Here’s a pleasant surprise — today the Senate voted 94-2 to repeal that part of the Patriot Act that allows the Attorney General to appoint “interim” U.S. attorneys who can serve without confirmation.
My next question is, who were the two? I’m guessing one was Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) who had tried to attach an amendment that would have required the Senate to vote on a U.S. attorney nominee within 120 days. That amendment was voted down.
The measure passed today would reinstate the previous law, which allows interim appointees to serve no longer than 120 days without confirmation. If the Senate fails to confirm a nominee within the time period, a court appointed another interim attorney. The White House then has the option of appointing someone else or continuing to haggle with Congress.
The measure now goes to the House of Representatives, where I suspect it will pass easily by a veto-proof majority.
NAY:
Bond (R-MO)
Hagel (R-NE)
Wouldn’t it work better just to repeal the entire Patriot Act instead of waiting for every little sneaky illegal bit to bite us first?
If only.
It is so rare when you hear some bit of news that begins along the lines of “today the Sentate” and you think, “Thank God.”
If you wish to find out about votes (and much more, too), here are the sites to visit. Good stuff.
http://www.house.gov/
http://www.senate.gov/
And if you want live streaming audio of Senate committee hearings, here is another site, courtesy of the fine folks at C-Span.
http://www.capitolhearings.org/
And to toot my own horn (or at least that of my employer), here at the Rutgers University Law School Library in Camden, NJ we are working on a massive project of digitization of Congressional hearings. We have about a million pages up so far, but there are many more where that came from. Some of these hearings are pretty mundane, but some interesting ones do go by me on their way to the scanners. This is older materials, as within the last couple of Congresses the Government Print Office is releasing them in digitized form; but they don’t have the resources to go back and make all the old stuff available on the internet. That’s where we Depository Libraries come in. We are working with some of our peer institutions to forward the project. You can access what is available by visiting our site and clicking in the “More New Online Resources!” box.
http://lawlibrary.rutgers.edu/index.shtml