Good morning! Here's what we're facing today. Read this, it's important.
If you've been away from Livejournal for the weekend, you've missed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's stunt on Friday night on behalf of Chief Executive Bush. The shortest form: Senator Reid is ignoring Senator Dodd's hold on the retroactive-immunity FISA bill and is moving ahead with the version that provides retroactive immunity, shutting down the last functional train of investigation into illegal domestic wiretapping in the United States under the Bush administration. (See here, and, arguably, here, for why this is the last functional investigative path.) The bill is moving forward today.
Senator Dodd has suspended his Presidential campaign and is flying back to DC to lead an old-school real-life filibuster starting sometime around 10am today (Monday, 17 December 2007) by taking the floor and not yielding it. He has called Senators Clinton, Obama, and Biden on their pledges to support the filibuster; as of my writing (21:48 Sunday, this is a delayed post) they are not following through.
You still have time to read my Friday briefing on this and get caught up here. That URL is to a previous entry of mine on this topic (written Friday), and, in addition to the sitrep, lists contact data for most of the major players. You should also read here for a further update posted Sunday.
Contacting your own Senators to have them support the filibuster is vital. This is in part because if we want to defeat this, we need 41 votes, and even more importantly, because other Senators can ask questions of Senator Dodd while he has the floor. These questions can take up to 20 minutes, regardless of content. During this time, Senator Dodd can run to the bathroom, sit down for short rests, and so on.
It is literally a test of physical endurance at this point. That's where we are at this point; that's the line in the sand. Go help. Now.
If you've been away from Livejournal for the weekend, you've missed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's stunt on Friday night on behalf of Chief Executive Bush. The shortest form: Senator Reid is ignoring Senator Dodd's hold on the retroactive-immunity FISA bill and is moving ahead with the version that provides retroactive immunity, shutting down the last functional train of investigation into illegal domestic wiretapping in the United States under the Bush administration. (See here, and, arguably, here, for why this is the last functional investigative path.) The bill is moving forward today.
Senator Dodd has suspended his Presidential campaign and is flying back to DC to lead an old-school real-life filibuster starting sometime around 10am today (Monday, 17 December 2007) by taking the floor and not yielding it. He has called Senators Clinton, Obama, and Biden on their pledges to support the filibuster; as of my writing (21:48 Sunday, this is a delayed post) they are not following through.
You still have time to read my Friday briefing on this and get caught up here. That URL is to a previous entry of mine on this topic (written Friday), and, in addition to the sitrep, lists contact data for most of the major players. You should also read here for a further update posted Sunday.
Contacting your own Senators to have them support the filibuster is vital. This is in part because if we want to defeat this, we need 41 votes, and even more importantly, because other Senators can ask questions of Senator Dodd while he has the floor. These questions can take up to 20 minutes, regardless of content. During this time, Senator Dodd can run to the bathroom, sit down for short rests, and so on.
It is literally a test of physical endurance at this point. That's where we are at this point; that's the line in the sand. Go help. Now.