Feingold, Dodd to Fight FISA

After Democratic Senators Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold issued a strongly worded statement opposing the FISA bill that passed the House of Representatives yesterday, rumors of a filibuster quickly began to circulate. But nowhere in the actual statement did it say that Dodd and Feingold would filibuster the legislation.

On Amy Goodman's TV/radio program Democracy Now, Goodman pushed for a clarification from Feingold:

GOODMAN: Senator Feingold, will you filibuster this bill?

FEINGOLD: We are going to resist this bill. We are going to make sure that the procedural votes are gone through. In other words, a filibuster is requiring sixty votes to proceed to the bill, sixty votes to get cloture on the legislation. We will also-Senator Dodd and I and others will be taking some time to talk about this on the floor. We're not just going to let it be rubberstamped.

GOODMAN: Would you filibuster, though?

FEINGOLD: That's what I just described.

Dodd and Feingold have their legislative bag of tricks out and they are going to make passage of the so-called FISA compromise as painful as possible. At the end of the 2007 Congressional session, Dodd ran out the clock on an earlier version of FISA that included telecom immunity.Oddly, Feingold indicated only yesterday that he would not filibuster the arrangement between Democratic leaders in Congress and the Bush Administration despite the fact that it included immunity. Feingold and Dodd intend to introduce an amendment stripping immunity from the bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will co-sponsor that amendment. Today Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi expressed support for a filibuster, saying, "It would be healthy and wholesome."

Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama supports stripping telecom immunity. Liberal bloggers have launched a campaign to pressure Democrats, especially Obama, to reject all aspects of the FISA legislation, which they view as an affront to the fourth amendment. MoveOn.Org called on Obama to uphold a pledge he made to filibuster any version of FISA that includes telecom immunity. Obama's campaign has not indicated if Obama would join a filibuster by Dodd and Feingold.