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.

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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.

There's no reason for Congress to retroactively grant immunity to a powerful special interest like the telecommunications industry for what appears to be illegal activities.  The Bush administration is claiming that simultaneously (1) what they did isn't illegal, (2) they should be given legal immunity anyway, and (3) they can't tell us what they did because it's a national security issue.  It seems that they're trying to have it both ways.  Congress is wise to delay until this issue can be properly resolved, and questions of executive branch overreach and abuse of power are answered in the light of day.

More on this in my earlier post here.