The Senate Judiciary Committee was faced with a crucial ethical test yesterday, and most of the committee failed. The test came during a special executive meeting to consider whether to reauthorize the infamous Patriot Act, a law that was passed in a rush, without any senator even reading the bill, granting the Executive Branch extreme [...]

At That’s My Congress, we would like to clarify a matter which may appear unimportant out of context. In context, however, the clarification demonstrates a small but consistent effort by two senators to reform surveillance laws in the direction of greater constitutional protection. In an otherwise excellent legislative analysis by Kevin Bankston of the Electronic [...]

This morning, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont opened a full Judiciary Committee markup session on S. 1692, legislation to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act for another four years, until December of 2013. A video record of the committee meeting can be viewed here. In his introductory remarks, Senator Leahy made the following declaration regarding “national [...]

As a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota, Al Franken refused to make any comment about the FISA Amendments Act, a bill which became law while Franken was running for election. The FISA Amendments Act(read text of the law here) legalized a massive electronic operation to spy on the personal communications of millions people [...]

Senator Patrick Leahy has responded to the release of the documents by renewing his call for a commission to investigate the use of torture in a comprehensive way.

President Barack Obama is openly violating the law in order to cover up torture. Will Democratic senators like Whitehouse, Leahy and Feingold do anything about it, or will they continue to solely focus on the Bush presidency, which is conveniently finished?

Patrick Leahy’s failure to deal with Obama’s refusal to follow war crimes law looks awfully partisan to me.

Is Patrick Leahy right? Is enforcement of the law truly divisive? If so, why are ordinary criminal prosecuted for their crimes?

What kind of cockamamie war is this, where one government is granted the right to act in self-defense, but the other is not?

Obama promised last Friday that he would be in the Senate. “I will work in the Senate,” he said, to remove retroactive immunity from the legislation. Today, Barack Obama wasn’t there.