http://mydd.com/"The Senate Judiciary Committee punted on Thursday over whether to shield telecommunications companies from civil lawsuits for allegedly helping the government eavesdrop on Americans.
That decision -- the main sticking point in a rewrite of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- will be left to the full Senate."
Doesn't appear to be a victory yet at all. More from Greenwald.
UPDATE X:
Matters are a bit clearer, and I think some of these claims of a great victory are looking a bit overstated. It's not as bad as it could have been (i.e, the bill sent to the full Senate with amnesty), but it's not a victory either (the Committee did not strip the bill of amnesty). Instead, once Feingold's amendment failed, they basically agreed not to decide at all on amnesty and leave it to the full Senate. As this AP article states, "the Senate Judiciary Committee punted on Thursday over whether to shield telecommunications companies."
Similarly, this statement from Sen. Leahy says that "the Feingold amendment . . . did not prevail in the committee" and that "The full Senate will yet need to resolve the immunity issue." And a statement from Sen. Feingold (via email) says that "I hope that, when the full Senate considers this issue, the Majority Leader brings up the Senate Judiciary Committee bill instead of the badly flawed Intelligence Committee alternative."
Apparently, the Committee agreed (by a 10-9 party line vote) to do nothing on amnesty -- neither leave it in nor strip it out -- and instead left it to a floor fight to determine if amnesty will end up in the bill passed by the Senate. That's preferable to having the bill sent to the floor with amnesty (because now, it will need 60 votes to overcome Dodd's filibuster and to support an amnesty-specific amendment to put it back into the bill), but it's not as clear of a statement as the Committee's having stripped it out.
UPDATE XI: Having just spoken with several people involved in today's morass, I have a lot more clarity about what happened. What I described in the prior update is accurate. Now, the next step will be focused on Sen. Reid. He has virtually unlimited discretion to decide what version of the bill to introduce to the full Senate. He could introduce the Intelligence Committee version (with amnesty), the Judiciary Committee version (without amnesty), the House version, or he could just introduce something entirely new altogether, something that gets negotiated between Rockefeller and Reid. "
http://salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/11/15/amnesty_fisa/index.html