Is it possible to get 41 senators to prevent closure for this legislation or for House opponents to engage in parliamentary maneuvers (such as the GOP engaged in) to block this "compromise" bill?

As far as the public is concerned, there is no risk in denying the favor of immunity to the telecom industry. Any polling on the matter would almost certainly show that the public opposes granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms;I believe one poll found 59% of the public opposed, but I can't find a link to it now.

One point that should be emphasized is that until the telecom companies and the Administration come clean to Congress about past behavior, Congress can't possibly evaluate the merits of this legislation. Even more conservative Democrats in Congress have to be upset about this nose-thumbing behavior toward Congress (of course, it hasn't stopped this kind of Congressional surrender in the past).

In addition, even a good portion of the public willing to surrender civil liberties for national security concerns would be sympathetic to the idea that those guilty of past violations have to make a clean breast of it before Congress can even consider immunity for past violations. (A Truth and reconciliation approach.)

Neither the telecoms nor the Administration rate high in public esteem. There certainly is not much risk associated with denying favors to the telecom industry.

Overall, the idea that Democrats can't build an effective case to the public on this issue seems pretty fatuous as does the claim that the Democrats had to cave in order to avoid being seen as weak on national security. I am coming to the conclusion that Glenn's analysis as to motivation of many Congressional Democrats is more accurate and that the "can't be seen as weak on national security" is just an increasingly tattered cover story.

Painton was a visiting lecturer in the English department at Mount Holyoke College in the Fall of 2006.

If she won't talk to Glen or Jane, I wonder if former National Security Advisor, Anthony Lake (a Mount Holyoke professor) might be persuaded to give her a call and ask her to explain the failure to correct Klein's and Time's libel that Pelosi and other House Democrats are backing a bill that "would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court."

One aspect of the legislation hasn't been discussed much. In addition to the immunity provisions, Section 803 of the bill immediately preempts all ongoing state investigations, mainly being done by state Public Utility Commissions. This will happen automatically irrespective of the immunity determination by the federal district court. Six states were conducting investigations of the telecoms; DOJ sought injunctions against them. The federal district judge hearing the cases had rejected the preemption argument, but reserved judgment on the state secrets claim pending a decision by the ninth circuit in Hepting v. AT&T.