Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Countdown: Senator Chris Dodd On The FISA Victory

Play (371)

Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Chris Dodd, appeared on Tuesday’s Countdown to discuss his victory on the Senate floor yesterday, by forcing an amendment to the FISA legislation that would have given retroactive immunity to telecom companies that spied on Americans without warrants, to be tabled till next January - or February.

Senator Dodd showed the same passion and leadership talking with guest host Alison Stewart as he did last night on the Senate floor, vowing once again to filibuster the bill in January if immunity is still included and saying that to do so would be pretending like these crimes never happened. Dodd, unlike most of the Democratic leadership, shows no fear of President Bush, excoriating him for trampling all over our Constitution.

Dodd: “…The president said he’d veto the legislation if that immunity were not in the bill. Imagine this, passing a bill that would allow us to get better information about those who would do us harm and protect our rights. He’d squander all of that to protect a few phone companies. I’m not going to stand for it, I’ll go back and filibuster it if I have to. [snip]

“I’ve been asked, what’s the first thing I’d do as president in the year 2009, and January 20th. And I’m going to give you back your Constitution, because this administration has gone out of it’s way to do just the opposite and the Constitution does not belong to a political party or a candidate and they’ve been trampling all over it.”

Sadly, the New York Times followed much of the liberal media and buried the story of Dodd’s historic fight on page A29.