A Planned Demolition

It's clear by now that the revised FISA bill that included telecom immunity was not a cave-in by the Democrats as much as it was a planned demolition. It was clear that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer was behind it from the beginning, but it wasn't initially as obvious that everybody else was so much in the bag. Now that it's been approved by the House, more people have weighed in, and the whole thing now looks as though it was never in doubt. (Actually, the common wisdom all along had little doubt that it would pass, but some of us are, well, doubters). As Glenn Greenwald pointed out on Thursday, Nancy Pelosi was pretty much unintelligible in discussing the bill. She ended up supporting it. But the true nail in the coffin came from Obama, who released a statement to the effect that the world is a scary place, and giving the president extraordinary powers to fight the bad guys is the least we can do. It's hard to say whether or not the fact that the next president would also have these extraordinary powers to go outside of the Constitution swayed his thinking at all. He did say that he'd see about getting the immunity out of there, but if he can't, he'll vote for it anyway. Harry Reid--the man, don't forget, who controls the Senate's agenda, has already made his head fake to the constituency to make us think that he's going to do something, but I think the writing is on the wall. "I’m going to try real hard to have a separate vote on immunity." He's going to try real hard. (Did I mention that Reid controls the Senate agenda?.) But unfortunately, no matter how hard he tries, it may still be beyond his reach: "Probably we can’t take that out of the bill, but I’m going to try." That's certainly good of him. Digby wonders if this is Obama's Sista Soldja opportunity to show that he's not indebted to any one person. She just may be on to something.