Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) is taking an enormous amount of criticism from the left — see Glenn Greenwald and Christy Hardin Smith, for starters — for putting the Senate intelligence committee’s version of the surveillance bill on the floor as the “base text” for a vote on Monday and offering the Senate Judiciary Committee’s version as a standing amendment. In a nutshell, Judiciary’s version doesn’t provide retroactive telecom immunity and offers more civil-liberties protections. (TPMm homie Julian Sanchez has a good rundown of the differences at Ars Technica.)
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=179162