October 26, 2007: Dodd places a hold on new FISA bill

[14:03]
The Senate is done for the day. See you Monday but not until Tuesday for the next vote.

[11:01]
In a surprisingly frank speech on the Senate floor Christopher Dodd (CT) has announced that he has placed a hold on a new version of the FISA bill, which was passed by the Intelligence committee last week.

Dodd says that he has placed a hold on the bill because he does not believe that telecom companies should be granted retroactive immunity for cooperating with government requests to access the private communications of telecom customers.

It is unusual for a senator to state publicly that he or she has placed a hold on a bill. Holds are a common quirk of the Senate. Basically, for a bill to proceed toward debate on the floor of the Senate, senators must unanimously agree to bring it up for a "first reading." Because this action must unanimously agreed to, one single senator can hold up a bill by refusing to consent to the bill's first reading. This is what Dodd has done.

The new version of the FISA bill — the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 — would replace a hastily passed update of the legislation that the President signed into law in August. In hindsight, the Democratic Congress regretted passing a bill that fell short in protecting the civil liberties of Americans. The new FISA bill is supposed to fix shortcomings in the August bill.

However, there has been dispute over a provision in the new legislation that would grant to telecom companies retroactive immunity for their complicity in the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping of conversations by ordinary Americans in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

Jay Rockefeller (WV), who heads the Intelligence committee, championed the immunity provision last week. It later came to light that he had received a significant increase in campaign donations from telecom companies in 2007, totaling some $42k.

Thus, because of Dodd's hold the bill that Rockefeller's Intelligence committee signed off on last week appears to be stalled in the Senate. Of course, that leaves Americans still under the governance of August's dubious update of the FISA bill.

Preview

:The Senate is in session this morning but there won't be much action today. The Senate doesn't vote on Fridays or Mondays anymore.

Reid (NV) filed cloture on the Amtrak bill this morning. This limits further debate on the bill. I expect the Amtrak measure to pass next Tuesday. It provides $11b over the next six fiscal years for improvements to Amtrak and perhaps an addition of some intercity routes.