When the Senate reconvenes next week, legislation to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) will be among the first issues we address. I am as determined as ever to use all procedural tools at my disposal, including a filibuster, to try to stop the FISA legislation if it doesn’t protect the privacy of law abiding Americans or if it includes immunity for telecom companies. I am also deeply grateful for the energy this community has put behind stopping this assault on the rights and liberties of Americans - it gave a huge boost to our successful effort in December to stop a bad FISA bill being rammed through the Senate. But while we had some temporary success last month, we face an uphill battle to fix the bill, particularly since the Democratic leadership still seems intent on bringing the flawed Intelligence Committee bill to the floor, rather than the better version approved by the Judiciary Committee.
The last time I posted on Daily Kos, it certainly generated a lot of interest, even though many people disagreed with what I had to say. I read all of the comments and I know many of you disagreed with me. As always, I appreciate how honest and passionate the Daily Kos community is about the issues that matter and even when we don’t agree it was important to have the civil exchange that we did.
After that last post, you really got me thinking. While I still am not convinced that Congress should pursue impeachment, you made some great points about how important it is to hold this administration accountable for its terrible misconduct. That includes tough oversight by Congress, but we should do more than that. The history books should show that Congress formally condemned this President, and others in the administration who have so brazenly misled the American people and undercut the rule of law.
Last week I came here to discuss how I plan to tighten my legislation to end the open-ended military mission in Iraq so the Administration would not be able to exploit it and keep tens of thousands of troops, if not more, stuck in the middle of an Iraqi civil war. I appreciated all of the responses and of course I noticed that many of you advocated for the impeachment of the President as well as the Vice President and the Attorney General. I’ve been hearing some of those same comments in Wisconsin.
With Senate Democrats increasingly united, it looks as if for the first time, a majority of the Senate will support binding legislation with a firm end date for our open-ended military presence in Iraq, something I first called for, with support and input from so many of you, back in August of 2005.
This would be a watershed moment but we all agree that it has taken far too long to get here. The binding language in Levin-Reed makes this amendment significant and I will support it. But there are aspects of the amendment that are cause for concern – in particular, the exception for "providing logistical support" to Iraqi troops could give the administration too much wiggle room to "repackage" its failed military mission instead of redeploying our troops.
I wanted to link to a couple really good posts that I’ve seen in the past few days about the Democrats’ strategy on the Iraq supplemental spending bill. They drive home what a mistake it is to just give up and pass a supplemental that doesn’t include language to stop the war:
Last week, Sen. Feinstein and I went to the Senate floor to try to get unanimous consent to pass the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, S. 223. The bill had been reported by the Rules Committee on a voice vote nearly three weeks earlier and has 35 bipartisan cosponsors. No one expressed opposition to it at either the March 14th Rules Committee hearing on the bill or in the Rules Committee markup when the bill was voted out of committee. We went to the floor because while Sen. Reid had determined that no Democratic Senator objected to passing the bill, the Republican leadership was not as forthcoming. As everyone now knows, Sen. Alexander objected "on behalf of a Republican Senator" to our request for unanimous consent to take up and pass the bill.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did a great job getting the supplemental spending bill through the Senate last week. We were able to pass a bill with tough, binding language that forces the President to begin redeploying our troops from Iraq in 120 days. But our work is far from over – we have got to keep pushing to end the terrible mistake in Iraq. That next step has got to be Congress using its power of the purse to end the war.
When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee took up the Biden-Hagel resolution opposing the President’s troop escalation proposal last week, I supported it as a first step toward ending our involvement in this war. That resolution didn’t go nearly far enough – it was nonbinding and just focused on the escalation – but putting the Senate on record against the "surge" was a small step in the right direction.
Unfortunately, the new Warner-Levin resolution that many Democrats are pushing is flawed and unacceptable. It rejects the surge, but it also misunderstands the situation in Iraq and endorses the President’s underlying approach. It’s basically a back-door authorization of the President’s misguided policies, and passing it would be a big mistake. Under the guise of constructive criticism, the Warner-Levin resolution signs off on the President continuing indefinite military operations in Iraq that will not address the fundamental political challenges in Iraq, and that continue to distract us from developing a comprehensive and global approach to the threats that face our nation.
