House extends eavesdropping law

Source: AP

WASHINGTON - The House on Tuesday gave two more weeks of life to a law that allows the government more freedom to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists inside the United States, an attempt to buy the logjammed Senate time to pass a bill to replace it.

The Senate is also considering extending the surveillance law Congress hastily adopted last August when the White House warned of dangerous gaps in its surveillance authority. Civil rights and privacy advocates say the broadly written law allows the government to eavesdrop on innocent Americans without oversight from a court created for that purpose. The law expires Feb. 1.

Senate Republican leaders reversed their opposition to extending the existing law Tuesday, saying they would agree to an extension if the Senate can pass new surveillance legislation this week. That legislation, favored by the White House, includes giving retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies that allowed the government to wiretap their customers without court permission.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080129/ap_on_go_co/terrorist_surveillance

may be correct. They have been spying on Democrats for years, and if it were to come to light, Bush may actually be impeached!

If they let that shit legislation go through the way the white house wants it, I'm becoming an independent.

I've about had it with them.

"This just typical republicon homelander OCCULT bullshit. Smirk."

- Ronald Reagan's Dead Republicon Astrologer*


* Courageously channeled by Ye Olde Spirale Hawk, who ate a half dozen cream-filled doughnuts beforehand to maintain the purity of his Precious Bodily Fluids as he entered the Occult Republicon Netherworld.

We desperately need a new Speaker of the House.

step down if he allows this legislation to be brought up. Please do the same. Let Rockefeller know what a traitor he is, etc.

Democrats wanted an extension. Bush and the GOP refused. Bush and the GOP hoped they could use the expiration of the eavesdropping law to pressure Democrats to vote for a bad bill. If Democrats didn't pass a bill, the GOP would say Democrats left the nation unprotected. I don't buy that wiretapping protects us from anything but many in Congress feel that charge could do real damage to them.

Democrats should use the extra time to amend the current bill and make it a better law. Phone company immunity should be stripped but its especially important to see that rights of American citizens are upheld.

For once, Democrats didn't cave. They stood up to the GOP and the GOP blinked. Hooray!