Final Post on Clemens Testimony Before Congress: Hearing Made No Difference in Determining Whether Security Bill Vote Was Scheduled or Not

I've been hearing rumblings in the last several days about Congress wasting time on pro baseball while the FISA bill is set to sunset tomorrow. I'm so-so on that point.

FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows for electronic monitoring, physical searches, wiretapping and business record access with the permission of a special federal court. It expires at midnight.

The Senate passed a version with legal protection for phone companies that have cooperated with the U.S. government against dozens of pending lawsuits; the House went on a twelve-day vacation without bringing it up. And the blame game between the White House and the House of Representatives has been in full-swing ever since.

With regards to the baseball hearing, the truth is that the FISA bill was not going to be approved or disapproved in the five-hour span that the nation's attention was focused on Congressman Waxman's committee hearing on baseball. Nor was the presence or absence of the second stringers involved in that committee going to turn the tide of whether the House voted on FISA or not, either.

If a House leader who could schedule a vote on FISA was on that committee questioning Clemens and McNamee, then there would be some hell to pay. But there wasn't a senior member of the House leadership, such as Nancy Pelosi, present.

So the baseball hearing had no impact on the impending expiration of FISA. One had nothing to do with the other. The House leadership decided days ago that they were not going to bring up FISA until after their midwinter break. That's what really happened.