The Journal’s editors are superb today on this week’s FISA showdown in the Senate. They include some advice for the GOP’s prospective nominee along the lines of what I offered here a few days ago:

By far the worst threat is an amendment from Senator Chris Dodd (D., Conn.) to deny legal immunity to telephone companies that cooperated with the government on these wiretaps after 9/11. The companies face multiple lawsuits, so a denial of even retrospective immunity would certainly lead to less such cooperation in the future. This is precisely the goal of the left, which has failed to get Congress to ban such wiretaps directly but wants to use lawsuits to do so via the backdoor. We’re told that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are co-sponsoring the Dodd amendment, no doubt for political reasons as they compete for left-wing votes in their nomination fight. But they had better hope the effort fails, because as President they’d surely want the same telecom cooperation. Care to make this an issue, Senator McCain?