Who are you, and what have you done with the House of Representatives?

[Lemur]

drone, I'm starting to think a Democratic president would be a good thing, and for one reason only: Nothing less will convince Xiahou and Vladimir to stop advocating granting the executive branch more power. Once it's President Hillary, they will lose their appetite for ubiquitous, unchecked surveillance.

[Xiahou]

drone, I'm starting to think a Democratic president would be a good thing, and for one reason only: Nothing less will convince Xiahou and Vladimir to stop advocating granting the executive branch more power. Once it's President Hillary, they will lose their appetite for ubiquitous, unchecked surveillance.

That's cute.

Have you read anything that's in the bill? The only thing that the House leadership is holding this up over is appeasing their lobbyists. A bipartisan majority in both the House and Senate support the bill as is. Pelosi won't pass it only because of the immunity provision.

[Lemur]

Tell me how it feels to be far to the right of the Cato Institute on an issue. Is that where you go so far to the right that it's indistinguishable from the far left?

The Bush administration can initiate new terrorist monitoring activities after the PAA expires. It just has to get a FISA warrant, the same way it did in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006.

[drone]

After recent deliberations, including a "classified" Republican-requested, closed session, the House passed (213-197) their version without the immunity. I thought for sure they would cave (especially when I heard about the closed session), wonders never cease. The lower house grew some balls.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...=moreheadlines

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

A deeply divided House approved its latest version of terrorist surveillance legislation today, rebuffing President Bush's demand for a bill that would grant telecommunications firms retroactive immunity for cooperation in past warrantless wiretapping and deepening the impasse on a fundamental national security issue.

Congress then defiantly left Washington for a two-week spring break.

The legislation, approved 213-197, would update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to expand the powers of intelligence agencies and keep pace with ever-changing communications technologies.

But it challenges the Bush administration on a number of fronts, by restoring the power of the federal courts to approve wiretapping warrants, authorizing federal inspectors general to investigate the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance efforts, and establishing a bipartisan commission to examine the activities of intelligence agencies in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Most provocatively, the House legislation offers no legal protections to the telecommunications companies that participated in warrantless wiretapping and now face about 40 lawsuits alleging they had breached customers' privacy rights.

Back to the Senate, hopefully they remember their oaths.

[Vladimir]

Hopefully the President won't forget his.

[drone]

Hopefully the President won't forget his.

If he remembered his oath, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

[KukriKhan]

I don't like telco immunity. But with the passage of all these sure-to-be-vetoed-and-not-overridden bills, the cynic in me (looking at the timing) thinks it's dem election '08 strategy for Sep-Nov this year.

Whichever 'guy' they select will need fresh ammo going into the fall campaign, and I can just see the TV ads now: "Immigration Reform: Vetoed", "Social Security Reform: Vetoed", "FISA Reform: Vetoed." "And how did Sen McCain vote?" "The Republicans have thwarted all efforts at bi-partisan blah-blah-blah"... etc.

I'd like to think the Legi's have found their cajones, but I doubt it. More likely this is positioning for 6 months from now. In my humble opinion.

We do better 'deals' here in org mafia games.