Slashdot Mirror
Senator Slaps Down FISA Telecom Immunity
cleetus writes "Today Senator Chris Dodd decided to put a hold on the FISA bill, one of the provisions of which would have granted immunity to any telecom which, if found to have acted in good faith, violated U.S. laws in turning over customer data to the government. According to TPM Election Central, "By doing this, Dodd can effectively hold up the telecom immunity bill, because bills are supposed to have unanimous consent in the Senate before going forward. One Senator can make it very difficult to bring a bill to the floor by objecting to allowing it to go to a vote." This throws a fairly big roadblock in front of this bill, covered by Slashdot earlier today."
The good guys can play that game too.
Technoli
From a conservative newsite: (http://www.baltimorereporter.com/?p=4499)
...
"RUSH: Mike in Chicago, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush, how you doing today?
RUSH: Fine, sir, thank you.
CALLER: Good. Why is it that you always just accuse the Democrats of being against the war and that there's actually no Republicans that can possibly be against the war?
RUSH: Well, who are these Republicans? I can think of Chuck Hagel, and I can think of Gordon Smith, two Republican senators, but they don't want to lose the war like the Democrats do. I can't think of who the Republicans are in the anti-war movement.
CALLER: I'm not talking about the senators. I'm talking about the general public. You accuse the public and all the Democrats of being, you know, wanting to lose -
RUSH: Oh, come on, here we go again. I utter the truth, and you can't handle it so you gotta call here and change the subject. How come I'm not also hitting Republicans? I don't know a single Republican or conservative, Mike, who wants to pull out of Iraq in defeat. The Democrats have made the last four years about that specifically.
CALLER2: I have a retort to Mike in Chicago, because I am serving in the American military, in the Army. I've been serving for 14 years, very proudly.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER2: I'm one of the few that joined the Army to serve my country, I'm proud to say, not for the money or anything like that. What I would like to retort to is that, what these people don't understand, is if we pull out of Iraq right now, which is not possible because of all the stuff that's over there, it would take us at least a year to pull everything back out of Iraq, then Iraq itself would collapse and we'd have to go right back over there within a year or so.
RUSH: There's a lot more than that that they don't understand. The next guy that calls here I'm going to ask them, "What is the imperative of pulling out? What's in it for the United States to pull out?" I don't think they have an answer for that other than, "When's he going to bring the troops home? Keep the troops safe," whatever.
CALLER2: Yeah.
RUSH: It's not possible intellectually to follow these people.
CALLER2: No, it's not. And what's really funny is they never talk to real soldiers. They pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and spout to the media.
RUSH: The phony soldiers.
CALLER2: Phony soldiers. If you talk to any real soldier and they're proud to serve, they want to be over in Iraq, they understand their sacrifice and they're willing to sacrifice for the country."
Note the plurals: "soldiers". It's pretty clear from context that they are referring to any soldiers that have spoken out against the Iraq war. The immediate trigger was the prior caller Mike, who has nothing to do with "Jesse Macbeth" that Rush mentioned some 2 minutes later on.
Don't just look at his edited video, read the transcipt.
It IS indeed good to know the facts.