Thank Dodd, telecom immunity stalled

By Libby

How do these staff reporters at the WaPo deserve to have a job covering politics when they write headlines like this? Telecom Immunity Issue Derails Spy Law Overhaul. The misleading headline only gets worse as you read this insipid hit piece that implies the temporary defeat of the FISA 'fix" is somehow threatening the pursuit of terrorists.

You would have to be a complete idiot not to realize by now that this 'fix' has nothing to do with finding terrorists and is simply of coverup of White House criminality. Maybe these 'reporters' forgot the fix was supposed to repair the atrocity they passed in August by providing stronger oversight over the process that they virtually eliminated last summer. It wasn't ever supposed to be to excuse the telecoms for putting millions of tax dollars worth of contracts ahead of the rule of law, that is until the White House decided it should be so.

But let's not waste time on failed media. Nothwithstanding the slimy insinuations by the WaPo, Chris Dodd saved the day and so did we. Cernig covered the events of yesterday and has the list of the ten Senators who stood up for us on the first vote. At that point it looked like Dodd would fail, despite his brave efforts, and he would have, had not all of you flooded the Senators with emails and phone calls. Dodd's blog has the stats and the hundreds of thousands of comments from the voters is why Dodd was able to succeed. Don't let anyone tell you that one letter can't make a difference. It did because enough of us believed it would and sent one.

But the biggest lesson is what we learned about the candidates yesterday. In Iowa, only a few days ago, four Democratic Senators who are running for president stood up on a stage and made pretty pledges to restore constitutionality to the government and repeal Bush's excessive power grabs. When given an opportunity to show leadership and fight to hold the White House accountable for their current conduct, only one showed up on the Senate floor to walk his talk -- Chris Dodd.

And what were the other three candidates doing? Fighting only for themselves. Booman has the details on where Hillary, Obama and Biden were, talking about fighting for change. Apparently what they mean by that is, it's very important to them that the voters change their street address to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Only Dodd was willing to put his political future aside, at no small cost to himself, in order to fight for us and the constitution.

We can savor our victory for the moment but the fight is far from over. Dodd has pledged to stand his ground. He'll need us to continue to stand with him. You can watch Dodd's statement and MSNBC coverage at the links. Dodd graciously thanks us for the help and we owe him just as much gratitude. Neither of us could have done it alone. Together, we did something formidable yesterday, that even six months ago seemed impossible. We made a difference. Let's not stop now.