But not the way you think:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Thursday that she favors legal immunity for telecommunications companies that allegedly shared millions of customers' telephone and e-mail messages and records with the government, a position that could lead to the dismissal of numerous lawsuits pending in San Francisco.

This means the bill will reach the Senate floor and Dodd will get to lead a filibuster of it.

Oh by the way, how bad can Feinstein get?

Anyone expecting a speedy trial in the case of Bernie Kerik is bound to disappointed. The Government today turned over 20 cartons of discovery and the results of a 2005 wiretap on Kerik's cell phone that yielded 2,500 calls.

The defense will challenge the the wiretap and that alone will take many months to resolve. Details of Bernie's phone calls were reported by Newsweek in April, prompting me to ask, who leaked them? Now I'm wondering when in 2005 they got the wiretap, and what was the probable cause for it?

The defense may also need time to conduct an investigation of international scope:

Among the new allegations in the indictment are charges that Mr. Kerik failed to disclose the $250,000 loan from an unnamed Brooklyn businessman in June 2003; Mr. Kerik was in Iraq helping to train a new police force at the time. The indictment alleges he knew that the money had come from “a wealthy Israeli industrialist whose companies did business with the federal government.” The loan was repaid in June 2005.

I don't see this case going to trial for a year -- which would put it after the 2008 elections. That may lessen Rudy's Bernie curse.

Update: Another good read from the past: Bernie in his own words in New York Magazine, Tears of a Cop.

Update: Wiretap mystery solved below.

I'm at the gate at the Las Vegas airport getting ready to board.

Things I'm not a fan of:

• Southwest Airlines
• The airport security procedures when leaving
• AT&T's Edge Network and Treos.

On the other side:

• The Paris Las Vegas hotel was way better than I expected.
• The monorail in Las Vegas
• Blogworld ran smoother than I expected and I enjoyed it, especially seeing Markos, Jerome of My DD, Henry and others from Blogads, Joe of AmericaBlog, Natasha of Pacific Views and Gabe of Memeorandum. On the right, I enjoyed talking to Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters, Roger Simon (Pajamas Media), Hugh Hewitt and Dean of Weekly Standard

Links later, gotta board. I'm not finding the Kerik indictment on Pacer, if anyone has a copy and can email it to me, or email me a link, it would be much appreciated.

Update: Links are in and I found the Indictment.

Update: A big thanks to Big Tent Democrat for his posts today and yesterday while I was gone. TalkLeft hit 20 million visitors this week...thanks to all of you for reading.

I have been a Chris Dodd supporter for many months now. The reason why was simple - he was leading on the issues I cared most about.

And, too be fair, he still is on many. But I can no longer ignore a very troubling development about the Dodd campaign - it has been much less about issues and more about attacks of late. His nod to bigoted opposition to Eliot Spitzer's drivers licenses for undocumented aliens initiative was, on the issues, easily his lowest moment of the campaign for me.

But more troubling than that for me is his campaign team probably thinks it was one of his best moments - because he got to zing Hillary Clinton. It appears that the Dodd campaign believes that is a winning formula for him. What else could explain this?

Via Atrios, the Heartland speaks:

“You people are really nuts,” she told a reporter during a phone interview. “There’s kids dying in the war, the price of oil right now — there’s better things in this world to be thinking about than who served Hillary Clinton at Maid-Rite and who got a tip and who didn’t get a tip.”

That this was said by the person who was wrongly alleged to have not received a tip speaks volumes.

But this is a warning for us all. Too many blogs ignore the issues and go for the so-called "poltics." Too many citizens do the same thing. Of course it starts with the Media, but we do not have to echo it.

If you care about issues, then talk about issues. Despite what the Media thinks:

In the first five months of this year, almost two-thirds of the mainstream media campaign coverage was devoted to the horse race (and subsidiaries thereof, like polls, tactics and fund-raising). Why do we do it? Lots of reasons. I’ll start with the obvious: We can’t help ourselves! . . . Another reason: It’s easier. It takes time and patience to dig through records, to get answers from candidates that go beyond spin.

Only the lazy and stupid think discussing issues is hard or uninteresting. Yes that means the Media. But it does not have to mean us.

Obama:

You know, Senator Clinton says that she's concerned about Social Security but is not willing to say how she would solve the Social Security crisis, then I think voters aren't going to feel real confident that this is a priority for her. And that's the kind of leadership I think that the Democratic Party has to offer in the years to come.

High Broderism as Democratic leadership? As others have said, THERE IS NO SOCIAL SECURITY CRISIS!

Yep. He did. And he says Kevin Drum agrees with him. Oh, Brooks starts by the standard unsourced argument that Ronald Reagan really did not mean to send a message to white Southerners on civil rights when he gave a speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi where defense of "states rights" figured prominently. He calls those of us, including his colleague Bob Herbert, purveyors of a "heinous conspiracy theory." But the truth is Brooks has been a pernicious, mendacious apologist for the GOP throughout his career and this is no different.

Brooks provides NO evidence to buttress his claims. Indeed the version he provides buttresses the argument that the Philadelphia speech was in fact an exercise in dogwhistle politics in the Deep South:

Charles Franklin of pollster.com, one of the better analysts of polls, demonstrates the limits of relying on both polls and pollsters. Franklin opines that there has been a significant uptick in how Americans feel the "military efforts" in Iraq are going:

So what to make of the upturn in positive views of how the war is going? Republicans (including the president) have made real progress in swaying opinion to their side, while 10 months of Democratic efforts have failed to persuade citizens that the war continues to be a disaster. The war of partisan persuasion has tilted towards the Republicans and away from the Democrats, at least in this particular aspect.

This is just wrong. Franklin takes a result, "the Surge is working," and turns it into support for the Iraq Debacle. As the most recent polling suggests, Americans seem to understand that whatever success Petraeus is perceived as having militarily (and I think not much of it personally, but that is another issue), the american People understand that the Iraq Debacle is and will be a Debacle irrespective of Petraeus' efforts. Think of it this way - the American People are blaming Bush AND the Iraqis now. Petraeus and the troops are heroic and blameless. Sometimes pollsters can't think past the questions they want to focus on. Franklin is guilty of that here. More.

One thing about the Beltway is that no matter what the topic, its thinking is always at least 2 years behind the curve. As TechPresident reports, Karl Rove and Max Cleland are no different than the rest of the Beltway:

For most of us in the audience, the presentation was an elaborately-delivered (think Tom Cruise as Frank T.J. Mackey in Magnolia) compilation of overused Pew research points and carefully-selected stock photos. Clearly, we are not the intended audience. Those who would find this presentation helpful are those who still think internet users are 12-year-old kids in their mother's basement posting visceral blog comments in virtual echo chambers. In other words, Karl Rove and Max Cleland.

Heh and more.

Reuters is reporting Bernie Kerik was indicted this afternoon. He'll be arraigned tomorrow in federal court in White Plains New York.

Speaker Pelosi today announced:

House Democrats said Thursday they would send President Bush $50 billion for combat operations on the condition that he begin withdrawing troops from Iraq.

The proposal, similar to one Bush vetoed earlier this year, would identify a goal of ending combat entirely by December 2008. It would require that troops spend as much time at home as they do in combat, as well as effectively ban harsh interrogation techniques like waterboarding.

In a private caucus meeting, Pelosi told rank-and-file Democrats that the bill was their best shot at challenging Bush on the war. And if Bush rejected it, she said, she did not intend on sending him another war spending bill for the rest of the year.

"This is not a blank check for the president," she said later at a Capitol Hill news conference. "This is providing funding for the troops limited to a particular purpose, for a short time frame.

As always, we know Bush will veto.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Bush would veto any bill that sets an "artificial timeline" for troop withdrawals.

As always, I applaud the Speaker's STATED stance today.

As always, the important point here is that the House Dems MUST stick to their guns and tell the President - if he vetoes then he is abandoning the troops in the field. I repeat, the President of the United States will be ABANDONING AMERICAN TROOPS IN THE FIELD!

President Bush is proposing to stab the troops in the back by vetoing funding for them.

A disgraceful man. The worst President in history.

One of the biggest ideological fault lines in the Democratic Party is trade. I stand on the pro-free trade side of this issue. I supported and support NAFTA and its extension to Peru.

Among the Dem Presidential candidates, Open Left reports:

Barack Obama supports the pact while John Edwards opposes it. Hillary Clinton has yet to take a position, though she has suggested the nation may need a little "timeout" from new trade agreements pending a review of the effects previous pacts have had on American workers.

I agree with Barack Obama on this issue. More.