There may be hope yet for our Constitution. The Washington Post reports today that, in a rare move, the Chief Justice of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court instructed the Bush Administration to register its views about a records request by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The ACLU wants the court to release a series of pivotal orders issued in January of this year about the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program and specifically related to the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program. This program had been operated without court oversight since late 2001.
Two weeks ago, the U.S. Senate was one vote short of a filibuster to defeat President Bush’s Legislation that now gives NSA and Attorney General Gonzales sweeping authority to conduct surveillance without the need to obtain warrants.
There has been only one public ruling in the secret Court’s 29-year history which was eventually overturned.
Let’s hope this is the beginning of shedding some light on the Bush Administration’s obsession with secrecy.
Ed O’Reilly
Democratic Candidate for the U.S. Senate
Not everyone who votes against a bill is also willing to vote against cloture. It’s possible that the opponents of this bill already checked to see whether the bill could be filibustered successfully, saw that it couldn’t, and gave up. You keep saying that it was just this close to being filibustered but provide no evidence. It looks either disingenuous or naive.
<
p>
IMHO, it seems that we should be pressuring the rest of the Democrats in the House and Senate to switch their votes on this. Where do we sign up for that? A united Democratic caucus can have an excellent effect on Republicans in Congress.
…the US Congress consists of two chambers. One of which (the House) does not permit a filibuster. Where were the Democrats in that chamber on that issue.
<
p>
I suppose that it’s nice that you are advertising your candidacy (for free) on this web site, but I’ll tell you, it is getting a little boring, and I do make judicial use of my scroll bar.