House passes FISA bill..without Telco immunity.

Bush has of course threatened to veto it, and the vote total is below the amount needed to override a veto..but the House did send BushCo a hearty ‘kiss off’ before they left town for a two-week hiatus. The Rethug members of Congress, as usual, screamed the Democrats were undermining national security.

The Democrats, as usual, said the President and his boot-lickers were using fear-mongering as an election year tool. But the Democrats did cave in on an important issue, as usual. From the Reuters writeup:

While the House-passed bill would not grant immunity, it would allow phone companies to present their cases in a closed-door court, with the judge given access to confidential documents about the surveillance and the authorization for it.

The writeup is full of verbal bitchslaps of each other from both sides of the aisle. Slog through it if you must, but we are still in a holding pattern on this one folks..

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On Surveillance Bill, Debate Postponed Till Monday

A few turncoat Democrats sided with the Republicans today to force the Surveillance Bill onto the Senate floor.

Isn’t that special? I didn’t think so either.  From TPMmuckraker:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) moved for a vote on cloture — that would force an end to debate and trigger a simple majority vote on the underlying Senate intelligence committee version of the bill (which has retroactive immunity). To do that, he’ll need 60 votes.

Reid objected to this, said that he would vote against it, and then postponed the vote until Monday.

Reid is a pimp, plain and simple. The Democrats are so damn afraid of being called ’soft on terrah’ they will pretty much pass anything BushCo wants at this point.  If you don’t believe me, read the letter Reid’s dumbass sent up to the Pres this afternoon. I refuse to post it here, so click the link at the top of the post.

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