Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Moveon.org and other top bloggers are sending a message to Obama and Hillary.



TPM Election Central:

Another interesting twist in the Dodd-FISA story.

In a move that will up the pressure on Hillary and Barack Obama to stand firm against the Senate telecom immunity FISA bill, MoveOn and a dozen top progressive blogs will launch an all-out campaign Wednesday to pressure the two Senators into publicly declaring their support for Chris Dodd's threat to place a hold on and filibuster the bill, Election Central has learned.

MoveOn spokesman Adam Green tells me that the group will send out an email to "thousands" of its members tomorrow morning, and thousands more throughout the day, asking them to call the offices of Hillary and Obama and demand that they publicly affirm their support for Dodd.

"We'll be asking Obama and Clinton to publicly get Chris Dodd's back and say in a statement that they will explicitly support his hold and filibuster," Green tells me. "Pretty much this is the exact same ask made to Joe Biden in a Washington Post chat. The question was, Will you join Chris Dodd? He said Yes."

If Hillary and Obama don't comply, Green added, "it would send an unfortunate signal to Democratic voters about whether they're willing to stand up to George Bush. The idea is to get Democrats to stand on principle and exercise the powers of their office to stop Bush from covering up how far he went in illegally spying on the private emails and phone calls of innocent Americans."
In another move that points to the significant degree of coordination among the top liberal blogs on the FISA issue, Green says that the following bloggers will also be directing their readers to call Hillary and Obama's offices and press them on this:
DailyKos, Atrios, OpenLeft, Firedoglake, MyDD, Glenn Greenwald, Crooksandliars, AmericaBlog, Digby, Taylor Marsh
Update: TPM got a response from Obama and Hillary.
Update I: From Hillary:

Q: Can you discuss your position on the reauthorization of the FISA bill?
HRC: I am troubled by the concerns that have been raised by the recent legislation reported out of the Intelligence Committee. I haven't seen it so I can't express an opinion about it. But I don't trust the Bush Administration with our civil rights and liberties. So I'm going to study it very hard. As matters stand now, I could not support it and I would support a filibuster absent additional information coming forward that would convince me differently.
Update II: From Obama's spokesperson:
"Senator Obama has serious concerns about many provisions in this bill, especially the provision on giving retroactive immunity to the telephone companies. He is hopeful that this bill can be improved by the Senate Judiciary Committee. But if the bill comes to the Senate floor in its current form, he would support a filibuster of it."

1 comment:

KittyBowTie1 said...

Well, Obama nad/or his staff did his homework so on this issue, Obama 1, Hillary 0.