The Senate Judiciary Committee is going to mark up the FISA reform legislation tomorrow. They had originally scheduled to do it last Thursday, but we expect it to happen this time, though it's not clear that the SJC will complete mark up tomorrow.

The bottom line is that now is the time to call the Senate Judiciary Committee and ask them to oppose retroactive immunity for telecom companies that helped the Bush administration spy on Americans without warrant.

We want the Senate to hear your voice on this issue -- we think it's so important that we're paying for you to do the calls. Call today - and the Dodd campaign will do the dialing for you, making it free for anyone calling for a hardline to talk to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Four Senators on the Judiciary Committee have already said they oppose retroactive immunity. We need just six more Senators to oppose retroactive immunity to kill it in committee.

Visit http://chrisdodd.com/immunity to take action now!

Christy Hardin Smith also brings up basket warrants and Emptywheel brings up minimization as other key issues that the FISA legislation needs improvement on.

Call now and report the results back:

http://chrisdodd.com/immunity

Cross posted at Blue Hampshire, Bleeding Heartland, My Left Nutmeg, My Silver State, and the Dodd Blog.

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The San Francisco Chronicle has reported that California Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein will support retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. This puts the official tally at two votes in favor and four votes opposed to telecom amnesty. We still need to convince six more Senators on the Judiciary Committee to oppose retroactive immunity to ensure that it is killed in Committee and doesn't reach the floor of the Senate.

This means one of the "nay" votes has to come from a Republican member of Committee, which does not seem incredibly likely. The Republican who we'd previously targeted as most likely to vote the right was was Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Since Specter has also introduced a proposal that would indemnify the telecom companies by making the federal government sole defendant in all of the pending cases against the industry. This proposal - retroactive immunity by another name - makes it look unlikely that Specter will oppose other forms of immunity.

There are two paths from here:

First, we must continue to call all members of the Senate Judiciary who aren't currently opposed and ask them to oppose retroactive immunity. Everyone is not opposed needs to hear from the public on this issue - even conservative Republicans - because the Constitution and rule of law are not partisan issues, nor should they be.

Second, if you're feeling discouraged by the increased chances of amnesty for telecoms making it out of the Judiciary Committee, remember that Senator Dodd has vowed to stop any such legislation from becoming law, either through a hold or by filibuster if necessary. Dodd will stand up for the rule of law. He will defend the Constitution.

Now is the time to take action, though. Chris Dodd won't wait until 2009 to lead and we shouldn't wait until 2009 to stand up for what we believe in.

Call the Senate Judiciary Committee - we'll do the dialing for you through our Citizen Generated Whip Count calling tool: http://chrisdodd.com/immunity

Disclosure: I proudly work for Chris Dodd's presidential campaign.

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Tomorrow morning the Senate Judiciary Committee will begin marking up FISA reform legislation. What we don't yet know is what changes they will make to the bill passed out of the Senate Intelligence Committee. That's why we have to keep calling and make sure all of the Judiciary Committee members know that retroactive immunity needs to be stripped from the bill.

So far, four senators have said they will oppose retroactive immunity. We need six more to ensure that we'll win this fight. Coincidentally, there are still six Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee that have not said how they will vote on retroactive immunity (Schumer, Feinstein, Durbin, Kohl, Whitehouse, and Leahy). Arlen Specter has also expressed his concern over retroactive immunity, but has not yet made clear where he stands.

The good news is that we've just launched a new function in the Citizen Generated Whip Count that makes calling the Senate much, much easier for you.

We've built a direct calling feature on our Whip Count tool that connects users to Senate offices over the internet. It allows you to enter your phone number in our widget, we then call you while simultaneously connecting you to the Senate office you're trying to reach. Your phone will ring, the Senate office phone will ring, then you ask them to oppose retroactive immunity. Nice and easy.

Oh, and the Dodd campaign is footing the bill for your calls if you're calling from a land line.

To start calling, visit http://chrisdodd.com/immunity.

Disclosure: I proudly work for Chris Dodd's presidential
campaign.

Cross posted at Daily Kos.

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