In Denver, it's easy to get the feeling that the telecom companies are funding this convention.  And it's pretty close to true.  AT&T, Qwest, Verizon, and Comcast are heavily invested in the Denver DNC, and are similarly paying for a good chunk of the RNC next week.  If you want to see a big special interest buying its way further into the halls of power, you've got it here.  And anyone who cares about the future of the media, the internet, and the election system in this country should be getting mad.

On the ground in Denver, it's the little things that catch your attention - like almost every delegate has a lanyard around their neck that says "Qwest Qwest Qwest" (see the pics).  When half the people you see have a Qwest band around their neck, you notice.  And it gets in your head.

And then it's the parties.  Of course, folks like me can't get in - but delegates, elected officials, lobbyists and their staffs usually can.  AT&T is hosting a reception virtually every day, sometimes several.  (Check out Sunlight's Party Time blog for some great coverage of the convention parties.)  Yesterday I went to see who was at the AT&T-sponsored luncheon for "western delegates" only to get turned away at the door and informed that the event had been moved to a different fancy restaurant on the other side of town.  Tuesday night I wandered past a private event sponsored by Verizon for Iowa delegates; they had reserved a café on the main drag through town and locked out the public, as you can see from the photo.

Those are the obvious images, but what's less visible to the naked eye is more significant.

Check out the footage of Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher attempting to talk to attendees of a swanky AT&T sponsored party last night.

AT&T's name is littered across both the DNC and RNC party lists as a host of lavish receptions as well as a major donor to both conventions' Host Committees.  AT&T has a lot at stake in Congress in 2009.  Smells wrong.

UPDATE:The FISA bill that did not contain retroactive immunity for the telecom companies failed in the Senate today, 60-34, and the rest of the debate and voting will take place on Monday.

In a moment the Senate will take up the issue of FISA--I'm writing this with the hope that the debate takes more than a few minutes, and perhaps stretches into the next couple days.  The big question for me and for many of us is whether the bill will contain a provision granting blanket, retroactive immunity to telecom companies that allowed the government to spy on Americans without a warrant.

The issue hasn't changed over the past few months: this is a question of whether it's okay to break the law or not, and whether, if an individual or company appears to have broken the law and violated the Constitution, that person or company will be held accountable.  Granting retroactive legal immunity to the telecom industry before the Congress has had a chance to investigate their actions and before challenges to their actions in court have been concluded amounts to undermining the process of justice and rule of law in this country.

That's a big question.  Meanwhile, Credo Action (formerly Working Assets) has put together an action center that points a spotlight on the presidential candidates and the debate on FISA.  More below the fold.

UPDATE (Monday, 9 a.m.): The Washington Post this morning clarifies that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is not putting retroactive immunity on hold forever; he's just pushing back that debate by a couple months and may still cave to the White House. Senators Chris Dodd and Patrick Leahy remain vigorously opposed; hopefully they'll spend the next couple months laying out the case to their caucus and the majority leader.

Some good news, despite the Wall Street Journal's claims to the contrary: it appears that the Congress will not grant blanket immunity to the telecom industry for allowing warrantless wiretapping by the government.

More on this in my earlier post here.

Some welcome news: the top Democrat and Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee are cooling to the idea of telecom amnesty.

We're not out of the woods yet, though.  Leahy and Specter are hesitating, but they're not drawing the line in the sand, though Sen. Chris Dodd did that last week.  Here's more from the two ranking Senators.

In the evolving fight to preserve the rule of law by not granting retroactive amnesty to the telecom companies who allowed warrantless wiretapping--i.e. domestic spying--on Americans, Sen. Chris Dodd has made a series of bold steps.

He first put a 'hold' on the bill, stopping it from reaching the Senate floor.

As I pointed out earlier, not only does the notion of amnesty for the telecoms have serious and troubling implications for the basic tenets of law and justice--and that if the telecoms are granted immunity, it's likely that we'll never be able to accurately determine whether and to what extent the Bush administration illegally spied on Americans--but it also ties directly back to the corrupting and overwhelming influence of powerful special interest money in politics.

Note how the Senator who forged this compromise received ten times more money from the telecoms this past year than in the five previous years combined.

2. Whether or not his compliance was bought, the clear impression from that spike in campaign cash from the telecom industry to Rockefeller is that he's not an impartial legislator.  Until we create a system of full public financing for all races, especially for Congress, we will continue to live with the suspicion--if not the reality--that powerful special interests are buying favors and currying excessive influence with our lawmakers.  It is moments like this--when the apparent "best interests" of the people come into conflict with the wishes of major campaign donors--that highlight why having a political system awash in private money is such a bad idea for our democracy and why we must devote ourselves to changing it.

The Senate has apparently reached a deal that threatens any attempt to uncover the details of the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping of American citizens and whether those actions violated the law.

This is a sad and embarrassing trial and the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller, is essentially throwing the rule of law and the rigorous pursuit of justice under the bus--and it's not clear what is gained by doing so.  It's very clear what is lost.

When the Bush administration's intelligence agencies began domestic spying operations, the major telecom companies had to comply to make it work.  The White House, on the one hand, insists that it was legal; on the other hand, at the very same time, wants the telecom companies to receive retroactive immunity from any civil litigation--for allowing their customers' privacy to be violated by the federal government.

To recap, the White House is pushing two circles of logic here, and both are dangerous.  One is that the White House says that its wiretapping program was legal, but still wants telecoms to be granted immunity.  The other, which I covered earlier, is that the White House wants Congress to grant the telecoms immunity, but is preventing the telecoms from going before Congress to divulge what they did and what they'd deserve immunity from.

If we want a chance at justice with regard to the wiretapping program, letting the telecom companies retroactively off the hook may make that impossible, because then they'll never have to comply with any investigations.

It is unclear why the Senate would grant immunity to the telecoms while being kept in the dark about their activities in allowing domestic spying on American citizens.