BAKER
I don’t know if anyone has pointed out Jerry Nadler’s position on the FISA wiretapping legislation. It seems relevant.
House Passes Bill on Federal Wiretapping Powers
WASHINGTON — The House on Friday overwhelmingly approved a bill overhauling the rules on the government’s wiretapping powers and conferring what amounts to legal immunity to the telephone companies that took part in President Bush’s program of eavesdropping without warrants after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The bill cleared the House by 293 to 129, with near-unanimous support from Republicans and substantial backing from Democrats. It now goes to the Senate, which is expected to pass it next week by a wide margin.
“Our intelligence officials must have the ability to monitor terrorists suspected of plotting to kill Americans and to safeguard our national security,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican minority leader. “This bill gives it to them.”
The Democratic majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, was considerably more restrained in his support of the bill, calling it the best compromise possible “in the current atmosphere.”
The issue has bitterly divided Democrats, as a sampling of remarks after the vote made clear. “The FISA legislation we approved gives our intelligence community the tools it needs and the public the civil liberty protections it deserves,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “While this bill isn’t perfect, the perfect should never be the enemy of the good. I applaud the Democrats and Republicans who reached this compromise and produced legislation that earned support from both sides of the aisle.”
But Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat who heads the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, called the bill “a fig leaf,” and one that “abandons the Constitution’s protections and insulates lawless behavior from legal scrutiny.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/washington/21fisacnd.html?ref=us
https://youtu.be/5JMjfzCgxlc