HIGH NOON

The earth shook yesterday, but you’d never know it because the media apparently decided it wasn’t news. Not a peep on the national news, either last night or this morning. Not a word in the Times today. You’d almost think nothing happened.

What did happen is that Sen. Chris Dodd, a second tier presidential candidate in the Democratic primary, stood on the floor of the Senate yesterday for more than eight hours and managed to block, albeit temporarily, passage of the FISA bill, which would have granted retroactive immunity to phone companies for their participation in illegal surveillance of American citizens. Here’s the deal:

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act stipulates that in order to tap a phone or secretly read the of “suspected” terrorists, you must first get the approval of the FISA court, made up of eleven judges. This court is historically supple, virtually never saying no. But that wasn’t good enough for Bush and co., who wanted the freedom to spy on suspected terrorists with absolutely no judicial oversight. So five years ago they went to a number of telecommunication companies, AT&T for one, and asked them to simply ignore the law and tap whatever phones they were told to. Several companies said no. AT&T said yes, and now they want immunity from any possible prosecution. President Bush has threatened to veto the bill if it does not include this immunity, thereby endangering our national security. In other words, he’s willing to put us at risk in order to protect these phone companies.

Chris Dodd saw what had to be done and he did it. He deserves our thanks. And I suspect he deserves our votes.

a foot on either side