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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Senate Rejects Four-Year FISA Sunset; Immunity Issues Irk House’s Hoyer Senate Rejects Four-Year FISA Sunset; Immunity Issues Irk House’s Hoyer By Edward Epstein and Tim Starks, CQ Staff The Senate on Wednesday rejected an amendment to electronic surveillance legislation that would have moved up the bill’s expiration date to four years. The underlying bill (S 2248) to overhaul the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would sunset in six years. The effort to shorten the bill’s lifespan by two years failed, 49-46. Under an agreement governing consideration of all but one of the amendments to the bill, that proposal would have needed 60 votes for adoption. “I think it’s very important that the next administration focus on this issue,” said the amendment’s sponsor, Benjamin L. Cardin, D-Md., noting that a six-year sunset would take a new law past the 2012 elections. But Christopher S. Bond, R-Mo., the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, which drafted the bill, said a longer sunset would give the intelligence community time to perfect its spying procedures under a new law. Only one of several pending Senate amendments does not, thus far, have a time agreement or vote threshold. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is still seeking ground rules for her amendment to strengthen a provision of the bill that would make FISA the exclusive authority for conducting electronic surveillance. She said Bond offered a modification to her amendment that would allow spying outside the FISA law for up to three months, as needed. But Feinstein said that was too long and countered with 30 days. Hoyer Unloads Meanwhile in the House, Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer attacked the Bush administration for its continued refusal to turn over to House leaders documents about how telecommunications companies did or did not cooperate with federal requests for their customers’ records after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Senate bill includes a provision that would grant retroactive liability protections for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the government in surveillance efforts. Hoyer, D-Md., and other House Democratic leaders are balking at granting immunity until they see the documents they are seeking. Hoyer said the documents would provide “papers of justification, why they did it. Some companies cooperated and some did not.’’ He said he was “not prepared to grant immunity unless I see the information.’’ The latest temporary FISA extension (PL 110-182) lasts only until Feb. 16, and the administration is pressing Congress to clear the Senate bill by that date. “The administration expects us to do what they want by the 16th. That is not the role of the Congress,’’ Hoyer said. His staff told him that National Security Agency officials had promised to provide the documents to the House, but the White House intervened to block that move, he said. Hoyer said that after the Senate passes its bill he hopes for a Senate-House conference on the legislation. At that conference, he said, House negotiators will press their Senate colleagues about why they included the immunity provision. He said he doesn’t know if the Senate had access to some documents that the House is still trying to see. Source: CQ Today Print Edition
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I wonder what it is that NSA is willing to have Hoyer see, but that the White House is not.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
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