UPDATE: The best information I have is the Rules Committee is acting on the FISA bill right now, and they're waiving the requirements that would conceivably allow them to act on both war funding and FISA as soon as tomorrow. However, war funding may happen tonight, with FISA tomorrow. I apologize for trying to get this information out swiftly. It's still possible but not a done deal.
Here it is. The final indignity. Funding for endless war AND etching out the 4th Amendment will be combined into the same bill to force enough compliance from Bush Dogs to get this bill passed. "By any means necessary" for Hoyer and his corporate lobbying buddies.
The House Rules Committee is meeting at this hour on the "FISA Amedments Act." Later today, they'll be meeting on a technical fix that allows them to waive PAYGO rules and waive consideration of a bill within 24 hours of its rules being set.
The plan is to put the two together.
UPDATE: If you click on the meeting at this hour and then click on "Meeting time" you see this:
Thursday, June 19, 2008, at 2:00 p.m. in H-313 the Capitol
Emergency Meeting
H.Res. _ – Providing for consideration of the Senate amendments to the House amendments to the Senate amendment to the bill (H.R. 2642) making appropriations for military construction, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008, and for other purposes. (Supplemental Appropriations Act)
H.R. 6304 – The “FISA Amendments Act of 2008”.
So the meeting for the FISA bill is also the meeting for the supplemental. This is obviously fluid, but it tells me that both will be considered as the same bill.
To be precise, the war supplemental will be attached to the FISA bill. This is being fast-tracked well beyond our ability to stop it. The royalists in the House want war without restrictions and free passes for lawbreakers.
Keep up the calls and emails and faxes, but this is eventually going to take muscle. There is an organization being built right now to combine a defense of civil liberties with the masses of money needed to fight for them. The Strange Bedfellows coalition will remember the betrayal being done today. And they will make each and every member of Congress who votes for this abomination pay.
More as I know it...
...Sen. Obama, incidentally, can't be found.
The two presumptive presidential nominees have differed over the issue. A senior aide to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., recently indicated the senator would support granting immunity to the phone companies. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was among the most vocal opponents of immunity in the Senate debate last year.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Bankston applauded Obama for his opposition to immunity for the phone companies, and he said he would "call upon him to be as vocal as possible on immunity in the coming days."
A spokesman for the Obama campaign didn't return phone calls or emails seeking comment for this article.
Hope! Change! Please call again soon when we're not so busy!
UPDATE: Russ Feingold:
"The proposed FISA deal is not a compromise; it is a capitulation. The House and Senate should not be taking up this bill, which effectively guarantees immunity for telecom companies alleged to have participated in the President's illegal program, and which fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home. Allowing courts to review the question of immunity is meaningless when the same legislation essentially requires the court to grant immunity. And under this bill, the government can still sweep up and keep the international communications of innocent Americans in the U.S. with no connection to suspected terrorists, with very few safeguards to protect against abuse of this power. Instead of cutting bad deals on both FISA and funding for the war in Iraq, Democrats should be standing up to the flawed and dangerous policies of this administration."
We have about 15 Senators and 100 or so Congressmen that get this.