Good for him:

Senator Chris Dodd plans to put a hold on the Senate FISA renewal bill because it reportedly grants retroactive immunity to telephone companies for any role they played in the Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping program.

For the most part, the new FISA bill – especially the one in the House – is a pretty good bill that democrats should vote for.  But as I mentioned earlier, Retroactive immunity to telecom companies for doing things which – well, we don’t know what they did, which is why I have a problem with it.

Then they can take that out of the bill, then I’m fine with it for the most part, but that’s pretty much something which I think needs to be taken out.

Leahy – who chairs a committee which the bill must get through to get to the full Senate – calls the bill “caving” as well, so it’s clear that he isn’t about to give it a free ride either.

The reason why this doesn’t happen more often is that typically holds are only placed by members when they know a bill is going to pass and, presumably, intense public pressure to life a hold on a presumably popular bill will finally get to the Senator holding the bill, and it will move on.

However, I’m not sure how much public outrage you’re going to be able to cook up over giving telecom companies retroactive immunity, and Dodd hasn’t shown himself to be one who would back down from something like this either.

To learn what a hold is exactly, once again I refer you to Kagro X.