Another example of how shrub wants to rewrite the laws he's broken so that he hasn't really broken them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090700837.html
President Bush urged Congress today to give him "additional authority" to carry out a controversial warrantless eavesdropping program directed against international terrorists and to approve "broader reforms" in the 1978 law that regulates domestic surveillance of foreign agents' communications.
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Despite Bush's call for congressional action to strengthen the legal underpinnings of the eavesdropping program, the Senate Judiciary Committee today delayed action on such a bill after a Democratic senator, Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, spoke against it at length and offered four amendments.
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In the Senate, however, Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) called off a vote on a bill he had negotiated with the administration. Among other provisions, the bill would submit the NSA surveillance program to the FISA court for a one-time constitutional review and would lengthen the duration of emergency surveillance before obtaining a FISA warrant from three days to seven days.
Specter blamed what he called election-year "obstructionism" for the delay in sending his bill to the Senate floor.
"We have seen the incipient stage of filibuster by amendment," he said as he called off the committee vote on the measure, the Associated Press reported.
In opposing the bill on grounds it would give the White House too much power to carry out warrantless eavesdropping, Feingold told the panel, "The president has basically said: "I'll agree to let a court decide if I'm breaking the law if you pass a law first that says I'm not breaking the law." Feingold added, "That won't help reestablish a healthy respect for separation of powers. It will only make matters worse."
Go Russ!