Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold have managed to get the FISA bill pulled until after January even though Harry Reid tried to get a vote on the bill today. Harry Reid has been a disappointment, and this Congress has been awful all around, both parties. Of two bills that strengthened FISA protections, Reid chose the bill that contained retroactive immunity and fewer safeguards for our privacy and against executive abuse. This even though Dodd had put a hold on the bill, which Reid has honored from Republican senators time and time again. There is no explanation for this.

Here is Sen. Dodd explaining why he held the floor for hours today and was prepared to go 30 hours if necessary.

I also should point out that he is still campaigning hard in Iowa. He isn’t the sexy choice, but he showed real leadership today, giving up the chance to campaign to come back to Washington and fight for an issue he truly cares about. The other candidates, who supposedly supported Dodd and the filibuster, couldn’t be bothered to leave their campaigns behind. That’s disappointing. It’s also why, even given the historic opportunity to elect the first minority or first female President, I will be voting for Dodd.

This fight isn’t finished, and Dodd and Feingold will need your support in January as this bill comes up again. Follow the news and contact your Senators and Congressmen about this issue. It’s important because in our system of government is built on checks and balances. Retroactive immunity is an additional insult in this bill. These companies could’ve done what others did, and refused to cooperate without a court order.

But the most damning reason to kill this provision: The New York Times reported this weekend that these surveillance programs were started before 9/11. These programs weren’t about terrorism, they weren’t a tradeoff made because of 9/11. They were part of a larger plan by Bush and Cheney about a powerful executive branch with limited interference from Congress.

Even if 9/11 were the impetus for the bill, there were better ways to do this. Here’s Kevin Drum:

But it’s still worth noting that it didn’t have to be this way. After all, hardly anyone, either liberal or conservative, would have objected if the Bush administration had gotten telecoms cooperation as a genuine emergency measure following 9/11. As Ron Suskind reminds us in The One Percent Doctrine, this was the situation at the time: Al-Qaeda terrorists had just attacked the country; further attacks seemed highly likely; our intelligence network was scrambling and nearly blind; we had good reason to believe that Osama bin Laden might be negotiating with Pakistani radicals to obtain a nuclear weapon; and credible reports suggested that al-Qaeda might also be on the road to manufacturing weaponized anthrax. Under the circumstances, asking telecoms companies to cooperate on an interim basis even in the absence of legal approval would hardly have been inappropriate.

But that’s not what happened. As Suskind also reminded us, instead of requesting temporary cooperation and then asking Congress for the implementing legislation within a few months, the Bush administration insisted on going it alone. Dick Cheney had long been obsessed with reasserting the power of the executive branch, and Bush himself was obviously smitten with the idea of being a “wartime president.” It was a toxic combination. As a result, instead of calming down after the initial panic and getting Congress fully involved, Bush and Cheney insisted on moving ahead for years in a legal gray zone.

So now we end up where we are today. Instead of an emergency request that was quickly put on a firm legislative foundation, we have a legal quagmire. And because Congress — Republicans and Democrats alike — went along with this even after we had gotten our bearings and had no excuse for continuing to operate on an emergency basis, they’re just as happy as anyone to put this whole episode behind them and cave in on the retroactive immunity issue.

And what happens the next time a president demands telecoms cooperation for years on end without legal justification? Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?

That is the problem. As Dodd says in the above video, we learned these lessons during Watergate and the Nixon administration where the Church Committee recommended what became the FISA law. History is bound to repeat itself unless we learn from it.

I’m proud that Chris Dodd is my Senator. He understands the essence of what has been wrong about the Bush years and is fighting to bring us back to a more sane balance.