Barack Obama has proven to everyone that his speeches can convince everyone that experience may not be everything. Although, his argument on experience would never work for say, someone surgically operating on your heart or saving you in court; apparently, the argument does work for someone campaigning to control the most powerful nation in the world.

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That’s what Jane Hamsher thinks. 

According to the ACLU, there is rumor of a backroom deal being brokered by Jay Rockefeller on FISA that will include retroactive immunity. I’ve heard from several sources that Steny Hoyer is doing the dirty work on the House side, and some say it will be attached to the new supplemental.

If she’s right, it’s about time. 

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The House of Representatives today voted to pass a Democratic plan to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, defying President Bush’s demand that telecom companies that cooperated with the Justice Department be granted immunity for their actions.

As I’ve said repeatedly, it makes no sense to penalize the telecoms for doing what they thought they had to do to protect our nation while allowing the driving force behind the information gathering process to escape punishment. 

The Democratic plan would allow telecommunications companies to be sued for their role in the administration’s much-disputed warrantless surveillance program.

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ABC’s Justin Rood reports that John Brennan, Barack Obama’s intelligence adviser, has gone on-record as being strongly in favor of granting immunity to telecoms that provided information to the national security apparatus in advance of a new law granting them that authority.

“I do believe strongly that [telecoms] should be granted that immunity,” former CIA official John Brennan told National Journal reporter Shane Harris in the interview.  “They were told to [cooperate] by the appropriate authorities that were operating in a legal context.”

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Sen. Jay Rockefeller is condemning what he calls “scare tactics” from the Bush administration in regards to the FISA bill. The bill, held up in the House after achieving bipartisan Senate approval, extends executive authority for wiretapping of international communications while granting immunity to telecommunications companies from lawsuits filed by privacy groups as well as political action groups seeking to score points against Bush in the final days of his presidency.

Rockefeller’s criticism is well-placed in that the Bush administration exaggerates the impact of the delay in wiretapping authority. The nation’s intelligence gathering did not “go dark” as a result of the delay, it merely reverted to earlier procedures that, while cumbersome and technologically outdated, nonetheless allow most intelligence gathering capabilities to continue. The dramatic hyperventilating in some segments of the right-wing media about looming disaster from terrorists exploiting a newfound hole opened by Democrats in Congress is not legitimate. (more…)

I don’t often agree with the aims of the ACLU, but I think that filing a suit against the Bush administration’s use of “unapproved”, to put it gently, wiretapping was a good thing.  Today the U.S. Supreme Court declined the opportunity to hear the case.

Steven R. Shapiro, Legal Director of the ACLU:

“Although we are deeply disappointed with the Supreme Court’s refusal to review this case, it is worth noting that today’s action says nothing about the case’s merits and does not suggest in any way an endorsement of the lower court’s decision. The court’s unwillingness to act makes it even more important that Congress insist on legislative safeguards that will protect civil liberties without jeopardizing national security.”

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Hot on the heels of doing the right thing by voting thumbs-up on immunity for the telecoms who provided information to the government in the wake of 9/11, the U.S. Senate took a big step in the wrong direction by passing the FISA Amendments Act of 2007 in overwhelming fashion: (more…)

Glen Greenwald writes:

The Senate today — led by Jay Rockefeller, enabled by Harry Reid, and with the active support of at least 12 (and probably more) Democrats, in conjunction with an as-always lockstep GOP caucus — will vote to legalize warrantless spying on the telephone calls and emails of Americans, and will also provide full retroactive amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms

Despite what Glen says, I think this is the correct response from the Senate as regards the telecom companies.  Hopefully the House will follow along soon.

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Glen Greenwald has an excellent piece up about the FISA amendments that are about to expire, the Bush administration’s bullying scare tactics that got them passed in the first place, and how the “imminent” danger no longer seems important to the president.

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The no-immunity stance was such an obvious loser that one has to wonder whether it was simply token political resistance to a Republican agenda that the Dems had no way of defeating anyway. (more…)

The Huffington Post writes that Christopher Dodd played the hero today, bringing Democrats’ plan to bring a new version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act:

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. (more…)