I spy with my little eye

Sen. Chris Dodd steps up:

The Military Commissions Act. Warrantless wiretapping. Shredding of Habeas Corpus. Torture. Extraordinary Rendition. Secret Prisons.

No more.

I have decided to place a "hold" on the latest FISA bill that would have included amnesty for telecommunications companies that enabled the President's assault on the Constitution by illegally providing personal information on their customers without judicial authorization.

I said that I would do everything I could to stop this bill from passing, and I have.

It's about delivering results -- and as I've said before, the FIRST thing I will do after being sworn into office is restore the Constitution. But we shouldn't have to wait until then to prevent the further erosion of our country's most treasured document. That's why I am stopping this bill today.

This is the crappy FISA bill that would give blanket amnesty to telecommunications companies who BROKE THE DAMN LAW for GWBush's pleasure:

It will include full immunity for those companies that can demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States.

Such a demonstration, which the bill says could be made in secret, would wipe out a series of pending lawsuits alleging violations of privacy rights by telecommunications companies that provided telephone records, summaries of e-mail traffic and other information to the government after Sept. 11, 2001, without receiving court warrants. Bush had repeatedly threatened to veto any legislation that lacked this provision.

My friend Greg Saunders writing at HuffPost issues a challenge to another Senator running for President:

If you look around the liberal blogs today, there's a lot of frustration with the Senate bill to grant immunity to telecoms who have helped the Bush administration illegally spy on Americans. High profile bloggers like Glenn Greenwald, Markos Moulitsas, Atrios, Jane Hamsher, and Big Tent Democrat at MyDD have been urging their readers to put pressure on the Senate to block the bill by contacting...Chris Dodd.

If anyone from the Obama campign is paying attention, this should serve as a wake-up call. A representative cross section of the liberal blogosphere no longer thinks Barack Obama is willing to stand up to the Bush Administration. These bloggers have already been disappointed enough over the last few months they didn't even bother asking Obama to oppose the bill this time around, instead throwing their support behind a candidate who's trailing Dennis Kucinich and Undecided in the polls.

Indeed.