« previous | MUCK HOME | next »
Reid: GOPers Are Pulling The Ol' Surveillance Squeeze Again
It worked in August. It didn't work last week. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) says the White House and GOP seem set to give it a third try. From CQ:
Legislation to overhaul the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act remained stalled in the Senate Tuesday, held hostage by a partisan clash over procedures for consideration of an unrelated economic stimulus package.A frustrated Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., complained that Republicans were blocking his efforts to schedule votes on proposed amendments to the bill (S 2248). He questioned Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ’s commitment to the legislation, saying Republicans have declined to allow FISA to move forward.
“The Orwellian Bush administration has now slopped over into the Senate, and now the Republican leader is now becoming Orwellian himself,” Reid said. “They want to stall the FISA legislation as long as they can, and they’ve done a pretty good job, because they want this legislation to be completed at the last minute, to give the House and the Senate conferees little time to work on this.”
The answer came from the Republicans and is very simple: JUST SAY NO!
February 6, 2008 3:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
The answer came from the Republicans and is very simple: JUST SAY NO!
Posted by JMOHR
I agree. Let the issue and authorization die. Screw George Bush and his enablers. If and when we suffer another attack we know who to blame it on. As much as the rest of the world hates Bush, I somehow doubt there will be an attack on him.
February 6, 2008 3:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
At the very least, show some balls and threaten to let it die of GOP obstruction. That's the only way to counter their "delay until the last minute" pressure.
The best outcome at this point would be for this bill to die, and a much more limited bill be introduced to fix the few actual problems that need to be addressed.
February 6, 2008 4:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Unfortunately, it looks like Senator Reid is beholden to those same interests, and can't let it die.
I would love to see some real facts about this whole issue be debated. Republicans shoudl have to justify things like how President Bush could have known about the need for "Terrorist Surveilance" in February 2001.
I'd love hear the justifications for explained for saving all that data on calls from Americans to Americans.
The more they have to discuss, justify, and obfuscate, the more people will understand what a travesty the PAA is.
Harry Reid can't let that happen.
February 6, 2008 4:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
All the administration wants is the power to capture all our email, read it at their discretion, and store it forever. What could go wrong?
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/nsa/index.html#45178578
the changes legalize Room 641A , the secret spying room inside AT&T’s San Francisco internet switching center that was outed by former AT&T employee Mark Klein. That room sits at the center of a lawsuit against AT&T for its alleged illegal participation in the government’s secret, warrantless spying program.
Under the new rules, secret spying court judges will no longer be evaluating whether the government has probable cause to eavesdrop on a spy or a terrorist who is inside the United States or to wiretap a particular foreigner via wiretaps inside the United States.
Instead the judges will simply evaluate descriptions of how NSA filters in the infrastructure are designed to not catch purely domestic traffic. They can also approve or disapprove of how the spooks ’disguise’ or reveal the identities of Americans who are one of the parties in any communication that involves a foreigners.
Rockefeller outlined the differences between the old legal architecture and the new one to argue against a amendment from Sen. Russ Feingold. That amendment would require the government to throw out non-emergency communications that were caught by filters if judges later found the filter to be illegal (and which the spooks didn’t fix in 30 days).
Feingold argues that without such a penalty the NSA won’t care at all what the courts say since there’s no penalty for intercepting purely domestic phone calls in the current bill.
February 6, 2008 5:30 PM | Reply | Permalink