Republicans, liberal and Blue Dog Democrats stopped an effort by the United States House of Representative’s Democratic leadership Wednesday to extend the surveillance bill for 21 days. So unless the House comes up with a compromise in the next day and a half, it will expire on Friday.

According to the TPMMucraker, Congressional Quarterly and other sources, the Republicans wanted to help the administration put the squeeze on the Democrats to pass the Senate’s version of the FISA bill. The liberal Democrats, such as Rush Holt, D-N.J., and Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, because they opposed the Protect America Act in the first place. And the few Blue Dogs such as Leonard Boswell, D-Ind., and Collin Peterson, D-Fla., don’t want any more delay on the issue, apparently.

On Thursday, either the House Democrats will fold and the administration will get its prized retroactive immunity for the telecoms, or the bill will expire and leave the executive branch without legal authorization to continue the spying program.

But legal experts say the implications of any expiration are not as dramatic as portrayed by the president Wednesday morning.. Any spying orders already in place would stay in place long after a temporary law dies on Feb. 16. At the same time, most experts agree that the administration would have to go back to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for new warrants in cases where foreign-to-foreign communications are routed through the United States’ telecommunications infrastructure. That poses little immediate threat, they say, but if a backlog of warrant applications were to build, as happened last summer, it could begin to cause problems.

It will not be a crisis, according to House Speaker Nanci Pelosi, D-Calif. She issued the following statement later Wednesday afternoon.

All Members of Congress fully understand and support our responsibility to protect the American people and the need for the President, the Congress, and policymakers to have the best possible intelligence to fight terrorism.

On Friday, a surveillance law insisted upon by the President last August will expire. Today, an overwhelming majority of House Democrats voted to extend that law for three weeks so that agreement could be reached with the Senate on a better version of that law. The President and House Republicans refused to support the extension and therefore will bear the responsibility should any adverse national consequences result.

However, even if the Protect America Act expires later this week, the American people can be confident that our country remains safe and strong. Every order entered under the law can remain in effect for 12 months from the date it was issued.

Furthermore, the underlying Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which provides for the surveillance of terrorists and provides that in emergencies surveillance can begin without warrant, remains intact and available to our intelligence agencies. Unlike last August, the FISA court has no backlog of cases, and thus can issue necessary court orders for surveillance immediately.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr., D-Mich, made the following remarks on the House floor earlier in support of a bill to extend the Protect America Act for an additional 21 days.

The temporary FISA law we enacted in haste as a stop-gap last August expires Saturday. We want to replace that law with a well-considered one, which appropriately addresses both our security needs and our constitutional values.

The House passed a version of that well-considered law in November – the RESTORE Act. We have been waiting for the Senate to pass its version, so that we could compare it with our version and decide together on the best course of action.

We have also been waiting on access to classified documents regarding what telecom companies may have done in recent years to assist the government with surveillance on U.S. citizens outside the bounds of the law at the time.

The 15-day extension we passed two weeks ago was intended to give us time to consider the Senate bill, thought to be on the verge of passing, and to review the classified documents. Unfortunately, it has turned out not to be enough time.

Judiciary Committee members – only some, not all – just began getting effective access to the classified documents on January 29, after we had been asking for over one year. And the review process is unavoidably somewhat cumbersome and inefficient. Even today, as I stated in my letter to the White House, we still do not have access to numerous critical legal documents.

Moreover, the Senate has just passed its version of a long-term surveillance law. It differs from the House version, in ways that may have major ramifications for the freedoms we cherish.

So we need a bit more time. This bill will give us three weeks – not much time, in the view of some. But enough, I hope, to permit us to reach an appropriate resolution on this matter of utmost importance.

A group of Blue Dog Democrats in the United States House of Representatives are now helping House Republicans by endorsing the Senate-passed bill that grants retroactive immunity to the telecom giants for their participation in the Bush administration’s illegal spying on millions of innocent American citizens.

Congressional Quarterly and the Daily Kos are now reporting that the House Republicans will try to derail the effort to pass a 21 day extension of the existing surveillance law and force a vote on the Senate bill that grants retroactive immunity to the telecom giants for their participation in the Bush administration’s illegal spying on millions of innocent American citizens.

House Republicans engineered a series of procedural votes Wednesday in a bid to derail the Democrats’ prooposed extension, which President Bush said Wednesday he would veto. They argued that the House should simply take up and send to the White House a surveillance overhaul bill (HR 3773) that the Senate passed by 68-29 Tuesday.

Because 21 conservative Blue Dog Democrats have endorsed the Senate-passed bill, Republicans might be able to win approval of the Senate bill through a motion to recommit the extension with instructions to amend it with the text of the Senate bill.

The Blue Dogs that have endorsed the Senate passed bill wrote to Pelosi last week, according to CQ, and some House Democrats were prepared to support immunity, regardless, according to DK.

In a letter dated Jan. 28, 21 Democrats in the conservative Blue Dog Coalition sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., supporting immunity and listing other provisions that they believed were needed in a FISA bill.

They wrote that the Senate bill “contains satisfactory language addressing all these issues, and we would fully support that measure should it reach the House floor without substantial change.”

“If this bad bill is jammed through the House of Representatives, it will be their fault,” says DK. “Call them and tell them to support the RESTORE Act without modification, and to support the 21 day extension of the current law. Tell them to stop enabling the Republicans and Bush in taking away our civil liberties.”

