FISA: What’s In It For Steny?

[babylonsister]

FISA: What’s In It For Steny?
By: Christy Hardin Smith Friday June 13, 2008 2:16 pm


I'm hearing from the ACLU that Steny Hoyer and Kit Bond presented a FISA deal to a limited number of members and staffers on the Hill today. And that Hoyer is representing this as a "done deal" for FISA that includes district court review (which, as we've already discussed, would be set up so that there is a pre-determined outcome) and a sunset of 6 years.

What I'm hearing is that Hoyer and Kit Bond want debate to begin in the Senate next week...but I heard from another source that they didn't bother going through the leadership channels to set this up before they started pushing it. Potentially a big mistake in the land of egos.

Especially since Hoyer, Bond and Rockefeller appear to be going behind the backs of both Pat Leahy and John Conyers -- cutting both Judiciary Committee chairs out of the discussions altogether in a massive turf refutation. Talk about trying to cut the legal legs out from underneath a civil liberties question. Will Leahy and Conyers allow themselves to be gelded this way? Guess we'll see. As CQ reports:

Congressional leaders and the Bush administration have reached an agreement in principle on an overhaul of surveillance rules, sources familiar with negotiations said Friday....

Under the last version of the Bond proposal, the FISA court would get to review, in advance, the process by which the administration chooses foreign surveillance targets who may be communicating with people in the United States. No warrants would be needed in such cases, though, and the executive branch could begin its warrantless surveillance program before the FISA court review in "exigent," or urgent circumstances.

Caroline Fredrickson, the Washington director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that sources told the ACLU the deal would sunset after six years unless Congress renewed it.

The deal was hammered out Thursday night at a meeting that included Hoyer, Bond, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., House Minority Leader Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and representatives from the Bush administration.

The fact that we are hearing about the backstage maneuvers at all says a lot of things, but it squares up with another rumor I heard earlier in the week from a Hill staffer -- that Hoyer and Rockefeller have tied their egos into getting something passed because their names have become synonymous with a cave-in on this issue.

But according to my source at the ACLU, Rockfeller did not attend Hoyer and Bond's presentation. Trouble in paradise?

more...

http://firedoglake.com/2008/06/13/fisa-whats-in-it-for-steny/

[JDPriestly]

1. So the Supreme Court ruling this week on habeas corpus

didn't put the fear of the SCUS into these guys? What is behind this? Are they being blackmailed by someone?

This is downright strange.

[VP505]

2. Why compromise and capitulate

on UNNECESSARY legislation that should have been settled with the House winning the war of will on this issue? Something really stinks about this, I sure wish we rank and file party members had more clout to get to the bottom of it.

[mmonk]

3. It's a secret.