A Reid aide tells Greg Sargent that “Reid refused to jam this bill through the Senate because he believes it’s an important bill that deserves to be debated thoroughly.” FireDogLake writes, “Well played, Senator Dodd.”Here's Dodd earlier today, very fired up:
Matt Browner-Hamlin at the Dodd campaign says:
Senator Dodd issued the following statement in response to Senator Reid pulling the Intel Committee bill from consideration until the new year:
"Today we have scored a victory for American civil liberties and sent a message to President Bush that we will not tolerate his abuse of power and veil of secrecy. The President should not be above the rule of law, nor should the telecom companies who supported his quest to spy on American citizens. I want to thank the thousands of Americans throughout the country that stood with me to get this done for our country."
The progressive blogs, who played a huge role in lobbying the Senate to support Dodd's leadership against retroactive immunity, are joining in the celebration now that the FISA bill has been pulled until next year.
Sam Stein at HuffPost adds:
Senator Chris Dodd won a temporary victory today after his threats of a filibuster forced Democratic leadership to push back consideration of a measure that would grant immunity to telecom companies that were complicit in warrantless surveillance.
The measure was part of a greater bill to reorganize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Earlier on Monday, the Senate, agreed to address a bill that would have overhauled FISA, authorized the monitoring of people outside the United States, given secret courts the power to approve aspects of surveillance, and granted telecom companies retroactive immunity for past cooperation.
But the threat of Dodd's filibuster, aimed primarily at the latter measure, persuaded Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, to table the act until January. A compromise on the immunity will ostensibly be worked out in the interim period.
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