Chris Dodd

By Dave Lindorff

So much for economic “green shoots.”

The Obama administration and the Federal Reserve, along with the servile corporate media, have been quick to grasp at and trumpet every little suggestion that things might be improving, as they did when the Labor Dept. announced last week that new unemployment claims had dropped to “just” 434,000, from a high of 684,000 in the week ended March 28 or last year.

Or when the Commerce Dept. reported last month that November housing starts had risen by 8.9% compared to the prior month.

Update: Reid put the bill on hold until January. Your calls and emails won the fight for now, but we'll have to gear up for another battle then...

Today is the day Senator Chris Dodd is leading his long-promised filibuster against immunity for the telecomm giants that have illegally wiretapped all of our calls and emails since 2001.

If you like Big Brother (or what Glenn Greenwald calls the Lawless Surveillance State), do nothing.

If you prefer Freedom, visit Dodd's special filibuster site and call, fax, and email your Senators.

Latest news: Dodd to Speak on the Floor at 11 AM

Following Senator Dodd's speech there will be a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to the Intelligence Committee version of FISA legislation. After that vote Senator Dodd will be holding a press conference to talk about how he will continue to fight against retroactive immunity and stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law.

Please note - this is all going to take place ahead of a filibuster, which is expected to start later today.

Here's a good email from Matt Browner-Hamlin, Chris Dodd's Campaign Blogger. Let's just do what he says:

1. Watch the video
http://chrisdodd.com/whistleblower

2. Call the Senate Judiciary Committee for free over the Internet, tell them to oppose retroactive immunity, and post the result of your call:
http://chrisdodd.com/immunity

Dear bob,

In spring of 2006 I started seeing people put special notes to government agents in their email signature. The thinking was that if a government official was going to read your email, you might as well put a line in at the end to remind them that they were doing so illegally.

Finally! After six years of shock and silence, one Senator is finally standing up for the Constitution - and America's real national security. Watch Chris Dodd's historic speech here.

Mr. President, for six years, this President has demonstrated time and time again that he doesn’t respect the role of Congress nor does he respect the rule of law.

Every six years as United States Senators we take the oath office to uphold the Constitution. Our colleagues on the House side take that oath every two years. That is important.

After listening to the questions asked by Brian Williams in South Carolina at the first debate of announced Democratic presidential contenders, one has to wonder how much worse the moderation would have been if it had been on the Fox Network.

There was hardly an inane smear, knock, superficial or unfair attack made against any of these candidates that Williams did not go OUT of his way to highlight or demand that they defend themselves against. We had the price of haircuts, misquotes about positions on Palestine, ties to Walmart, not to mention an entire segment on Giuliani's despicable "die under Democrats" rhetoric from yesterday, instantly elevated to the status of accepted mainstream gospel and framed as such. If most of the questions had been prefaced with the words "Karl Rove says" their slant could not have been more obvious. Even the questions selected from viewer emails seemed to be selected with that criteria in mind.

Connecticut's Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd has come out in favor of beginning an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, saying that "…the president should announce in January that we will begin withdrawing and redeploying our troops."

In an editorial in the Sunday Des Moines Register -- and clearly laying the groundwork for the Iowa presidential caucuses -- Dodd was very direct from the first sentence of his column.

"The time has come for the United States to begin the process of getting our troops out of Iraq," wrote Dodd, who many think will indeed run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Of the many good things we are beginning to see before the newly-constituted Democratic Congress even assumes power, one of the most gratifying is the move by Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) to neuter the hideous Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA), passed by the Republicans, and signed by George W. Bush in October.

On Friday, Dodd introduced legislation to amend Bush's "torture bill," remove the almost-dictatorial powers it has given the White House and neutralize the bastardizing effect it's had on the United States Constitution.