FISA gets no love on valentine’s day
by David Clark
Published: February 21, 2008
It was certainly a loveless Valentine’s Day on Capitol Hill this year. The only place you could have found colder behavior was if you had tuned in to “A Charlie Brown Valentine” to see the coquettishly cruel Lucy Van Pelt once again pull a football away from the swinging foot of that balding ten-year-old. On this day both sides of the aisle were at each others’ throats, as House Republicans kicked off the celebration of love with a good old fashioned hissy fit, not unlike what you could expect from a preteen girl who’s parents refuse to let her go to the movies with that strange neighbor boy. Much like our metaphorical preteen, Republicans went in asking for permission, already knowing the answer was “No.” Only they weren’t asking permission to hold the sweaty hand of their thirteen year old crush at the movies - they learned their lesson with Mark Foley. Instead, they were trying to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which subsequently expired Saturday.
Republicans were spitting-mad over the uncooperative Democrats blatant disregard for the Right’s favorite warrant-less wiretapping act. Instead of forging a compromise, Democrats devoted their time to sending their version of practical-joke Valentine’s cards to two of Bush’s cronies (John Bolten and Harriet Miers) in the form of contempt of Congress citations. In response, the preteen Republicans stormed out of the building, allegedly locking themselves in their bedrooms, and refusing to come down for dinner. Republican leader John Boehner, speaking on behalf of his party, said, “We will not stand idly by and watch the floor of the United States House of Representatives be abused for pure, political grandstanding.” So Republicans decided instead to take it outside and use the steps of the United States House of Representatives as the platform for their pure, political grandstanding.
The controversy surrounding FISA is due to issues of constitutionality, particularly since President Bush signed the Protect America Act (PAA) into law last August as an addendum to the original FISA bill which had been in place since 1978. The power of surveillance granted in the original FISA has expanded greatly since 9/11 by such legislative actions as the Patriot Act and the above mentioned PAA, the latter of which uses much broader terms to define “electronic surveillance” and allows the government to bypass traditional Constitutional checks in order to monitor people.
In the same way that punching the red-haired girl in the arm has never led to romance, the Republican “walk out” did nothing to keep the bill’s provisions from expiring. So why do it? Well, it could be that in the mad scrambled to create a bipartisan solution to FISA before it expired, House Republicans lost track of time and realized at the last minute that they still needed to make dinner arrangements, buy a box of chocolates for their sweethearts, a dozen roses and pickup a Hallmark card that says “I love you” in a humorous yet romantic way, all in time to beat D.C. rush-hour traffic. Not a bad move if the agenda was to stimulate the economy. In the end, though, the Democrats’ citations and the Republicans’ walkout neither expedited nor prevented the inevitable expiration of FISA; yet they may have bought just enough time to save some forgetful congressmen from a night on the couch.
—
(email this article or post to social network)
—
