Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrat leadership left town in mid-February for a weeklong recess letting expire on Feb. 16 wiretap authority that seriously weakened the intelligence community’s ability to intercept terrorist telecommunications. Now Pelosi recessed the House for two weeks – this time for Spring Break. Two months, and three weeks of recess?
Before leaving town this time, she pushed through a meaningless sham bill on a party line vote that even Harry Reid said can’t pass the Senate.
Congress might be in recess, but we doubt Islamic jihadists are taking any time off.
The Senate by a 68-29 majority long ago passed enabling legislation called the Protect America Act, but San Francisco Nancy doesn’t like it so she continues to refuse to allow the other 434 members of the House to vote on the Senate Bill – why? Because she knows it would pass by a comfortable bipartisan margin.
A month after America has been at increased risk she remains obstinate and refuses to allow the Senate bill to come to the floor. Instead, she has redrafted a bill that denies immunity to the telecommunications companies who cooperate with the CIA in tracking terrorists. In so doing, Pelosi’s taking the side of trial lawyers, the ACLU, MoveOn.org, Code Pink, and the terrorists who want to kill us. She is not, however, siding with our Intelligence community or top law enforcement officials.
In a strongly worded six page letter to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Sylvestre Reyes (D-TX) Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell wrote “Our experience in the past few days since the expiration of the Act demonstrates that these concerns are neither speculative nor theoretical: allowing the Act to expire without passing the bipartisan Senate bill has had real and negative consequences for our national security. Indeed, this has led directly to a degraded intelligence capability.”
The VFW National Commander George Lisicki was less polite and far more direct. “Americans are protected from illegal search and seizures by the Fourth Amendment, but critical legislation is now being delayed because some would extend these same constitutional protections to those who want to harm America.”
Lisicki continued, “There are people who kill without conscience, who represent no country, and who have no agenda other than the total destruction of our country. These terrorists have no privacy rights, as it relates to the aiding and abetting of future attacks, and the thought of giving them the right to sue their phone company for a privacy violation is asinine.”
Like a lot of what Nancy has done since becoming Speaker, her latest stunt might appease some of her base that lives in places like San Francisco, but it has no chance of passing the Senate and becoming law. A spokesman for Democrat Leader Harry Reid volunteered that it won’t get the 60 votes needed for passage, so Reid has no plan to bring up the House bill any time soon for a vote.
So, back to you Nancy while America waits and is at increased risk.