Are you kidding me?

Bush: Congress must stay put, pass new terror surveillance law



Associated Press

Aug. 3, 2007 09:30 AM

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Friday that Congress must stay in session until it approves legislation modernizing a U.S. law governing eavesdropping on foreigners.

I'll make this quick. Congress is busy, and so am I.

There is no reason in the world why this Congress should vote on a FISA bill before they've even been able to decide the very basic issue of whether or not the Attorney General of the United States has been lying to them about some of the very activities addressed by this bill.

It's nuts.

Forget that they're prepared to let charges of contempt of Congress float in the ether, unresolved, while they're out on their break. Although the issues behind those particular episodes of contempt are on the surface, unconnected, they are indicative of a Congress that is still feeling its way in dealing with what is really a very extraordinary situation. We can all understand that. We can register impatience with it, but we understand it.

How is it, though, that this same Congress could then find the resolution to act with such dispatch on a FISA bill that's largely gone unread, even as they're plagued by serious doubts about the fitness of the Attorney General to continue in office because they suspect he has been lying to them about the "administration's" domestic spying activities?

