Huckabee, Giuliani, and Romney are their front runners: someone who knows nothing about foreign policy, someone who appoints particularly bad people, and someone who lost interest in his job as governor, i.e., people who don’t care about governing.

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              p>Their fight against elitism is a fight against competence. It attempts to substitute folksiness for qualifications. A telling example was Terry Schiavo. A bigger example? The entire Iraq War was a Rethuglican fight against competence. They systematically silenced experts.

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              p>Look what it got us.

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              p>So when we hear Rethuglicans making fun of elites we should remember where contempt for expert opinion has taken this country.

              • is so hey, look over there!.  answer this, peter porcupine: how many years of his presidency has the Rethuglican in chief spent (so far) on vacation?  i’ll give you a head start.  it’s well over 1 year

  3. there was a cloture vote earlier, which suprisingly Ted Kennedy voted for even though his office had said he was joining Chris Dodd’s fillibuster when I called this morning, so the purpose of that specific vote is not clear to me. John Kerry voted “no” along iwth Dodd, Russ Feingold, Barbara Boxer, and a few others. Biden, Clinton, and Obama weren’t present, and Obama’s senate office did not know his position this morning when I called. Obama’s got 5 events in Iowa today so looks like he won’t be there, even though months ago, (as did Clinton and Biden), he said he was supporting Dodd on this.

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    p>The bill up now is the Intelligence committee version that includes telecom amnesty. Dodd is pushing an amendment to strip that out, and Kennedy and Boxer have spoken supporting it so far. Dianne Feinstein has put up a “compromise” amendment to change it so the FISA court will decide if the telecom companies will get blanket amnesty. Seems like passing the buck to me. Sheldon Whitehouse spoke too but I was watching much then…

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    p>Reid was trying to make it so the Dodd amendment would need 60 votes to be added to the bill for some reason, while claiming to support the amendment. How recently did he schedule this vote, was it on Friday? The other campaigns should have postponed the events, but the Senate Majority leader should have made sure to give them the time to so that we have a full bench to defend the constitution. The GOP controlled Senate scheduled votes in order to embarrass John Kerry in 2004, the Democrats shouldn’t do that to our own candidates if they can avoid it.

    • The President has said that American lives will be sacrificed if Congress does not change FISA.  But he has also said that he will veto any FISA bill that does not grant retro-active immunity.  No immunity, no FISA bill.  So if we take the President at his word, he’s willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies.

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