Last night, as the President told the American people that he wants to send more troops to Iraq, his Iraq policy hit rock bottom. The American people are demanding an end to the war, and it has to end for the sake of our national security. But the President just wants to dig us into a deeper hole, by sending more of our brave men and women into Baghdad and Anbar Province.
This war has got to stop, and Congress has the power stop it: the power of the purse. And I’m not just talking about blocking the troop surge here. Using the power of the purse just to stop the troop surge may be better than doing nothing, but if we don’t go beyond that, we will be accepting the status quo. We have to do more.
I know there may well already be diaries here and elsewhere discussing my decision to continue my important work in the Senate and not run for President in 2008, but I wanted everyone in the online community to hear from me directly.
In 2004, I was fortunate to win my third term in the U.S. Senate. During that election, we were also able to win 27 counties in Wisconsin that President Bush also won. We didn't win by 11 points that November because we had more money, or flashier lit pieces, or more T.V. ads (although we did have better T.V. ads - click here to view). The reason we won was because we ran the best ground operation Wisconsin has ever seen. I'm proud to announce today the 20 different campaigns and states around the country where we hope to help build similar campaign organizations this November.
When I first ran for the Wisconsin State Senate, the `conventional wisdom' was that I didn't have a chance. Same thing was true when I first ran for U.S. Senate in 1992. And, come to think of it, as most of you already know, `conventional wisdom' hasn't really been on my side for much of my career. Well, I can report to you that things seem to be going just fine and you can guess by now what I think of so-called `conventional wisdom.'
With the Administration doing so much to weaken our system of checks and balances, a lot of Americans were heartened to see the third branch of government - the judiciary - stand up to the Administration with the decision in the Hamdan case a few weeks ago. The Supreme Court made it crystal clear that all detainees have basic rights under U.S. and international law, and that the Administration has to scrap its plan to try some detainees held at Guantanamo Bay in military commissions that lacked basic safeguards of fairness.
As many legal thinkers, and some in this community, have pointed out, the Hamdan decision was a rebuke to an Administration that thinks it can make up its own laws. And this decision has ramifications far beyond the issue of detainees. For one thing, Hamdan completely undercuts the Administration's already weak legal argument in defense of its warrantless wiretapping program.
Something I didn't get a chance to mention on Meet the Press on Sunday is the back door pay raise for members of Congress. It may not be the biggest issue facing us as a nation, but it's something that's always bugged me, and it may come up in the Senate soon. This issue is symbolic to me of how out of touch and insulated some elected officials in Washington are from the problems that regular Americans face.
The federal marriage amendment, which would write discrimination into the Constitution, is an obvious attempt to change the subject from topics that the Congress should be addressing to a hot button social issue intended to appeal to certain factions. On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Frist plans to hold a vote on this mean-spirited proposal. It has no chance of receiving the two-thirds majority required for constitutional amendments. The only thing bringing it up now will accomplish is to push Congress further away from the issues it should be addressing and engage the Senate of the United States in a shameful political ploy.
Like all Americans, I woke up on the morning of September 11th, 2001 as though it was simply another day. The horrific events that unfolded made it anything but, and our lives were changed forever. In the days after 9/11, I was proud to stand with the President in strong support of the authorization to use force against those who attacked us. During those days our President showed great leadership. Politics were put aside, the country pulled together and for a brief time we were united.
In the four-plus years since, everything changed. The President exploited the climate of anxiety, misusing the trust he was given in the wake of the attacks on 9/11 to, among other things, grab intrusive powers in the Patriot Act, and take us into a war in Iraq that has been a diversion from the critical fight against terrorism.
There was an erroneous AP story that many of you may have seen online and in your newspapers this morning that reads: "Feingold gives up Patriot Act effort." Nothing could be further from the truth. As you can see here, I haven't given up anything. The story was wrong and I wanted to be sure everyone knew about it.
I will continue this fight - it's a fight worth having - and it's not over.
As many of you already know, the White House struck a deal with Republicans on the Patriot Act late yesterday, and it looks like they are on their way to pushing their bad deal through Congress. Unfortunately, the few minor changes to which the White House agreed simply do not address the major problems with the Act.
