Bill Nelson's office told me a fib today. I don't know why.

[madfloridian]

I posted this in GD earlier.

Bill Nelson's office confused me totally today. I think my leg was pulled.

I posted that in spite of his vote today, his office told me that he was not for immunity in the FISA bill. They said he supported the Dodd amendment.

But look at this vote today. From TPM:

Well, one down. The Senate just voted to kill (table) the Senate Judiciary Committee's surveillance bill, which did not contain retroactive immunity for the telecoms. The vote was 60-36 to table, with a number of Dems crossing over. As we said earlier, a number of other amendments will also go up for votes this afternoon.

..."Update: The final tally was actually 60-36, not 60-34, and the full list of Dems voting to kill were: Sens. Evan Bayh (D-IN), Tom Carper (D-DE), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Tim Johnson (D-SD), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), and Ken Salazar (D-CO).

TPM Muckraker

But look what I found tonight while doing a search on the subject to ease my confusion. It was not the truth that his office told me.

US Lawmakers Disagree over Terms For Renewing Wiretap Law

Read this part carefully, very carefully indeed.

Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who recently ended a bid for his party's presidential nomination, is vowing to block any bill that includes immunity for telephone companies. "I am vehemently opposed to that. I would utilize whatever vehicles are available to a senator here to stop that from becoming law with retroactive immunity in it," he said.

But Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, agrees with the White House position. "At the end of the day we have to have the cooperation of the telecommunications companies, and they should not have the threat of a spurious lawsuits hanging over their heads," he said.

Shame on him, and shame on his office for misleading the people who called today.

When did it become okay to say one thing and do another? On the same day. How very nervy.

[hfojvt]

1. Do we really want to prosecute the telecoms?

The real trouble with immunity is that it protects the Bush administration. Without the threat of prosecution, there's no incentive for the telecoms to testify against Bushco.

[madfloridian]

3. I want to know what they did. I want to know what Bush did.

However the point of my post was that my senator's office told me a lie.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. This is correct. Only when we see the scope of it, will we begin to understand

if they made a reasonable attempt to focus their investigations to potential terrorist suspects, and what they did with the information when they got it. Does it make a difference? To me it does.

If I find out that there were numerous examples of GOP insiders gathering information to wage personal vendettas, I think in that particular instance, nothing the Congress passes should interfere with our right to sue.

[ArkySue]

2. Vichy Dem

Just like my Senator Pryor. Ugh.

[madfloridian]

5. I agree.

We kept voting for Democrats who did not represent us, and now we have Democrats who are basically Republicans.

[madfloridian]

6. TPM has more on this today.

It sounds like Nelson went along with voting down and squelching the Judiciary bill without immunity...so he can co-sponsor a bill with Diane Feinstein about immunity that would be decided by the FISA court apparently.

I do not understand why they had to bring up the Judiciary bill, vote it down and get rid of it....then bring up another?

Something does not smell right in this whole situation.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/005139.php

"The major papers took a look at what happened on the floor yesterday -- particularly the defeat of the SJC bill -- and declare that it was a great day for the telecoms.

Yes, the SJC bill, which contained no retroactive immunity, did get voted down 60-36 with the help of twelve Dems. But it's far from clear that those same twelve Dems would vote to invoke cloture and prevent votes on the various other amendments. One of those Dems, for instance, is Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) who is co-sponsoring an amendment by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) that would throw the immunity question to the secret FISA court. Will he vote to prevent a vote on his own amendment? That seems unlikely. The Republicans need all twelve of those votes in order to invoke cloture.

So it will become a question of who's getting squeezed. Monday's vote is sure to be in the spotlight. It will be right before the President's State of the Union speech, making it likely the presidential candidates will show. And if that vote for cloture fails (my timid prediction), Sen. Reid has signaled that he'll try to shift the emphasis to the Republicans' obstructionism. Yesterday on the floor he declared: "It appears that the minority, the President, and the Republicans want failure. They don't want a bill. So that's why they're jamming this forward." (You can read a longer transcript of his remarks here.) Whether a media narrative of Republican obstructionism can take hold -- something that certainly hasn't happened so far -- is another question."

Sounds like power plays to me.

[watercolors]

7. I have had his office lie to me

in the past on a few votes, I no longer trust him, and will not vote for him again! I gave up contacting his office, I think they just try to apease the callers.