Sen. Dodd's Principle

The Albany Times Union has a great editorial today titled "Sen. Dodd's Principle." It praises Dodd's leadership in the fight to stop retroactive immunity from being passed in the Senate. Here's a large portion of the Times Union editorial:

In the House, which has just approved legislation that denies such retroactive immunity, Senator Dodd would be on the winning side of the issue. But the Senate is more sympathetic to the White House position on immunity. Dodd and a few of his colleagues, including Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., are the exceptions standing in the way. By contrast, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says the telecommunications companies shouldn't be punished for cooperating with the government. But Mr. Dodd is right to stand firm. This issue involved basic freedoms, which the White House has been more than willing to trample in the name of homeland security.

Both the White House and the Senate supporters of immunity argue that the government sought the customer records from the telecommunications companies in an attempt to track calls from suspected international terrorists to some people in the United States. No one -- Sen. Dodd included -- is arguing that the government had no right to conduct such a search. But Sen. Dodd rightly notes that there is a legal way to ask for such records -- by securing a court warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- and the way the White House went about it, by simply ignoring the FISA rules and asking the companies to cooperate.

Not every company did. The then head of Qwest Communications International refused to hand over the records without a warrant. Other telecommunications companies should have done likewise. "These companies have very strong, good legal departments here," Sen. Dodd said on "Meet the Press" recently. "The idea that companies would turn over thousands, if not millions, of private records, of individuals without a court order is an invasion of privacy, in my view. There's a way to do this, a legal way. They decided not to do it. ... There's been a consistent pattern by this administration ... to basically trample on the constitutional rights of people. ... That's of great concern to me."

If only Mr. Dodd's primary rivals were equally concerned, and outspoken. Instead, they seem more intent on jockeying for position by avoiding issues that might make them appear to be weak on national security. Credit Sen. Dodd for putting principle first, politics second.

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