Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut is leading the charge against a proposal to grant telecommunications companies retroactive immunity for helping the Bush administration spy on terrorist suspects without first getting warrants. The Democratic presidential candidate has vowed to filibuster a bill with such language if necessary.
Dodd explained his opposition to telecom immunity today in a live chat on the blog Firedoglake. He answered questions in the chat via a live video feed from Iowa, the home of the first presidential caucus.
Dodd criticized Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee for joining Republicans last week in backing retroactive immunity for telecom firms that disclosed information about their customers. He praised the firms that Qwest Communications International that reportedly refused to help the administration without warrants.
“I just find that shocking and reprehensible,” he said of the firms that participated in the spying efforts. “This is yet one further beat of the drumbeat that’s going on here with this administration to trample on the constitutional rights of Americans.”
Family members of wounded veterans would be eligible for benefits under the Family and Medical Leave Act for six months under language co-authored by Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. The proposal has the support of both Democratic and Republican senators.
“Imagine if your husband or wife, or your son or your daughter, had been injured,” Clinton said on the Senate floor. “You’d want to be with them and want to take care of them. But you wouldn’t want to lose your job in the process. It’s not a choice that military families should take.”
I’ve complained before about the utter lack of substance in much of the supposed online innovation from this year’s presidential campaign. Apparently Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, one of the Democratic candidates, has noticed the same problem, both online and offline, and he’s trying to turn the observation to his advantage.
Dodd blames the media for the fluffy campaign coverage to date. “They say they talk about haircuts instead of troop cuts, song choices instead of energy choices, Paris [Hilton] instead of Baghdad because they say that’s what you want to talk about.” But he thinks Americans would rather talk about the war in Iraq — and his proposal to end it.
“Today we have the ability to bypass the traditional media filter by participating in discussions online, through blogs and YouTube, ensuring that the important issues get the real attention that they deserve in the 2008 presidential campaign,” Dodd told voters in his time in the YouTube Spotlight. He invited viewers to ask their senators what they think of Dodd’s plan, tape the responses and post them to YouTube.
The annual “Take Back America” conference in Washington this week bills itself as a gathering of 3,000 politicians, activists, bloggers and “hip-hop visionaries” who are united in support of “progressive” politics. It sounds like a perfect place for an underdog Democratic presidential candidate to troll for votes, and that’s exactly what the campaign of Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut is doing.
The effort has yielded two on-camera, grassroots endorsements for the campaign so far:
Susan Collins, R-Maine: “If [the Iraqis] are not making progress in meeting the benchmarks, then I think we should not release the reconstruction funds. This would have definite consequences, and I think it’s appropriate that we link it to reconstruction funds.”
Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.: President Bush “can’t ignore what I’m proposing. He’s going to have to sign it or veto it. … We need to have a real vote, a binding effort here, and that’s what I’m determined to try to get in the Foreign Relations Committee.”
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