'Blue Dog' Democrats May Give Bush Victory on Spying

A plan to grant legal immunity to telecommunication companies that cooperated with potentially criminal spying would pin another Bush victory on the conservative Democratic group

Go to Truthout.org original
Democrats in the House of Representatives - teetering on the verge of compliance with the spy power demands of the Bush administration - have devised a plan that would give the president everything he has demanded, while keeping the majority of Democrats' fingerprints off the most controversial elements of the proposed legislation.

The bill at hand is an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a law intended to prevent misuse of surveillance powers by presidents in the wake of the Watergate scandal. The legislation passed the Senate with the majority of Democrats voting against it. The bill evoked heated disagreement between conservative and progressive Democrats because it would broaden presidential spy powers and would grant retroactive legal immunity for a broad range of companies that may have broken the law by participating in the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance programs.

Civil liberties groups and progressive members of Congress oppose immunity because it would cut off around 40 lawsuits against the telecoms - court cases that have been the only significant source of information about the administration's surveillance activity. However, House Democratic leaders face mounting pressure to grant telecoms immunity, from the Bush administration and from members of the Blue Dog coalition - a group of conservative Democrats who often cross the aisle to vote with Republicans on legislation framed by the Bush administration as pertaining to national security.

more...