Senate Democrats defeated Monday a Republican attempt to ram through a bill that expands the government's warrantless spying powers and give retroactive legal immunity to telecoms that aided the President's secret warrantless wiretapping program. The attempt by the Republicans to prohibit amendments to the bill and limit debate time failed to gather enough votes and failed with 48 yes votes and 45 against it. They needed 60 yes votes to limit the debate..

Senate Democrats want instead to pass a bill temporarily extending powers given to the nation's spies this summer, in order to have more time to debate and work out a compromise with the House, whose version does not include immunity.

President Bush and Senate Republicans oppose any temporary extension, saying that Congress has had plenty of time in the last 6 months to pass a bill and that the bill under consideration satisfies both the president and the intelligence community.

Today's defeat sets the stage for President Bush to blast Democrats in tonight's State of the Union speech and makes it nearly inevitable that some sort of extension will be passed and signed into law this week.

Failure to do so would not prevent the nation's spies from tracking foreign threats, but would remove their power to unilaterally order American-based phone and internet companies to install wiretaps. Instead, they will have to ask a court to issued an order, as has been the case for the last 30 years. The restriction would apply only to wiretaps physically located inside the United States. Under any outcome, the government is free to wiretap outside the country in any means it likes or can pull off without court oversight, so long as they are not targeting Americans inside the United States.

The Senate immediately moved to vote on whether to take up a 30-day extension, but Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) urged Republicans to vote against it.

That motion also failed to gather the necessary sixtie votes by the same margin of 48 votes against it and 45 for it (the former all Republican, the latter mostly Democratic), though the Senate will almost certainly pass some sort of extension later this week.

The Senate is now in recess until this evening when President Bush will give the State of the Union speech and will plans to return to the spying bill late Tuesday morning.

UPDATE: The House, which is going to hold some sort of retreat in the coming days, is scheduled to vote on a 30-day extension of the current powers tomorrow morning.

Much will depend, THREAT LEVEL thinks, on tonight's State of the Union. Check back later this evening for our take on the speech.

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