FISA - hoodwinked? URGENT - Let's get organized.

Things are still in a bit of a lull right now. On the one hand, that's good, the longer we stall things and the intelligence community keeps doing its thing and preventing terrist attacks, the more people will hopefully grow tired of Bush's wolf-crying.

On the other hand, some of us are worried about a lack of information about a plan on the dems side. It's good that dem leaders in both the House and Senate are speaking out and responding to Bush's scare tactics, but I'm not confident that this is more than talk. Here are some of my specific concerns and questions. I'm hoping someone less ignorant than i will be able to address some of these and better inform us all.

UPDATE: It has been reported (by lgcap - ht) that the House is going to be taking up this issue next week. If so this is potentially bad news, see below...

The President (and it sounds like some folks on the House floor today) have called for an upperdown vote on the Senate version. That makes it sounds like they can still do that, but my understanding is that this has already happened. From a previous post of mcjoan's:

The House Dems just prevailed, 222-196 in beating back the Rs effort to substitute the Senate version of the FISA bill for the bill currently on the floor, a 21 day extension of the Protect America Act. This was a procedural vote, but a good win. Now the vote is on extending the PAA.

Thinking about this the motion was only brought up as a substitution for the extension, not brought for "on its own merits", so to speak. If that is true, does that mean it could still be brought back to the floor for a vote? If repubs are again calling for this, is this just posturing meant to pressure dem leaders? Or does this mean that they could bring it back until a conference committee is officially formed? And on that topic, why hasn't a conference committee formed yet? Anyone have any updates about this?

UPDATE: more details in a note i made below, but the conference committee has NOT been formed yet. The repubs appear to be refusing to participate in one. END UPDATE

If they could still force this vote back on to the floor until a conf committee is formed this could be VITALLY IMPORTANT and we need a conference committee formed ASAP. ****UPDATE: If the House is really going to talk about this next week, and potentially vote on it, as Hoyer has reportedly said in the Congressional Quarterly (can't get a working link on this), we need to mobilize NOW. The only way I see taking FISA up next week in the House as being good news is that if a conference committee has been meeting and we don't know about this and they are coming up on a decision about what to bring back to the house. But if a committee has not been meeting and there will be voting on FISA next week, it seems likely that it will be the Senate version that will be voted on. END UPDATE

Many of us are interested in contacting both Sens and Reps, but currently we (or at least I) are unclear about who we should be contacting or what we are pushing for. Talking to the blue dogs is important to try and bring their support in (see mcjoan's posts for phone numbers/contact info) but asking for a specific action is so much better than asking for a generalized support.

Anyone who could answer these questions or form for us a more coherent call for action, please chime in. I'll update this post as I get info from you all.