Senate Rejects Amendments That Would Have Stripped Telecom Amnesty From Spy Bill

By Ryan Singel

The U.S. Senate voted against removing retroactive immunity for lawbreaking telephone companies from the pending domestic spying bill Wednesday morning, and is expected to approve the legislation within hours.

An amendment sponsored by Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) that would have stripped immunity from the bill failed by a vote of 32 to 66, a tally nearly identical to a vote on a similar amendment in February that failed 31 to 67. The Senate also voted down an amendment that would have paused pending lawsuits and the amnesty provisions until after an Inspector General investigation into Bush's warrantless wiretapping program.

"This may be a historical embarrassment," senator Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) protested Wednesday morning on the Senate floor. "Everyone knows we don't know what the program did, but here we are giving immunity to the telephone companies."

Specter noted that Congress was violating the constitutional principal of separation of powers by interfering with the courts.

Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), one of the fiercest opponents of expanded spying and retroactive amnesty, had urged the Senate to allow the cases against the telecoms to continue in federal court.

"These civil suits may be the last opportunity to get a ruling on the legality of the warrantless wiretapping program," Feingold said Wednesday morning on the Senate floor.

But Senator Kit Bond (R-Missouri), the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, argued that the nation's telecoms shouldn't be punished for coming to the aid of the country.

"It is unfair to use telecoms as the punching bag to get at the administration," Bond said, arguing that anti-wiretapping suits should be filed against the government, not the telecoms. Bond failed to note the significant legal hurdles to suing the government, including the need to prove standing and overcome soverign immunity privileges.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco non-profit rights groups, plans to challenge the legality of the amnesty provision, arguing that Congress overstepped its authority by messing with the courts.

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