Senate bars bill to restore detainee rights
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The Senate voted on Wednesday against considering a measure to give Guantanamo detainees and other foreigners the right to challenge their detention in the U.S. courts.
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The Supreme Court yesterday reversed itself and agreed to consider whether detainees at Guantanamo Bay have been unfairly barred from the federal courts by the Bush administration and Congress, a move that may finally determine legal rights for foreign-born terrorism suspects.
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A rebellious Senate committee defied President Bush on Thursday and approved terror-detainee legislation he has vowed to block, deepening Republican conflict over terrorism and national security in the middle of election season.
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The US Senate passed controversial new rules on interrogating and prosecuting &quot;war on terror&quot; suspects, despite opponents who said the measure seriously curtails detainees' rights.
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Virginia Democratic Senate candidate Jim Webb said Sunday that President Bush's terror-detainee legislation would weaken the Geneva Conventions and potentially subject captured U.S. soldiers to torture.
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US President George W. Bush's request for authority for military tribunals to try &quot;enemy combatants&quot; detained at Guantanamo Bay faces stiff opposition in Congress after the Supreme Court blocked similar trials in June.
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A bipartisan immigration bill narrowly survived a potentially fatal challenge on Wednesday when the Senate turned back a Republican bid to limit the illegal immigrants who could gain lawful status.
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Guantanamo prisoners and other  foreigners got a step closer to regaining the right to  challenge their detention in the U.S. courts in a bill approved  in a U.S. Senate committee on Thursday.
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The White House bill in Congress would strip courts of jurisdiction on detainee confinement.
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A bill that would allow terrorism suspects access to federal courts to challenge their imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
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The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Sunday he has a problem with the Republican agreement on rules for the interrogation and trial of suspects in the war on terror.
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The U.S. Senate defeated on Tuesday an amendment that would take away legal immunity from telecommunications providers that helped the U.S. National Security Agency conduct surveillance on U.S. residents, earning criticism from two civil liberties groups.The Senate, by a 31-67 vote, defeated an amendment to the FISA Amendments Act, a bill that would make changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and allow the NSA program to continue. In the past, the NSA has conducted telephone and e-mail surveillance of U.S. citizens conversing with terrorist suspects overseas without court-approved warrants.The Senate was scheduled to vote on the full FISA bill late Tuesday.The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) slammed the Senate vote. &quot;Immunity for telecom giants that secretly assisted in the NSA&#39;s warrantless surveillance undermines the rule of law and the privacy of every American,&quot; said EFF senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston. &quot;Congress should let the courts do their job instead of helping the administration and the phone companies avoid accountability for a half decade of illegal domestic spying.&quot;It doesn&#39;t make sense for Congress to work hard on the FISA bill when the NSA and telecom providers can circumvent the law, added Greg Nojeim, CDT&#39;s senior counsel. &quot;The telecom immunity provision sends a message that it&#39;s OK for a telecom to assist with unlawful surveillance when secretly asked to do so by the government,&quot; he said.Democratic Senators Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin had sponsored the amendment to get rid of legal immunity for the telecom providers. AT&amp;T and other telecom carriers are being sued in U.S. court in San Francisco for their participation in the surveillance program, which many civil liberties groups say is illegal.Last month, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said in a speech that it is &quot;entirely appropriate&quot; for U.S. intelligence agencies to seek help from private companies like telecom providers, because agencies don&#39;t have all the resources they need to keep the U.S. safe from terrorism.&quot;Some providers are facing dozens of lawsuits right now,&quot; Cheney said then. &quot;Why? Because they are believed to have aided the U.S. government in the effort to intercept international communications of al Qaeda-related individuals.&quot;A House bill, passed in November, does not include legal immunity for telecom providers that participated in the NSA program. The House and Senate would have negotiate the differences in the two bills before sending the legislation to U.S. President George Bush to sign. Bush has threatened to veto a surveillance bill that does not include legal immunity for telecom providers, but congressional authorization for the surveillance program expires Feb. 15.It would be counterproductive for Bush to veto a bill that extends surveillance programs that he says are critical, Bankston said. &quot;The only way they can [get legal immunity] is by fallaciously tying it to something critical,&quot; he said.The EFF will push hard to have House negotiators keep the telecom immunity provisions out of the bill that goes to Bush, Bankston added.The EFF and CDT both prefer the House FISA bill, called the Restore Act. Unlike the Senate bill, the House bill would require court approval of surveillance, and the House version would expire in two years, as opposed to six years in the Senate version. The CDT has produced a chart comparing the two bills.
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Several Republican senators are stepping up their opposition to the Bush administration's plan to authorize military trials for suspected terrorists, with one calling a key part of the bill "ill-advised." The issue in contention involves a White House-backed bid to redefine the U.S. interpretation of the Geneva Conventions. Some GOP senators say that would be a mistake.
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The Bush administration is taking the narrowest possible view of legal rights the Supreme Court gave to terrorism detainees while trying to fend off any new court challenges. Ultimately the high court probably will weigh in again, lawyers said.
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US President George W. Bush has urged the Senate to follow the example set by the House of Representatives a day earlier and pass a controversial bill setting out rules for detaining and prosecuting &quot;war on terror&quot; suspects.
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The Senate voted on Tuesday to bring back President Bush's immigration reform bill from the dead, but any of the two dozen amendments now to be debated could kill the deal for this year.
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A U.S. Senate committee approved a  bipartisan bill to tighten rules on government eavesdropping on  terrorism suspects, but a Democratic presidential candidate  said on Thursday he would try to block it.