Jul 09 2008
Live Blogging FISA Senate Votes
12:15 PM Eastern: Â OK, they are now voting on the first of 3 Amendments to attempt to remove the telecom immunity from the new FISA bill. Â My understanding is this requires a simple majority to pass. Â Results soon.
12:18 PM Eastern: Â Ayes 32, Nays 66! – Dodd’s telecom immunity amendment crashes and burns. Â The FISA bill is on the way to the President’s Desk. Â Next vote is on the Specter Amendment, which I believe requires 60 votes.
12:21 PM Eastern: Voting has begun on the Specter Amendment, which has no chance of passing
12:35 PM Eastern: Specter’s Amendment also fails by a vote of 37 Ayes , 61 Nays (not even close).  Seems Obama is doing some of those Kerry-esque  “voted against FISA, before I voted for it” CYA votes on these amendments, knowing full well they won’t matter. Not sure that fig leaf will work to appease his base.
Side note here. This post at the FISA supporter revolt community at Obama’s campaign site notes all the telecom donations to top Dem leaders – quite an eye opener! Big names with large donations from Telecoms. Â If I was a liberal I would be feeling completely betrayed right now.
Next up is the Bingaman Amendement, also not likely to even be close.
12:54 PM Eastern: The last Amendment fails, as expected, with the 42 Ayes , 56 Nays. Â The final two votes will be later this afternoon to provide an opportunity for Senators to attend a memorial service for Senator Jesse Helms. Estimate is sometime after 2:15 PM for final passage (and Obama’s self destruction).
2:44 PM Eastern: One more procedural vote for cloture (to close debate) before we get to the final vote and the end of Democrat nonsense. The results were 72 Ayes, 26 Nays. Â Seems like the Dems want to get this debacle behind them, but it will dog them for a long time. Â They let the most energetic component of their base down. They rolled over and gave Bush all he wanted, not even a pretend filibuster was staged. Â More on why this happened after the final vote.
But until then folks can enjoy the teeth gnashing on the left, which is going to lead to a really serious blowback onto Obama and the Dems. Now onto the final vote!
3:06 PM Eastern: Final tally is 69 Ayes, 28 Nays and the country is back under the protection of our brave men and women who had their hands tied behind their backs prior to 9-11. My sense of the reason the Dems keep caving is Bush has made it clear he would make public sufficient detail on the threats STOPPED by this program if they dragged their feet too long. There is only one reason a politician does something unpopular with their base – and that is when the other options would be even more damaging to their reelection chances. Â As state-wide office holders they cannot rely on the rabid left along to hold their seats, and they know that.Â
Then the decision comes down to how to lose? One can lose the middle and expose us to attack. Or one can lose the far left and sacrifice for their nation. Â I wonder how many dems would take this stand? Â My guess is quite a few.
[…] AJ Strata is liveblogging the votes. The other two amendments fail. One vote to […]
Outstanding.
When George Bush was governor of Texas, he had a reputation as a deal maker, of someone who had a way of getting things done even when the state legislature was composed mainly of the opposition party.
Here we see another example. With wide bi-partisan support, support that goes directly counter to the rhetoric of the other party, we have a bill passed by both houses of Congress that benefits all Americans.
Mr. Bush is still getting things done and with the support of people of both parties.
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I watched the stream on CSPAN.
After cloture only RockHead offered a couple of minutes debate and all others sat on their hands and said lets vote.
Specter was the only R to vote for the amendments and he voted no on the Dodd amendment and yes on the other two.
The big one is Obama voted yes on the bill and Hillary voted no.
Lot of pre Denver warm up going on there.
“My sense of the reason the Dems keep caving is Bush has made it clear he would make public sufficient detail on the threats STOPPED by this program if they dragged their feet too long.”
That right there says a LOT. Many other politicians would have made those successes public when their public support numbers started to drop. President Bush doesn’t have a narcissistic bone in his body, apparently. He could try to pump up his support numbers by revealing our successes, but it better serves the security of our nation that those successes remain secret so they might be repeated in the future.
Not a single Al Qaida terrorist attack in the US since 9/11 after they promised there would be a “rain of destruction” following 9/11.
There is no way I could ever bring myself to vote for a Democrat this election.
Tonight Fred Barnes was talking about the fact that Democrats have a good chance of winning both the White House and the Congress. Maybe so, but it seems to me that if they were that sure of their coming success, so many of them including Obama would not feel the need to go to the center.
…and daily the left calls Bush a lame duck.Ha!
NOT!
terrye, even if the dems win, I will still feel comfortable that I made the right vote.
Merlin, do like that waffle picture shown above. Such creativity!