We survived

The "Protect America Act" expired Saturday night, which according to Bush would open up dangerous gaps in our intelligence. After spending Saturday night in the fetal position under my bed, the Sun came up on Sunday and I was still alive!

Congress didn't pass a multi-year renewal on the act, mainly due to disagreement on whether on not to include retroactive amnesty for telco companies. Bush promised to veto any bill that didn't include it, and he also promised to veto any further temporary extensions. The line repeated by Bush and republicans was that the time for debating is over and congress needed to pass the bill immediately. The sudden urgency just happened to be when for the first time, the senate passed a bill that included the retroactive amnesty. Before then, there was time to debate and temporary extensions were fine. Once a bill got passed that had telco immunity in it, suddenly talk time is over and it is imperative that the bill be finalized.

Then the fear-mongering started. Congress must act or else the terrorists will kill us all.

Republicans in the House walked out over the issue.

Telco companies, under existing law, are required to give the government help with any lawful request for surveillance. Why they need amnesty for complying with legal requests confuses my simple little mind. Should they get amnesty if the cooperated with illegal surveillance? It would be a safe bet the the people who ran the illegal surveillance would want them to, otherwise details about what was done might come out. Oh yeah, and if that happened the terrorists will win because they will know that we only conduct legal spying.

The house passed a similar bill a while ago, but it didn't include amnesty, and went home for a while without passing a new one that includes the amnesty. Look forward to some high pressure bullying from Bush in the weeks to come.

A few senators worked to keep the retroactive immunity out, like Feingold and Chriss Dodd. A lot didn't though.

Countdown did a good piece on it this week. If you look here they have been tracking the story as it progressed as well.