It was disconcerting, to say the least, to hear Sylvestre Reyes on CNN this morning talking about retroactive telecom immunity:

Reyes, D-Texas, said he was open to that possibility after receiving documents from the Bush administration and speaking to the companies about the industry's role in the government spy program.

"We are talking to the representatives from the communications companies because if we're going to give them blanket immunity, we want to know and we want to understand what it is that we're giving immunity for," he said. "I have an open mind about that."

Regarding a compromise deal, Reyes said: "We think we're very close, probably within the next week we'll be able to hopefully bring it to a vote."

I hope before the Democrats decide to cave on this they think very carefully about the message they're sending in the wake of huge ad buys against their freshmen by a GOP attack outfit. Jim Klobuchar writes about the ads taken out in Minnesota against Tim Walz (and Walz's admirable response):

His supporters are responding with their dollars. But the question he raises hangs, ominous and taunting, over the 2008 elections.

How much have the voters actually learned from the corruptions of decency and truth that emasculated John Kerry’s campaign in 2004?

One thing we probably haven’t learned is how easily it was done. The architects of it were shadowy surrogates of the real political hatchetmen and corporate pirates who brought the Bush government to power. In the middle of it some credulous Democrats actually asked George Bush to disavow the Swift Boat fraud.

Were they serious?

If House Democrats back down now, it worked. And it will keep happening, again and again and again.