Let the DoddMania begin:

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.

Thank you Senator Dodd. You make me proud to be a supporter of your candidacy for President.

The S-CHIP veto overide has failed. The roll call vote is here. Via Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.), received by e-mail:

The House voted 273 to 156 to override the veto, however this was 16 votes short of the 2/3 necessary to override the President’s veto and pass this bill into law.

"I am disappointed the President is playing politics with our children’s health”, said Perlmutter. “As we saw with the vote on stem cell research, the President and many Republicans reject the will of the majority of Americans and the hopes and promise that basic health care services can provide to our children. Be assured, I will continue to fight to keep kids from hardworking American families ."

Yesterday Senator Chris Dodd said:

While the President may think that it's right to offer immunity to those who break the law and violate the right to privacy of thousands of law-abiding Americans, I want to assure him it is not a value we have in common and I hope the same can be said of my fellow Democrats in the Senate.

"For too long we have failed to respect the rule of law and failed to protect our fundamental civil liberties. I will do what I can to see to it that no telecommunications giant that was complicit in this Administration's assault on the Constitution is given a get-out-of-jail-free card."

Senator Dodd, what you must do is lead the fight against the capitulation by your fellow Dem Senators on this issue:

Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources.

. . . It was a victory for President Bush, whose aides lobbied heavily against the Democrats' [House] bill, and an embarrassment for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who had pushed for the measure's passage. The draft Senate bill has the support of the intelligence committee's chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), and Bush's director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. 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.

More...

Total capitulation.

Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources.

Here's more:

The draft Senate bill has the support of the intelligence committee's chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), and Bush's director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. 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.

Why am I not surprised? Because I never expected anything else since August when the Dems signed onto Bush's bill so they could go home and vacation during the August recess.

The saddest part is that FISA didn't need to be gutted or amended. It needed to be followed.

More...

There is a passage in today's WaPo article on the Senate capitulation on FISA that demonstrates how little Democrats understand of the power of the Congress to do nothing:

An adroit Republican parliamentary maneuver ultimately sank the bill. GOP leaders offered a motion that would have sent it back to the House intelligence and Judiciary committees with a requirement that they add language specifying that nothing in the measure would apply to surveilling the communications of bin Laden, al-Qaeda or other foreign terrorist organizations.

Approval of the motion would have restarted the legislative process, effectively killing the measure by delay. Democratic leaders scrambled to persuade their members to oppose it, but with Republicans accusing Democrats of being weak on terrorism, a "no" vote proved too hard to sell, and so the bill was pulled from the floor.

Stacey Bernards, a spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), called the Republican maneuver "a cheap shot, totally political."

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, called it a "perfect storm" of progressive Democrats who did not think the bill protected basic constitutional rights and of Republicans who took advantage of the lack of unity. "It was too precipitous a process, and it ended up in a train wreck," she said. "It was total meltdown."

The vote on the Democrats' proposed changes to FISA was delayed today.

Consideration of the Democratic-crafted measure to strengthen oversight by a special intelligence court was halted by Democratic leaders amid uncertainty about whether it could pass, and in the face of a veto threat from President Bush.

What it means: The Dems may not be able to pass a bill that revises and limits the powers included in Bush's August bill they allowed to pass right under our noses.

Inability of Democrats to achieve a vote in the House this week raises additional questions about its fate.

Any bill the House approves would have to be reconciled with a Senate version, with additional changes likely in that process.

So all those promises by the Dems telling us they voted for Bush's bill because they'd have a chance to redo it? Looks less likely now. Which means Bush's bill stays.

Think Progress has more.

Christy at Firedoglake has all the update details, phone numbers and more on FISA and S-CHIP.

Roll Call (subscriber only) reports the GOP is spoiling for a FISA fight, hoping to distract attention from S-CHIP. The Carpetbagger Report has this quote from the Roll Call article:

Specifically, Republicans are planning to use the kidnapping and subsequent murder of three U.S. soldiers in Iraq earlier this year to put a “human face” on the issue, the House staffer explained. According to this aide, while Democrats’ arguments about privacy may resonate with some voters, Republicans believe using real-world examples of how a weak FISA has put U.S. troops in danger will help galvanize public support for their position.

The House Judiciary Committee today passed the RESTORE Act, the Democrats' answer to August's FISA rewrite. There were three amendments that passed as well.

• Jackson-Lee (TX): An amendment to clarify the bill's language and prevent "reverse targeting" by requiring the Administration to obtain a regular FISA warrant whenever a “significant purpose of an acquisition is to acquire the communications of a specific person reasonably believed to be located in the United States” rather than waiting until said person formally becomes a target.

• Nadler (NY): An amendment to improve court oversight over the government’s compliance with the FISA Court’s orders by requiring the court to assess compliance with its orders as opposed to merely authorizing it to do so and by removing limitations on its review.

More....

Glenn Greenwald has hope on FISA:

But at least thus far, from everything I can tell, the picture is more complicated and less depressing than this NYT article suggests, and the defeat is not yet a fait accompli. To begin with, the bill to be proposed today by the House Democratic leadership actually contains some surprisingly good and important provisions. . .

But that bill will never see the President's desk. As Glenn himself notes:

It is definitely possible that this is all just deceit, that House leaders introduced this bill strictly to placate their Progressive Caucus and their base and that they have no real intention of fighting for these provisions, but instead will give Bush what he wants once Mike McConnell starts accusing them of Helping the Terrorists and they begin negotiating in secret again.

Yes, that is exactly what will happen. We know the cast of characters already. This is a repeat of the Iraq Supplemental fight in March. The House bill will be eviscerated. More.

The Democrats will introduce their FISA wiretap bill tomorrow.

The Justice Department would have to reveal to Congress the details of all electronic surveillance conducted without court orders since Sept. 11, 2001, including the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program, if a new Democratic wiretapping bill is approved.

The draft bill, scheduled to be introduced to Congress Tuesday, would also require the Justice Department to maintain a database of all Americans subjected to government eavesdropping without a court order, including whether their names have been revealed to other government agencies.

This is the rewrite bill Dems promised before the August recess:

More...

Good on the Progressive Caucus:

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the House Majority Leader, postponed a press conference announcing new reforms of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act after progressive lawmakers banded together and said they would fight any legislation that did not include a set of eight principles on wiretapping that preserve the "rule of law."

"What's most significant is that the Progressive Caucus came together and said to the leadership that all 72 of us require that these provisions be included," said Caroline Fredercikson, Legislative Director for the American Civil Liberties Union. "This changes the dynamic significantly."

Rep. Hoyer had planned to roll out the new FISA reform bill at 1:30 PM today. A spokesperson from his office told the Huffington Post that the House Intelligence Committee had decided to postpone completion of the legislation, though it's not clear that the announcement from the Progressive Caucus influenced their decision. Votes in the House were also canceled today. The committee was not available at press time.

Now do the same on any Iraq funding without a date certain to end the Debacle.

The Senate approved a $459 billion Pentagon funding bill Wednesday.

Included in the package: $3 billion for the 700 mile border fence and $794 million for border security along the Mexico-U.S. border.

This is what the Republicans wanted all along. Money for enforcement, none for immigration reform.

Did the Dems vote against it? Of course not. The border provisions passed on a vote of 95 to 1.

Also in the bill: $43 billion for new weapons systems.