The cloture vote on the Leahy-Specter-Dodd amendment to restore habeas corpus will take place this morning at 10:30 AM Eastern. We need 60 votes to overcome the Republican filibuster of this crucial legislation. As you can see, we're closing in on the votes we need to take this first critical step towards restoring America's moral authority in the world. With almost 700 calls logged through our Citizen-Generated Whip Count tool at Restore-Habeas.org, we've watched the number of "Yes" votes steadily rise.
This is going to be a close vote. Almost every Republican office is punting on telling their constituents how they will vote. It seems most will announce whether or not they think America should continue to stand by the Great Writ of habeas corpus with their vote alone.
The key swing votes are resting largely in moderate Republicans -- Christy Hardin Smith of FireDogLake has a list of targets.
Bloggers around the net have been driving their readers to call their Senators and ask them to vote "Yes" on restoring habeas corpus. Check out the efforts at the following sites:
Cliff Schecter
MyDD
Digby (also here)
My Left Nutmeg
FireDogLake (also here)
Open Left
The Albany Project
Taylor Marsh
TalkLeft
The Left Coaster
The Seminal
CT Local Politics
Atrios
The Carpetbagger Report
TAPPED
Crooks & Liars
Think Progress
Working Assets Blog
Poltical Forecast
So please -- keep lighting up the phones. We only have an hour and a half left until the cloture vote to restore habeas. Senator Dodd and Senator Leahy have asked for your help: will you give stand up for the Constitution with them?
http://restore-habeas.org
Call your Senators and log your calls through the Citizen-Generated Whip Count tool. Your action is crucial.
Disclosure: I proudly work for Chris Dodd's presidential campaign.
Update:
The vote failed cloture 56-43.
Democrats picked up Specter, Sununu, Smith, Snowe, Hagel, and Lugar.
Harry Reid voted no for procedural reasons.
Sanders voted "Yes" and Lieberman voted "No."
Thanks to everyone for their hard word and efforts. This did not fail for a lack of our activism and action.