Sunday, March 02, 2008

Cover Your Heads, Here it Comes . . . .

The dems caving-in, that is.

Figured they would, and this looks like the beginning of the end courtesy of Reuters:


Top U.S. Democrat: accord near on spy bill, immunity
Sun Mar 2, 2008

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives may soon resolve a stalemate that has blocked efforts to renew an anti-terrorism spy law and shield phone companies from lawsuits, a key Democrat said on Sunday.

Lawmakers may consider a compromise bill that would renew the law, which expired last month, and possibly grant some sort of protection to phone companies from lawsuits. But it would differ from a Senate-passed measure backed by the White House that would provide blanket immunity.


"We think we're very close. Probably within the next week, we'll be able to hopefully bring it to a vote," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes of Texas said of efforts to craft and pass such legislation.

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Many Democrats have opposed immunizing phone companies that participated in the warrantless domestic spying program begun by President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks, saying they first needed to know what the companies did.

Reyes said House Democrats were now reviewing confidential U.S. documents they received in recent weeks about the warrantless electronic surveillance program and were talking with phone companies.

Consequently, Reyes said he now had an "open mind" on whether to shield companies from lawsuits.

Yes, and I'll bet the "open mind" of a lot of representatives includes an "open checkbook" for all those telecom company campaign contributions . . . .


2 comments:

RossK said...

How come I can't get that old Doors song out of my head?

Not to mention the haunting images of FF Coppola.

Could this really be the end?

.

West End Bob said...

Watching the national news this evening with a run-down of all the "hot-spots" world-wide, one does have to wonder, RossK . . . .