The Senate has surrendered to Mister Bush on domestic spying, yielding ignominiously to the White House’s demands that the unitary executive be given more authority when it seeks to wiretap suspected terrorists without warrants. The vote was 60-28. If passed by the House, the bill would be law for six months. Meanwhile, Congress would use that time to put together a permanent one.
The New York Times notes:
The White House and Congressional Republicans hailed the Senate vote as critical to plugging what they saw as dangerous gaps in the intelligence agencies’ ability to detect terrorist threats.
"I can sleep a little safer tonight," Senator Christopher S. Bond, the Missouri Republican who co-sponsored the measure, declared after the Senate vote.
The measure approved by the Senate expires in six months and would have to be re-authorized. The White House’s grudging agreement to make it temporary helped to attract the votes of some moderate Democrats who said they thought it was important for Congress to approve some version of the wiretapping bill before its recess.
The White House and Republican leaders pressed the point throughout the day that a vote against the measure would put the nation at greater risk of attack.
No Republicans voted against the bill. The following Democrats voted for it: Evan Bayh (Indiana); Tom Carper (Delaware); Bob Casey (Pennsylvania); Kent Conrad (North Dakota); Dianne Feinstein (California); Daniel Inouye (Hawai‘i); Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota); Nancy Mary Landrieu (Louisiana); Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas); Claire McCaskill (Missouri); Barbara Mikulski (Maryland); Bill Nelson (Florida); Ben Nelson (Nebraska); Mark Pryor (Arkansas); Ken Salazar (Colorado); Jim Webb (Virginia).
Senators Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd and Barack Obama all opposed the bill, as did 23 other Democrats and Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont. Joe Lieberman voted ...well, you know how he voted.
Caroline Frederickson, head of the American Civil Liberties Union office here, said: "The Democrats caved in to the politics of fear we’re seeing from this administration. They didn’t want to be depicted as soft on terrorism. But this measure removes any court oversight from surveillance on Americans in a large number of cases."
CNN reported:
"Al Qaeda is not going on vacation this month," said Sen. Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. "And we can't either until we know we've done our duty to the American people." ...
Before the vote, Democrats excoriated the GOP plan, which Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, said "provides a weak and practically nonexistent court review."
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, angrily chastised his colleagues for bending to the administration's will.
"The day we start deferring to someone who's not a member of this body ... is a sad day for the U.S. Senate," Feingold said. "We make the policy -- not the executive branch."
The bill is scheduled to be voted on Saturday in the House of Representatives where it is expected to pass with the help of scores of Democrats who will begin their summer recess with a trip to the hardware store for new kneepads.
[andgarden has more in a Recommended Diary.]