Dodd down on spying

By Times Staff | Friday, December 21, 2007

Chris Dodd rapped three other Democratic U.S. Senate members running for president for not being in Washington, D.C., to help him quash a proposal he says violates the Constitution.

Dodd, a U.S. senator from Connecticut and White House hopeful, has been an outspoken critic of warrantless wiretapping.

He’s working to defeat a proposal that would give immunity to telecommunications companies that voluntarily handed over years’ worth of private phone, fax and e-mail records of American citizens to the federal government without a court order.

Dodd said he convinced the Senate leadership to pull the bill this week after spending several hours speaking out against the bill and threatening a filibuster.

“That was a good victory for the Constitution on Monday, but that was only one battle in this war,” Dodd said at a news conference Thursday in front of the Iowa State Capitol.

Dodd said it is unlikely the bill would have even come up had Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden been in the Senate with him to fight it.

But Dodd said the issue will be up again when the Senate takes up a reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in January.