Good for them. Democrats in the Senate have rejected a Republican-backed cloture vote that would have forced an up-or-down vote on a Senate wiretapping bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecom companies. Encouragingly, only 48 senators voted for cloture, suggesting that the vote on the final bill might be close.
It remains to be seen if the Democrats have the spine to go on the defensive. If I’m reading things right, the president has threatened to veto any effort to temporarily expand the powers of the Protect America Act. In the president’s own parlance, he appears to be putting politics before the safety of Americans. So will the Democratic leadership fight fire with fire and tell the American public that the president is endangering American lives for the benefit of big telecom companies? I sure hope so, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.