Feinstein and Whitehouse are still trying to strike a compromise with the Specter bill which would let the government be sued in place of the telecoms. It passed out of the house without the immunity for the telecoms, but it appears not to be over completely.
From the New York Times:
Panel Drops Immunity From Eavesdropping Bill“The full Senate will yet need to resolve the immunity issue,” Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement after the committee vote.
Even as Mr. Leahy sent the bill to the full Senate without dealing with the immunity issue, there were efforts by leading Democrats and Republicans to strike a compromise.
Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the panel, is pushing a plan that would substitute the federal government as the defendant in the lawsuits against the telecommunications companies. That would mean that the government, not the companies, would pay damages in successful lawsuits.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, said in an interview after the vote Thursday that he would support a compromise along the lines of the Specter proposal.
Mr. Whitehouse was one of two Democrats who voted against an amendment proposed by Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, that would have banned immunity for the companies. “I think there is a good solution somewhere in the middle,” Mr. Whitehouse said.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who also opposed Mr. Feingold’s measure, pleaded with Mr. Leahy to defer the immunity issue because she wants more time to consider several compromise proposals.
Harry Reid gets to decide which bill goes to the floor apparently. One with or one without immunity.
From Glenn Greenwald at Salon:
FISA and amnestyUPDATE XI: Having just spoken with several people involved in today's morass, I have a lot more clarity about what happened. What I described in the prior update is accurate. Now, the next step will be focused on Sen. Reid. He has virtually unlimited discretion to decide what version of the bill to introduce to the full Senate. He could introduce the Intelligence Committee version (with amnesty), the Judiciary Committee version (without amnesty), the House version, or he could just introduce something entirely new altogether, something that gets negotiated between Rockefeller, Leahy and Reid.
Even under the best-case scenario -- namely, Reid introduces a bill which does not contain amnesty -- anyone can (and certainly will) offer an amendment to include amnesty in the bill, and no matter what happens, it will be necessary to find 41 Senators willing to support Dodd's filibuster to keep amnesty out of the bill. As indicated, today is a good result in that it's preferable for the bill to have left the Committee today without amnesty in it (especially given the 3 Democratic members' support for amnesty) -- and that's not nothing -- but there is no grand "victory" in the sense that there is now some huge hurdle to having the Senate's bill include amnesty.
It appears the Senate Intelligence Committee’s bill was the result of a "compromise between
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is chairman of the panel, and the White House. Mr. Rockefeller agreed to the immunity measure, and in exchange won the administration’s support for other provisions that would provide greater court oversight of the government’s eavesdropping operations."
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