FISA debate in Senate: What happened?

Winston Churchill said of Soviet Russia in 1939, “[i]t is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” Take away the geopolitical game of chess and the specter of World War II, and you have a pretty good description of the United States Senate.

So what happened Thursday in the debate on amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act?A temporary, six-month amendment passed last year covered a loophole in the way U.S. officials were and were not allowed to eavesdrop on foreign communications. However, now an amendment would give telecom companies retroactive immunity from prosecution for having assisted the Bush administration in breaking the law with warrantless wiretaps, blanket warrants and a host of other issues.

Although a lot of the details are wrapped up in Senate procedural rules, it is possible to boil down the action into understandable components:

The Senate rejected a substitution amendment, which would have replaced the Intelligence Committee bill (containing retroactive telecom immunity) with that passed by the Judiciary Committee (does not contain retroactive immunity), by a vote of 60-36. Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain were not present for the vote, nor was South Carolina Republican Lindsay Graham. Minnesota’s senators were split on the vote, with Norm Coleman essentially voting for the Intelligence bill with retroactive immunity and Democrat Amy Klobuchar voting to replace it with the Judiciary bill.

The American Civil Liberties Union was displeased with this course of events. Caroline Frederickson, director of its Washington Legislative Office, said in a statement: “Instead of capitulating to the administration, senators should listen to their constituents who overwhelmingly oppose warrantless wiretapping and telecom immunity. As the FISA debate moves forward, we urge the Senate to wake up and realize it is a co-equal branch of government.”

At that point, the Republican caucus essentially left Senate collegiality traditions behind, and blocked discussion on a host of Democratic amendments seeking to limit the Bush administration’s after-the-fact legitimization of its activities. They accomplished this by objecting to the amendments when they were introduced, which does not require an actual vote. One theory on why the Republican caucus did this was that any of these amendments presented a no-win scenario for President Bush: sign the bill with Democratic amendments and it defeats his goals on the matter, veto it and appear to be playing politics with anti-terror policies or worse — appear soft on national security.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., then essentially called the Republicans’ bluff in arguments with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Republicans filed a cloture motion on the Intelligence bill, which cut off debate on amendments and pushed the matter to a 4:30 p.m. vote on Monday — also the day of Bush’s last State of the Union speech, set against the backdrop of continuing violence in Iraq and an economic forecast some are already calling a recession.

Bottom line: This is a must-win for both sides. Democrats need a win to demonstrate that they have the political will to stand up to the White House after a string of capitulations and failures, and the Bush-led Republican Party needs a win to demonstrate its resolve in the face of bad poll numbers, a bad economy and precious little good news coming down the pipe. The political machinations this weekend and into Monday bear careful observation.