Well, first it appears that Bush and His Evil Minions^™ are coordinating with the Telcos to lobby, and are trying to move heaven and earth to make it so.

I can only conclude that in addition to evidence of illegal wiretaps, that the telcos have information of something much worse, my guess would be that there was specific spying done on political opponents.

If they mutter terrorism to a jury, it is unlikely that a jury would convict them, or that a judge would give them anything more than a slap on the wrist, but if, and there are indications of this, that there is evidence of spying on their opponents, it becomes a whole new ballgame.

If it is discovered that Bush, Cheney, and Rove were spying on Democrats communications, we just might see that impeachment that is “not on the table”, or serious prosecutions starting in 2009.

There have always been rumors that they wiretapped Kerry’s senior adviser for national security affairs, James Rubin, by surveilling his wife CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour for “national security reasons”, and using the inevitable of intercepts of him for political purposes.

My guess is that these activities were far broader and deeper than just one reporter or one candidate.

The Democrats victory in 2006 may very well have been helped along by the NY Times finally breaking the story on the wiretapping, and the telcos getting skittish enough to stop asking “how high” when Bush asked them to jump.

It may all be moot however, as Steny Hoyer and Jay Rockefeller appear to be doing their level best to create full immunity for the phone companies, which would prevent the real story from coming out. Ever.

I’m simply not clear on why Hoyer and Rockefeller are so gung ho about this, unless, of course they were in some way criminally complicit with the program.

What is interesting is that, for now at least, the Vichy Blue Dog Democrats have been remarkably uninterested in getting immunity passed.

As I’ve said before, I think that they headed home after it did not pass the house, and instead of the storm of criticism they expected, they got high fives from the voters, which gave them some backbone.