Senator Feinstein just spoke in support of her two pending amendments - one the exclusivity amendment, which every member of the Legislative Branch of government ought to support, and one the immunity "compromise" which would allow the FISA Court judges to review and decide on whether or not to grant immunity to the corporations. [The latter amendment has now been co-sponsored by Senator Whitehouse (in addition to the immunity substitution amendment he's sponsoring with Specter), and he will be speaking to it on the floor, Feinstein said.]

As with every Senator I've heard commisserating with the poor put-upon corporations in this matter, Feinstein expressed zero concern for the impact of the government's "state secrets" assertion on the ability of the plaintiffs (we, the people) to litigate - parties who are at least as blocked, and arguably far more negatively impacted by that privilege assertion as are the corporate defendants (who have made no serious effort to overcome the government's assertions of state secrets to date, knowing full well, as they do, that it bullet-proofs them from liability unless and until a court finally sees through the deception and rejects, or successfully works around, "state secrets" in order to reach the merits of a case).

But more telling is this inference I drew from Feinstein's concluding remarks: Senator Feinstein, and apparently the Democratic caucus as a whole, is prepared to pass the buck on FISA to the House, with or without full lawbreaking immunity attached.

Feinstein opposes full immunity, yet nevertheless telegraphed her apparent intention to vote for cloture so that the "conference" may consider adopting her immunity amendment as a solution to the immunity impasse, should it fail to pass the Senate, which she made clear it almost certainly will as it has been "prejudiced" by needing to reach a 60-vote margin for passage. So Feinstein is apparently prepared to ignore a principled filibuster by a Democratic colleague and vote for cloture on a bill she opposes just to get the matter out of the Senate.

How irresponsible is that? How reminiscent of her actions in August when she was the swing vote to pass a bill she admitted on the floor she didn't fully understand just so that 'something gets 60 votes.' This is unacceptable dereliction of difficult duty by a senior senator on both the Intelligence and Judiciary committees.

Instead of standing with Dodd, she's prepared to stab him in the back, apparently because principles are too political - and we must all go along to get along, and force the House to do the heavy lifting that the Senators - with their cushiony six-year terms and safe seats - are simply unwilling to do because it might displease a wealthy, corrupt colleague named Rockefeller.

To reiterate (too many on the blogs seem to be missing this point, and giving up without a fight as a result):

Thanks to Chris Dodd's willingness to filibuster the final FISA bill, we have a chance to stop this travesty with the votes of only 41 Senators.

We don't need 60 votes, we don't need 51 votes, we don't even need a majority of votes in the Senate. We only need 40 Senators willing to stand with Chris Dodd to vote no tomorrow on the FISA cloture motion to safeguard our Constitution, and to get FISA right in the Senate. If Dodd wasn't objecting, we wouldn't have this opportunity. We must make the most of it, and insist on the majority of the majority doing their duty, and not passing the buck to the House as they did so shamefully last August with the Protect America Act.

It looks like so far we have three Senators, of the 41 needed, on the record as votes against cloture on FISA-with-immunity: Chris Dodd, Russ Feingold, Patrick Leahy.

Where on the public record are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and their Senate endorsers concerning this crucial FISA cloture vote tomorrow?

For those who missed it, Russ Feingold simply nailed the lawbreaking immunity argument about 5 minutes in to his 15 minutes on the subject (he started speaking at about 4:21 p.m. ET today). Selise @ FDL and/or others will hopefully get the best 5-10 minutes from Feingold up on YouTube ASAP. Piercingly clear: The only reason to grant retroactive immunity is because the companies broke the law, because they are already immune from liability if they obeyed the law...

You're welcome to crosspost anything I've written, Nequals1. I'm trying to keep track of developments in the Senate today and tomorrow so won't follow up on your membership suggestion for the moment, but I certainly welcome the Constitutional focus of that group-blog.