The Senate is recessed until January 22nd. Well, actually, it isn’t really recessed…the Dems are holding pro forma sessions during the break to prevent any recess appointments. Bravo for that! But the Senate is not going to reconvene until the 22nd. A lot is going to happen between now and then. The Iowa caucuses are on the third, the New Hampshire primary is on the 8th, there’s the Michigan thing on the 15th, and the Nevada caucuses (and the South Carolina primary for the Republicans) on the 19th. When Congress gets back they’ll have three things looming: the South Carolina primary (for the Democrats) on the 26th, the State of the Union speech on the 28th, and the Florida primary on the 29th. It’s within this highly politically charged atmosphere that Harry Reid will have to navigate the FISA bill.

It’s important that opponents of amnesty for the telecommunications corporations explain what we want and what we don’t. We do not want to punish the telecommunications corporations. We want to know what was done and why it was done. And we want warrantless surveillance to stop, and those that ordered it to be held accountable. If Harry Reid can work out some kind of compromise where the administration and the telcos turn over all the relevant information, then we don’t mind immunizing the telcos, or substituting the federal government as the defendant in the civil cases. But we strongly suspect that the entire Republican strategy is to hide what was done and why it was done. Here is the bottom line: we do not want the Democrats to pass any FISA bill that will aid in a cover-up of crimes done by the administration. If the only bill we can get is a bill that covers-up criminal activity, we do not want any bill to pass.

So, what can Harry Reid do? First, get the framing right. Tell the American people that you will not pass any bill that is nothing more than an obstruction of justice. Offer the administration a deal. If they turn over all relevant documents and make no objections to subpoenas for testimony, Reid will allow for a vote on ‘substitution’. Arlen Specter has floated something along these lines, but without assurances of cooperation. When the president turns this deal down, offer to pass a patch bill which fixes the foreign-to-foreign call loophole in FISA, but does not do anything more. When the president rejects this deal, tell the American people that the president is sacrificing the security of the country because he wants to cover up his own crimes.

Each of the presidential candidates needs to adopt this same rhetoric. A united front from our candidates will show that the leadership of the party is adamant about ‘no cover-up’ and willing to take their chances with the electorate over this issue.

What Reid absolutely should not do is introduce a bill with immunity that requires 60 votes to strip out. He has to remain in control of the vote. For Democrats like Diane Feinstein who do not want to vote against the telecommunications corporations, or Mary Landrieu who doesn’t want to risk being called soft on terrorism, remind them that the leadership is united and will blame Bush for putting a cover-up over our safety.

Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee should make rumblings about opening impeachment hearings over obstruction of justice and contempt of Congress in several areas: failure to comply with subpoenas, destruction of the CIA tapes, and illegal warrantless surveillance. The object here is to apply a little pressure and also to highlight the case that the debate over FISA is really a debate over the cover-up of criminal activity.

The Senate has to be willing NOT to pass a FISA bill and to get blamed for introducing a potential security risk. It isn’t about punishing corporations that cooperated with the federal government, it is about getting to the truth about what happened and why. Once we know the answers to those questions, we’ll have a better basis for updating FISA.