dc_dux, if Harry Reid's aide, really said what I've highlighted in the excerpt below, why would it be unreasonable to for me to dismiss, from any serious consideration as an advocate for our fourth amendment protections from unwarranted government intrusion, every democrat in the senate who does not openly call for Harry Reid to step down as majority leader?
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/wa...rssnyt&emc=rss
Democrats Try to Delay Eavesdropping Vote
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: January 23, 2008
...The immunity issue has splintered Senate Democrats. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who leads the Intelligence Committee, has received approval from his committee for a plan that includes immunity.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has won passage of a competing plan that leaves it out.
“In the end, I think something like the Intelligence Committee bill would pass — with the immunity,” said a senior Democratic official who opposes the immunity plan and insisted on anonymity. “I don’t know that it’s possible to get anything through the Senate that doesn’t grant the telecom companies immunity.”
Advocates for civil liberties fault the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, for what they see as a weak effort to block the White House immunity plan. <h3>Mr. Reid opposes immunity, but his decision to allow an initial vote on the Intelligence Committee plan, with immunity, has angered opponents.
“If Senator Reid wanted to win, he would have put the judiciary vote on the floor first,”</h3> Caroline Frederickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said. “It seems as if he wants to lose.”
<h3>A spokesman for Mr. Reid, Jim Manley called such criticism ridiculous.
“Senator Reid intends to do everything he can to strip immunity from the bill,” Mr. Manley said.</h3>
Even if the Senate does approve a bill that includes immunity, it seems unlikely that such a plan could be signed into law before the Feb. 1 deadline, Congressional officials said.
Because the House has passed a measure that did not include immunity, the issue would first have to go before a conference committee to work out an agreement between the two versions. That could take weeks.
Because of the time problem, Mr. Reid proposed again on Tuesday that the temporary August legislation be extended a month “to allow lawmakers additional time to get this right.”
Republican leaders and the White House oppose that....
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DIdn't Harry Reid clearly have the option of selcting for introduction for senate debate, the version of the bill that most closely matched the version passed by the house, the version without immunity for telecoms, the version that would have required sixty votes to add the telecom immunity provision to, instead of the version Reid chose, the one requiring 60 votes to remove the immunity provsion from the bill?
If I have this wrong, and it is not what it seems...please explain, so I can stop making a fool out of myself for accusing majority leader Reid of looking like Cheney's sock puppet, instead of like the head of the senate majority opposing the lawlessness of the Bush administration. Remember, the telecoms were approached and asked to cooperate, outside the law,months BEFORE 9/11.