Here are those Blue Dogs:

* Rep. Leonard L. Boswell, D-Iowa — Phone: (202) 225-3806, Fax: (202) 225-5608

* Rep. Marion Berry, D-Ark. — Phone: (202) 225-4076, Fax: (202) 225-5602

* Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark. — Phone: (202) 225-3772, Fax: (202) 225-1314

* Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D. — Phone: (202) 225-2611, Fax: (202) 226-0893

* Rep. Robert E. “Bud” Cramer, D-Ala. — Phone: (202) 225-4801, Fax: (202) 225-4392

* Rep. Melissa Bean, D-Ill. — Phone: (202) 225-3711, Fax: (202) 225-7830

* Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C. — Phone: (202) 225-6401, Fax: (202) 226-6422

* Rep. John Barrow, D-Ga. — Phone: (202) 225-2823, Fax: (202) 225-3377

* Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Fla. — Phone: (202) 225-5235, Fax: (202) 225-5615

* Rep. Joe Baca, D-Calif. — Phone: (202) 225-6161, Fax: (202) 225-8671

* Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla. — Phone: (202) 225-2701, Fax: (202) 225-3038

* Rep. John Tanner, D-Tenn. — Phone: (202) 225-4714, Fax: (202) 225-1765

* Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah — Phone: (202) 225-3011, Fax: (202) 225-5638

* Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn. — Phone: (202) 225-4311, Fax: (202) 226-1035

* Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Tenn. — Phone: (202) 225-6831, Fax: (202) 226-5172

* Rep. Brad Ellsworth, D-Ind. — Phone: (202) 225-4636, Fax: (202) 225-3284

* Rep. Tim Holden, D-Pa. — Phone: (202) 225-5546, Fax: (202) 226-0996

* Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-La. — Phone: (202) 225-4031, Fax: (202) 226-3944

* Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Kan. — Phone: (202) 225-2865, Fax: (202) 225-2807

* Rep. Christopher Carney, D-Pa. — Phone: (202) 225-3731, Fax: (202) 225-9594

* Rep. Zack Space, D-Ohio — Phone: (202) 225-6265, Fax: (202) 225-3394

Wannabe king George woke up Wednesday morning and decided he was no lame duck president after all, empowered by the cowardly vote yesterday in the United States Senate granting his administration unlimited powers to spy on innocent American citizens and let the telephone companies off the hook for their illegal scheme.

So he started out his day browbeating the House to pass the same law and even got the Associated Press to run his press release saying, “…terrorists are planning new attacks on our country … that will make Sept. 11 pale by comparison.”

Bush said he would not agree to giving the House more time to debate a measure the Senate passed Tuesday governing the government’s ability to work with telecommunications companies to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mails between “suspected terrorists,” according to the AP. Do they not realize he is a lame duck who has broken the law and lied time and time again and that under the Constitution, it is the job of Congress to write the laws, not the president?

The bill gives phone companies retroactive protection from lawsuits filed on the basis of cooperation they gave the government without court permission, the AP reports, ignoring the fact that this government has not even paid the bills the phone companies charged to do the illegal sweeping and storage and data mining on millions of phone calls, e-mail messages and Web browsing trails of virtually everyone in this country.

“We need the cooperation of telecommunications companies,” Bush said. “If these companies are subjected to lawsuits costing billions of dollars, they won’t participate, they won’t help us.”

Well, good. They should voluntarily stop helping this administration break the law and stand up to his kingdom as well.

About 40 lawsuits have been filed against telecom companies by people alleging violations of wiretapping and privacy laws, but to its credit, the House did not include the immunity provision in a similar bill it passed last year.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers says he still opposes retroactive immunity. We will be watching today to see how firm he stands.

“There is no basis for the broad telecommunications company amnesty provisions advocated by the administration,” Conyers wrote in a letter to White House Counsel Fred Fielding asking for documents about the wiretapping program. The documents have been withheld from Congress.

It would be nice to see the House stand up to Bush and strip him of his spying power if he does not back down on the telecom immunity issue. The only way we are ever going to figure out just how bad our Constitution and our laws have been violated by White House officials is to get to the bottom of what the telephone companies and Internet service providers did when they complied with the illegal order to go along with the National Security Agency and spy on us all.

This administration cannot point to a single, solid case of domestic terrorism it stopped by this blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment’s provisions against illegal searches and seizures.

Watch the action on C-SPAN today and urge your Representatives in Congress to oppose telecom immunity.

Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wis., had some hard words for his colleagues after today’s vote.

“The Senate passage of this FISA bill, while not surprising, is extremely disappointing. The Senate missed a golden opportunity to pass a bill that would give our intelligence officials the tools they need to go after suspected terrorists while also safeguarding the privacy of law-abiding Americans. Instead the Senate, with the help of too many Democrats, is yet again giving the administration sweeping new powers – and letting it off the hook for its illegal wiretapping program. I hope that our House colleagues will hold a stronger line, and refuse to accept the deeply flawed Senate bill. The calls from Americans tired of having their rights and their Constitution trampled on by this administration are only growing louder. Congress should stand up for the American people, and the Constitution, by opposing such a badly flawed bill.”

The debate now moves to the House and C-SPAN I.