Today in Washington D. C. - Feb 13, 2008

On The Floor: Senate reconvened at 9:30 AM today and began an hour of morning business. Yesterday, the Senate finally passed the FISA reform bill with a strong bipartisan vote of 68-29. The Senate rejected six amendments to the FISA bill. Among those were an amendment which would have stripped the provisions granting immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated in surveillance operations and another which would have allowed lawsuits over such surveillance cooperation but substituted the federal government as a defendant.

At 10:30, the Senate is to hold a cloture vote on the conference report for the fiscal 2008 intelligence authorization bill (H.R. 2082). The White House has threatened to veto the bill over a provision, inserted at the last minute by Democrats during conference negotiations, which attempts to limit CIA interrogation techniques. Sen. Bond will oppose cloture on the bill because [r]equiring the CIA to follow the Army Field Manual would allow terrorists to know what kind of techniques will be used against them.

Later in the day, the Senate could return to the American Indian health care bill (S. 1200).

From Senate & News Sources: It is now up to the House to quickly pass the Senate bill, before the current FISA revisions expire on Friday. Sen. McConnell noted, “Twenty-one House Democrats have written Speaker Pelosi saying they ‘fully support’ the Rockefeller-Bond bill if it is not changed substantially—and it was not— and they urge her to ‘quickly consider’ this bill in order ‘to get a bill signed into law before the Protect America Act expires in February.’”

Yesterday, Sen. Harry Reid said that he would like to extend the law again to give the House more time to hold a conference with the Senate on the bill, instead of passing the bipartisan Senate bill which the president has indicated he would sign. Reid tried to shift blame to the White House if the FISA law lapses on Friday, accusing Bush of “Looking for an excuse to wave his banner of—‘be afraid, terror.’” Sen. McConnell addressed Reid comments of needing still more time on FISA: "In August, my Democratic colleagues said that an additional six months was needed to get this right. In the fall, they said we need just a little more time. Last month, they said give us another 15 days and we can wrap this thing up. At this point no member of this body can reasonably state that this piece of legislation was hastily or unfairly considered. We do not need yet another extension, yet another delay. We need to focus on getting our work done.”

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