Several of my readers have whined incessantly about the expanded powers of our intelligence agencies. They will be happy to know that they have a lobbyist that prevented the passing a law to expand FISA powers.

Pelosi could have exercised leadership prerogatives and called up the FISA bill to pass with unanimous Republican support. Instead, she refused to bring to the floor a bill approved overwhelmingly by the Senate. House Democratic opposition included left-wing members typified by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, but they were only a small faction of those opposed. The true reason for blocking the bill was Senate-passed retroactive immunity to protect from lawsuits private telecommunications firms asked to eavesdrop by the government. The nation’s torts bar, vigorously pursuing such suits, has spent months lobbying hard against immunity.

Look forward to strong denunciations of these lobbyists preventing the passage of expanding FISA even though this legislation enjoyed a large majority in the both houses.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 12:25 pm and is filed under Lobbyists. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.