Legal Commentary

Senate Votes on FISA: Dodd -Feingold and Other Amendment Fail

By Jeralyn

Update 12:17 pm ET: The Dodd-Feingold Amendment fails by a vote of 32 to 66. Specter's Amendment will be voted on in 2 minutes. It needs 60 votes to pass.

Update 12:37 pm ET: Specter Amendment fails by a vote of 37 to 61, and is withdrawn. The Bingaman Amendment vote will take place in 2 minutes.

Update: 12:54 pm: Bingaman amendment vote: It fails 42 - 56. Obama and Clinton and good Dems vote for it. Lieberman votes against it. Surprise, Sen. Salazar (CO) votes for it (he voted against the other two Amendments.) Senate goes into recess until this afternoon.

The Senate is voting on the first of three amendments to the FISA bill. It's the Dodd Amendment stripping the bill of the telecom immunity provision. You can watch on C-Span here.

The Dodd Amendment needs 50 votes to pass. Both Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton just voted for the Amendment.

Update: Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Ken Salazar (D-CO) and Joe Lieberman and Diane Feinstein voted against it.

Christy at Firedoglake is live-blogging the hearing and vote.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on July 09, 2008 (boomark / email).