SpyTalk

The curtains are coming down on a lingering, virtually meaningless Senate debate on "several apparently doomed amendments" to electronic surveillance legislation, my CQ colleague Tim Starks reports, with final votes scheduled for tomorrow,

Passage of the legislation overhauling the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act without amendments that would make telecommunication companies legally liable for their participation in the adminstration's warrantless monitoring of phone calls and emails is all but certain.

"Currently it looks like they'll finish up tomorrow afternoon," Starks just told me by e-mail from the Senate press gallery, where he's he's following debate.

 And Sen. Barack Obama is expected to vote for it, he says.

I'm thinking it'll get about 75 votes, maybe more. Cloture on the motion to proceed (aka a vote against filibustering, in essence) got 80, with 15 "no" votes, but that may have been a reflection more of people wanting to get on with it. The five who didn't vote on cloture include Obama, who said he's on board with the bill, and he's now expected to attend the vote tomorrow. The earlier Senate bill that was slightly more Republican-friendly got 68 votes in February, so this will get more than that, at least.

Obama's vote has created some very unhappy campers on the left, Starks notes.

His positional shifts on this matter -- he was adamant in his opposition this version of the FISA bill once upon a time -- have driven some on the left absolutely bonkers.  Last I checked last week, a group of his supporters opposed to immunity was the biggest group in the www.my.barackobama.com house, his very own website.

Bush administration officials have signaled their opposition to all three amendments pending to the bill, Stark writes.

Each would modify or cut out a provision of the bill that would effectively wipe out lawsuits against companies being sued for assisting President Bush's warrantless surveillance program.

"I do believe at this point in time to give this retroactive immunity kind of makes a mockery of the fact that we're supposed to be a government of laws, not people," said Sen. Barbara Boxer , D-Calif.

The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, however, argued against the amendments.

"Private companies who cooperated with the government in good faith, as the facts before the congressional intelligence committees demonstrate they did, should not be held accountable for the president's bad policy decisions," said Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV , D-W.Va.

Liberals, meanwhile, announced the formation of Accountability Now, http://www.actblue.com/page/accountabilitynow, whose goal will be to defeat members of congress who voted for the bill.

Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald writes that the fight against telecom immunity is not over, and that members of Congress who opposed it will be targeted in the elections.

(T)he campaign we have been conducting is intended to be only the first step -- not the last -- in taking a stand against the endless erosion of core constitutional protections and the rapidly expanding Lawless Surveillance State. We have created a new organization, Accountability Now, to conduct the ongoing battle to target and remove from power those who enable these abuses; to force these issues into our political discourse; and to prevent the Washington Establishment from continuing to trample on basic constitutional protections with impunity.