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The Senate vote was 48-45, 12 votes short of the 60 needed to extend the law. Also on Monday, House Democratic leaders delayed until Tuesday a vote on whether to extend the law.
From Michelle: ” as anticipated by the nutroots, both Clinton and Obama have voted no on cloture (e.g., voted to block press on the Rockefeller-Bond FISA reform bill)…5:12pm Eastern. Motion is not agreed to. Vote is 48-45….McConnell’s on the floor, next vote is on the 30-day extension…urging a no vote on cloture for 30-day extension…”
WSJ:
Opposition from the Democratic left to this intelligence program isn’t merely part of the partisan blood feud against a weak President near the end of his term. It is part of a far larger ideological campaign to erode Presidential war powers. Goaded by the ACLU and much of the press corps, many Democrats want to use the courts and lawsuits to restrict Mr. Bush and future Presidents in their ability to gather intelligence in the war on terror…Democrats blocked any retroactive liability protection for companies that thought they were doing their patriotic duty by cooperating with the National Security Agency after 9/11. The goal here isn’t merely to open another rich target for the tort bar. It is to use lawsuits to raise the costs for private actors of cooperating with the executive branch. Even if they lose at the ballot box or in Congress, these antiwar activists still might be able to hamstring the executive via the courts.
That’s also the explicit strategy in trying to expand the reach of the special FISA court to all wiretaps, foreign and domestic.
Mr. President, in my twenty years in Congress, I have not seen anything quite as cynical and counterproductive as the Republican approach to FISA.
The American people deserve to know that when President Bush talks about the foreign intelligence bill tonight, he’s doing little more than shooting for cheap political points - and we should reject his efforts….The Republican leader filed cloture on this bill after it had been on the floor for just a few hours. He filed cloture after Republicans blocked every amendment they could from being offered and blocked all amendments from getting votes.
In simple terms, this means the Republicans were filibustering their own bill. Let me repeat that. The Republicans were filibustering their own bill. In my time in the Senate, I can’t remember this taking place….
We are the deliberative body. Let us deliberate.
Well of course you don’t remember that, because it hasn’t happened. You might remember when you filibustered your own bill though.
I wonder if Harry Reid was who the author of this Soros backed report was talking about when he declared that the U.S.A. is finished.
January 28, 2008 - 05:31 PM on January 28th, 2008
“The expiration of the law is more of a political deadline than a practical one, congressional Democrats say. All existing electronic surveillance activities can continue uninterrupted for at least a year from their commencement.
New domestic eavesdropping activities, however, would follow the old procedures established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 30-year old law created to dictate when the government has to get permission from a secret court to tap Americans’ phone and computer lines.”
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Sounds good to me.
Bush is a lame duck, and a very unpopular one at that.
Why should anyone want to continue his misguided policies?
January 28, 2008 - 05:33 PM on January 28th, 2008
No doubt the Democrite party leaders, upset by their recent inability to help the terrorists and ensure American defeat in Iraq, are filled with rage and hate and looking to do anything they can to cause as much damage as possible before the next election.
January 28, 2008 - 05:45 PM on January 28th, 2008
Umm SFL, the fight is only about the retroactive immunity, otherwise the bill sails through..it kinda looks like alot of Democrats agree..
January 28, 2008 - 05:55 PM on January 28th, 2008
Umm Pam, the Senate voted to NOT extend the presidents program past Feb 1st.
That’s quite a rebuke, if you ask me.
January 30, 2008 - 12:53 AM on January 30th, 2008
Yes, heaven forbid we actually listen in to calls coming from known terrorist hotbeds. We certainly have MILLIONS of law abiding citizens with no connection to terrorists making short duration calls to the Waziristan area of Pakistan, or taliban controlled parts of Afghanistan. Who knows if we do that, we might actually get the information we need to be able to stop another terrorist attack before another 3000 American citizens die.
January 30, 2008 - 07:00 AM on January 30th, 2008
4, SFL and clowns like him make me want THEIR calls monitored.
SFL, fair warning, if one domestic terrorist attack gets traced to a phone call from your community, YOU are going to face scrutiny and investigation that will make what happened to Clinton seem like privacy.