FISA: Sen. Klobuchar, will you stand up for what's right?

[Updated: Iraq Vote]

When Amy Klobuchar (DFL-MN) ran for the Senate she said she would stand up for our civil rights and hold the Bush Administration accountable. However, in August she voted for the FISA bill that allowed the Bush Administration to continue their illegal, warrantless wiretapping. I was furious with her vote. When I and several other bloggers met with her in September, I wrote:

However, she admitted that she wouldn't vote for legislation like this again. She claimed that she wasn't part of the negotiations over this bill and ... it is not something she will vote for in the long term, and that the version she did vote for could have been better ... She claims that she and the rest of the Committee will carefully examine the upcoming legislation and make sure that American's rights are not ignored again.
(Sen. Amy Klobuchar meets with local bloggers)

I have contacted the Senators office in the wake of the worst case scenario FISA bill coming before the Senate. I have not been able to get any statement or inclination of how the Senator would vote. The staffer I spoke with claimed that the situation was too fluid to know what was going on. Why is it so difficult for Sen. Klobuchar to do the right thing and take a principled stand against warrantless wiretapping of Americans and against telecom immunity?

She is so good on so many other issues like global warming, renewable energy, the farm bill, vet issues and credit card rate reform that it baffles me why she voted so poorly in August and now won't take a stand on an issue that so clear cut? Either take a stand or tell us why you cannot!

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Update: Amy just did what she said she'd do and voted against Iraq funding without timelines for withdrawal like she said she would! Yeahhhh!!!
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Luckily for her, Amy is off the hook until January as it looks we won a temporary victory over Harry Reid, the Republicans and the Bush Administration. Read on if you want the whole story and what's at stake.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to ram a FISA bill through the Senate that allowed the Bush Administration to continue their illegal, warrantless wiretapping and would grant the telecom companies that participating in this criminal enterprise immunity from all civil suits and criminal proceedings.

Now for a little background. I highly recommend for those interested to read ALL of Glenn Greenwalds posts on this issue.

On October 18, it was announced that Dick Cheney and Jay Rockefeller [D?-WV] had reached an agreement on a new FISA bill that would dramatically expand the President's warrantless surveillance powers beyond what the original FISA law provided. It also would provide full-scale retroactive immunity for all telecoms which participated in the President's illegal spying efforts, a gift that would effectively end all efforts to investigate the administration's illegal spying programs and hold the lawbreakers accountable.

That day, The Washington Post announced that "Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration" which "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."
...
By that point, both prongs of the White House's FISA demands -- increased surveillance powers and telecom immunity -- seemed to be an absolute fait accompli. It would all follow the same depressing pattern we've seen all year long whereby the President easily gets everything he demands from the Congress.

Thus, the usual roster of obedient establishment propagandists -- the David Igantius's and Fred Hiatts and Joe Kleins -- dutifully lined up (as always) to support the White House's demands, explaining condescendingly to the masses how Important it was for their Safety that telecoms receive something the masses would never get: immunity from having deliberately broken our laws for years. They further insisted that when the telecoms and high government officials broke our laws, it was only because they were acting patriotically, doing this all for our own Good (without mentioning that they were profiting immensely in the process). By that point, nobody other than blogs, the ACLU, EFF, and similar groups were paying the slightest attention to this lobbyist-led, bipartisan establishment scheme, which was well on its way to being implemented.
(Glenn Greenwald)

Then it looked like Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) would come to the rescue and single-handedly filibuster the bill. Also Dodd asked to have a hold placed on the bill, but in an unprecedented move, Reid ignored Dodd's hold request. Reid has honored every single hold request by Republicans, yet denies a Democrat's wish to stop the abuse of our privacy rights and the protection of the telecoms who aided and abetted this criminal activity.

So Dodd began to filibuster. After eight hours, Reid pulled the bill from consideration until January.

A smile on his reddened face, Dodd was at once gracious and joyful by the turn of events. He had been arguing his case for approximately eight hours. . . .

"Everyone who spoke on the floor said they were grateful for Dodd taking a stand," said a staffer to the Senator who asked not to be named. "They said if it weren't for him they wouldn't be having this much-needed debate."
(Huffington Post)

What baffles me is where were all the Democrats who said they'd stand up to the Bush Administration. Dodd's first move was to threaten a filibuster and demand a cloture vote. This would have required 60 votes to move the bill forward. 76 Senators including Sen. Klobuchar voted to move the bill along. Were they meekly going to go along with our disgraceful Senate Majority Leader and Dick Cheney's lapdog, Sen. Rockefeller (who has suddenly been getting large donations from the telecom industry), if Sen. Dodd didn't save their butts?

Harry Reid has since attempted to cover his butt by requesting that the Bush Administration provide the full Senate with the documents previously reviewed by the Judicial and Intelligence Committees.

In a letter to Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) requested that the full Senate be briefed on documents pertaining to the legal justifications for the administration’s warrantless wiretapping progam. With the Senate debating FISA reform, Reid says “it is of critical importance that all Senators…have an opportunity to review these key documents themselves.” Previously, only the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees have had access to the documents.
(Think Progress)

Furthermore, Reid is now lying to the American people in claiming that despite trying to ram Dick Cheney's FISA bill through the Senate he's opposed to telecom immunity.

Even now, in the wake of his defeat yesterday, Harry Reid is doing everything possible to undermine efforts to defeat the telecom immunity bill that he claims he opposes. This is from today's Washington Post article detailing the defeat of telecom immunity ("in the face of more than a dozen amendments to the bill and guerrilla tactics from its opponents, Reid surprised his colleagues when he announced there would not be enough time to finish the job")

Reid spokesman Jim Manley said the decision had nothing to do with the efforts of Dodd and his allies.

There are Harry Reid's true colors: going out of his way to deny that the pernicious group known as "Dodd and his allies" had any effect whatsoever on the Senate's efforts to bow to every one of Bush's demands. We can't have any notion that the Establishment's will was disrupted in any way by dirty outside forces.
(Glenn Greenwald)

Head on over to firedoglake for some speculation on why Reid pulled the FISA bill.