The bipartisan nature of the commission and the processes it followed to eliminate bias in regards to politics or a conflict between the branches of government has produced as balanced and as pragmatic a product as one could hope would help resolve the conflict between the branches.

As Bill Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State who is connected with the Brookings Institution, I think it’s of some significance that over the past 13 months, I’ve agreed with virtually every word I have heard from Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General, who is connected with the Heritage Foundation, on this subject.

I always go back to the 9/11 Commission Report, where they said that one of the reasons we were unprepared for the 9/11 attacks was a failure of imagination. What they meant by that was that we could not imagine that any people would try to do to us what the terrorists did on 9/11. So I feel as chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, I have a responsibility to continue to imagine the worst. You hate to put it that way.

I asked Secretary Chertoff once, “What keeps you up at night?”, and he says, “A terrorist detonating a nuclear weapon in an American city.” So we’ve done this series of hearings, this is the fifth now, on “Are we ready?”. I want to both know, but I also want to push the executive branch and state, county, and local officials to be ready. Bottom line, I think a lot has happened since 9/11, but there’s more to do, so we’re going to stay on top of it.

Pakistan is a very important link in the War on Terror and has been helpful in a lot of ways but not as helpful or as focused as it could be. Right now there are a lot of major challenges about the ability of the current government to deliver and to marshal the kind of resources necessary to accomplish the task. The border areas in Pakistan are alarmingly out of control, and they are contributing to instability in Afghanistan as well as in Pakistan. Unless the government exhibits a greater ability to target its own resources to deal with this both militarily and in the social economic structure, it’s going to be very, very challenging for us in the next years. There are enormous issues which this hearing obviously is geared to focus on.

I voted no on the amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) because they won’t make Americans any safer from terrorists.

They simply reflect George W. Bush’s belief that the President has virtually unlimited power to ignore Constitutional protections for individual privacy and civil rights.  The FISA Act, with only slight adjustments to accommodate changing communications technologies, would give the government all the ability it needs to gather information from dangerous people without trampling on the rights of U.S. citizens.

President Bush also seems unnerved at the prospect of American citizens filing lawsuits to protect their Constitutional rights. I wish he was as concerned about protecting citizens from giant corporations as he is about protecting giant corporations from citizens.

We waited for so long for someone in the Democratic leadership to recognize that a compromise needed to be struck for the good of our country. I applaud Steny Hoyer for reaching across the aisle to get this done. This is a very responsible compromise, hammered out in a bipartisan way. The people who struck this compromise should be applauded.

It is well past time to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Our nation has been left vulnerable since the previous legislation expired February 16th. As a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, I am extremely concerned about our national security and deeply troubled that our intelligence community has been prevented from doing work needed to protect Americans. We do not monitor phone conversations, emails or finances of suspected terrorists and terrorist allies as we used to – and the enemy knows it. It is time for us to strengthen, not weaken, terrorist surveillance.

Since coming into power last January, Democrat leadership has time and again put politics before the safety of our nation and its citizens. Instead of prioritizing arguably the most important security issue, they have dilly-dallied for almost a year. Read the rest of this entry »

The Hill’s Bob Cusack takes a look at the week ahead on Capitol Hill.

My proposal is to establish a domestic terror court for the trying of those suspected of involvement in terror.  I think an international court or Article III courts are both not going to be the appropriate response once we close Guantanamo.  I also think it’s going to be critical to undergo a vetting process establishing this objective criteria for determining who really needs to stay in detention.  A domestic terror court, in terms of the introduction of classified information and not having a jury trial, I think as we move forward that’s going to be the most realistic, workable proposal.

It’s clear that there are problems with my proposal.  I am well aware of that.  That being said, I think it’s the most realistic, workable option.  The idea of having some kind of commission to look at the various options and proposals objectively and including a comparative approach is also correct.  But at the end of the day, we need to set up a system that enables us to try individuals who we’ve held for six and a half years and end up in detention, which is clearly a violation of the Constitution.

Editor’s Note: Guiora testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee today.

The basic point is that when it comes to dealing with people suspected of terrorism, our existing criminal justice institutions are more than up to the task.  It would be a mistake to try to create from scratch yet another new system like the one in Guantanamo to deal with these people.

Some members of the committee were more receptive than others.  I think Chairman Leahy would agree with the position I’ve put forward.  It’s very important that there was a sitting federal judge on the panel and an experienced prosecutor who agreed with the proposition that our existing courts are up to the challenge.  I think they spoke with some degree of experience and expertise to rebut the perception that the administration has put forward that we can’t rely on our courts to do this.

Editor’s Note: Malinowski testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee today.