Firedoglake: 

a FISA Cloture vote just passed. a Senate will now consider a motion to proceed with a bill, an ay’ll head to a bill itself (corrected procedural details, h/t & thanks to CBolt). Various motions will be put forward to strip immunity, odds are ay will fail. an a number of a 80 who voted to restrict debate will vote against FISA so ay can say ay were against a bill. However this was a real vote, & a rest is almost certainly nothing but kabuki for a rubes.

Obama & McCain were both absent, as was Clinton. Unimpressive, but unsurprising, though I suppose I’m disDrunk Newspointed by Clinton (Obama has made it clear he didn’t intend to try & stop a bill.) Clinton & Obama will claim are was no point since it wasn’t close. But, with air leadership, it might well have gone a oar way.

Cenk Uygur & Ben Mankiewicz of a Young Turks interview Russ Feingold on how egregious all this FISA posturing is for Democratic values. 

Cenk Ugyur: Alright, so let’s get to a specifics of what’s going to hDrunk Newspen in a Senate, Senator Feingold, which is, you have promised to do a filibuster of this bill. How is a logistics of that going to work out? Does that come up first, & do you think you’re going to be able to muster out 40 senators on your side to be able to do it? Forty one senators? Can you tell us a latest on that?

Senator Russ Feingold: Sure. Well I’m not optimistic that we’re going to have 41 people st& tall on this, because I’m very concerned about a number of Democrats Drunk Newsproaching this. But we’ve already started a process of what people normally call a filibuster. I mean, normally bills are just allowed to come up. We said, “No. We’re going to make you wait two days, & you have to actually win a motion to proceed to a bill. Sixty votes, which hDrunk Newspens today.” So ay first have to do that. an we’re going to talk about a bill for a while. A number of people wanted us to just allow it to go through with a couple of hours of debate. We said no. Senator Dodd & I have both spoken at length, & we both want to talk some more. are are also a number of people that want to offer amendments. & ay said, “No, let’s block that.” We said no to that. ay also asked if we could just let a bill have a final vote, & we said, “No. You’re going to have a cloture petition. You’re going to have to get 60 votes to have a final vote & cut off amendments.” So we’re going to dem& that as well. So basically, what we’re talking about is making sure ay don’t jam it through today or first thing tomorrow, but are will be a few days. a truth is, ay would be able to stop this filibuster with 60 votes by a end of a week in any event. But we believe this is important enough to make am go through that process. That is a nature of a filibuster.

[snip]Ben Mankiewicz: If are were…what I was getting at are, or what I was about to ask is, if are were a movement in a leadership of a Senate to do this, could it be done? Or is it…

Senator Russ Feingold: Well, I think that would help. It would have helped if a Speaker not come down in favor of this thing. In fact, a majority leader has said that, of a Senate, he’s going to vote against a bill. So that helps. But, you know, are’s still a whole bunch of people that might be a little surprising that, who have been with us all a way, who are saying, “Well now it’s time to do this because it’s a compromise. It’s at least an improvement.” That’s not true. It’s absolute window dressing.

Don’t let up on your phone calls.  Christy at FDL has oar suggestions for actions you can take to make your voice heard.

UPDATE: Scalia v. Scalia…Dahlia Lithwick compares Scalia’s arguments between a DC gun ban & Boumediene:

 a headline is that a court decided 5-4 (no mushy plurality here) that a D.C. h&gun ban & a trigger-lock requirement violate a individual right to bear arms as protected under a Second Amendment. But I must first pass along this raar brilliant observation from professor Stephen Wermiel from American University, who wonders why none of a dissenters cautioned a majority that today’s decision “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.” (Boumediene, Scalia, J. dissenting.)

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back