Back in civics class, things like congressional "holds" and the details of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act seemed dry as cold British toast. But it is in such poorly illuminated corners of congressional procedure that the real drama of lawmaking unfolds. The battle over FISA legislation that has been waged in the procedural backwaters since last fall may provide the last opportunity to find out just how far the Bush administration strayed (and may still be straying) into illegal surveillance of Americans. It has also revealed much about the Democratic majority's willingness to oppose Bush and withstand fearmongering attacks on their patriotism.
Last December, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid brought to the Senate floor a version of the FISA update bill that included retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration in mining domestic communications. Former telecom employees Mark Klein and Babak Pasdar both said the surveillance they uncovered in their jobs included all—all—communications traffic, American or foreign.
Remember as well the dramatic meeting that saw the Bush administration trying to get a deathly ill, hospitalized then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to sign off on surveillance so extreme that Ashcroft wouldn't sign. What did that surveillance involve?
When Senator Chris Dodd threatened to filibuster the FISA bill, Reid gave in and moved the vote to the new year. The Democratic Congress did the unimaginable, standing fast against telecom immunity in the House, not compromising in marrying the House and Senate bills. The GOP sent out all the usual flares, even targeting vulnerable Democrats with ads claiming that the lack of a FISA update meant we would be overrun with al Qaeda operatives armed with nukes. Their message went over with a surprising clunk.
But the famed Democratic propensity for stealing defeat from the jaws of victory has ridden back into town. At the reins? House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller. Never mind that Bush's disapproval numbers have broken all previous records; Hoyer has been in closed-door talks to work out a deal he calls "promising." It seems certain that the companies involved find this "compromise" promising as well. After all, the Politico blog reported, they wrote it.
