Ms. Obstructionist & Her Minions
According to this article, Ms. Pelosi won’t promise to bring the FISA reform legislation to a vote before Easter. As Generalissimo writes here, Pelosi’s Democrats have obstructed the will of the people and the will of the House and Senate.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated Thursday that new legislation regulating electronic surveillance may come to the House floor next week, but would not commit to a vote before the Easter recess.
She called the bill that easily passed the Senate on Feb. 12 “not right,” and said Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., continues talks with the Senate on how to meet House Democrats’ objections.
If Ms. Pelosi insists on saying that the Senate bill that passed with 69 votes isn’t right, how would she characterize her not voting on a much-needed FISA reform bill? As Kit Bond, Peter Hoekstra and Lamar Smith ponted out here, using the old bill is hurting US intelligence-gathering efforts:
We are less safe today and will remain so until Congress clears up the legal uncertainty for companies that assist in collecting intelligence for the government, and until it gives explicit permission to our intelligence agencies to intercept, without a warrant, foreign communications that pass through the U.S. Here’s why:
- Intercepting terrorist communications requires the cooperation of our telecommunications companies. They’re already being sued for having cooperated with the government after 9/11. So without explicit protection for future actions (and civil liability protection for the help they provided in the past), those companies critical to collecting actionable intelligence could be sidelined in the fight.
- It has already happened, briefly. “[W]e have lost intelligence information this past week as a direct result of the uncertainty created by Congress’ failure to act,” Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Attorney General Michael Mukasey wrote in a letter dated Feb. 22 to Mr. Reyes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
- The old FISA law does not adequately protect the U.S., which is why it was revised by the Protect America Act last summer. The problem is that, although it has a few work-around-provisions, such as allowing intelligence agencies to conduct surveillance for up to 72 hours without a warrant, FISA ultimately requires those agencies to jump through too many legal hurdles. Those include the Fourth Amendment’s “probable cause” requirements, protections never intended for suspected terrorists’ communications that are routed through the U.S.
Generalissimo mocks Ms. Pelosi this way:
What has Speaker Pelosi done with her time since she single-handedly put the country at greater risk by intentionally weakening the national defense? On February 14th, the House considered 8 suspension bills, and 2 motions to adjourn, about five hours work. They then broke for ten days to celebrate President’s Day. On the 25th, they took up 3 suspension bills. On the 26th, they started to work on the public housing bill, but withdrew it before final consideration. On the 27th, Pelosi actually passed something - the energy tax bill. On the 28th, 3 more suspension bills. Total work week? 15 hours and 5 minutes.This week, there were three more suspension bills on the 4th, six more suspension bills and the mental health bill on the 5th. And then we saw today’s antics.
The House scheduled amendments and debate to reauthorize Americorps for five more years. After tediously working through a couple of amendments, former California Attorney General and current Congressman, Dan Lungren, took to the floor and tried to hijack the Americorps bill by instead demanding the House take up the Senate version of the FISA bill. Even blue dog Democrats want to get this thing done before something bad happens and Nancy Pelosi politically ruins the party. But no, leadership can’t have this discussion now, not when there’s lawsuits to be had against the telcos for cooperating with the U.S. government to catch terrorists. George Miller, acting as the chief stooge for Nancy Pelosi, sought and achieved a ruling from the chair that Lungren’s amendment was not germane, and therefore out of order. Lungren and the Republicans appealed the ruling, and forced a vote. It was narrowly defeated.
Next Amendment to the Americorps bill was another Republican-drafted amendment to recommit the bill unless all Americorps candidates would have to subject themselves to a background check. On the surface, that doesn’t seem like such a bad idea; we would typically not want to see criminals flooding the ranks of Americorps volunteers. This amendment sent the House leadership into a frenzy, not wanting to see a vote on this amendment. After a brief delay in the action, Pelosi and her gang ended up pulling the overall Americorps bill from consideration, and abruptly adjourned for the week. Another ten hour work week, and foreign terrorists know that for at least one more week, we are bound to an arcane law that is 20 years behind our current technology, providing a loophole for them to plot and scheme.
Then Duane lays the wood to Ms. Pelosi:
It will have been 23 days of blinding intelligence to foreign terrorist communications before the House reconvenes next week. And there is literally one person on which to lay the liability– Nancy Pelosi.
For all their spin that they care about national security, I can’t find proof of that. If they were serious about it, they would’ve dealt with this issue instead of doing everything possible to not deal with it. It’s time for the White House, John McCain and John Boehner to go on a major media offensive decrying the House’s inaction on this important legislation.
Technorati Tags: FISA, Nancy Pelosi, George Miller, Obstruction, National Security, Peter Hoekstra, Intelligence, John McCain, John Boehner, President Bush
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog