Michael Mukasey is not a man to live in the past. It's a much more difficult place.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) started his questions by asking about the President's Article II powers under the Constitution. Do you think that the President can break any law he pleases because he's the President -- including, say, statutes banning torture?

"I can't contemplate any situation in which this president would assert Article II authority to do something that the law forbids," Mukasey shot back.

"Well, he did just that when he violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act" Specter responded. "Didn't he?"

Well, "both of those issues have been brought within statutes," Mukasey responded, apparently hoping that he wouldn't have to discuss the stickier past.

"That's not the point," Specter pressed. "The point is that he acted in violation of statutes, didn't he?"

"I don't know," Mukasey conceded. Awkward.

"There's no dispute about that," isn't there? The law says you have to go to court to get a warrant for wiretapping and the administration didn't do that.

Mukasey then wound into a description of the alleged problems with FISA regarding foreign to foreign communications.

"But I'm talking about wiretapping U.S. citizens in the United States" Specter protested, before giving up, saying "Well, not getting very far there, let me move on...."

Update: Here's the transcript:

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So what's going on this morning with the surveillance legislation?

Here's a statement we've just gotten from Reid's office: "Currently discussions are ongoing in an effort to determine how to move forward on FISA. Senator Reid is closely working with all Democrats including Senators Feingold and Dodd on this issue."

That's another way of saying that he's not selling out on retroactive immunity, it seems. And no deal has been struck yet. We'll keep you updated as things develop.

Last night, the Senate also quickly passed that 15-day extension to the Protect America Act. So it seems like the President will likely sign that into law.

So what's next? In comments on the Senate floor this morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that after holding a meeting in his office at 6 PM last night, he called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). He indicated that they may have struck a deal on how to proceed, but it wasn't clear if all the details had been hashed out, and he didn't indicate what the details of that deal might be. We'll keep you updated as we learn more.

Update: See update here.

Just now, the House changed the bill to make it a 15-day extension instead of 30-day one, and the bill passed by voice vote. It all happened rather quickly. So it seems as if there really wasn't much disagreement on this at all. Now it's back over to the Senate....

Note: As I noted yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) mentioned that he would agree to a shorter extension than 30 days. So it appears as if two weeks is what the Republicans hit on. In a press release, House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) warns: "This is the Democrats last chance - in two more weeks, if they fail to get a bill completed, there will be no more excuses available.”

As if things weren't complicated enough....

Over in the House, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), a member of the House intelligence committee, took to the floor this afternoon to urge others to vote against any extension to the Protect America Act. His reasoning: 1) the administration's bill was bad law in the first place and brought home the lesson to never pass legislation under "duress brought on by propaganda, misinformation, and fear mongering,” 2) surveillance authorized under the PAA would continue even if the law lapsed, and 3) it wouldn't improve the Dems' negotiating position.

Here's video of his remarks:

He reiterated this in a "Dear Colleague" letter sent to all of the other lawmakers who had voted against the PAA back in August. That letter is below.

So the question becomes whether other Dems will break ranks (all in all, 181 voted against the PAA last August). The vote on the extension is likely to take place in the next hour or so in the House.

In the Senate, they'll get back to debating the surveillance bill as well. Things still seem at a standstill, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) insisting on simple majority votes for all of the amendments -- including the crucial Feingold/Dodd amendment to strip retroactive immunity for telecoms that participated in the administration's warrantless wiretapping -- and the Republicans refusing. We'll keep you updated.

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The Senate is back at it this morning, and pretty soon, the House is expected to hold a vote on a 30-day extension to the Protect America Act.

Things are too fluid right now to tell what will happen next, but we'll keep you updated.

A transcript of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) brief remarks to open debate is below.

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So all but a handful of Dems held together to rebuff the Republican attempt to push through a surveillance bill with retroactive immunity. With that, the Senate is off until tomorrow morning -- when the battle will be rejoined.

The first fight looming is over an extension to the administration's surveillance bill, the Protect America Act. Even if all sides were able to hash out a deal in the next few days, the Dems argue, they wouldn't be able to get the bill signed before the law lapsed on Friday.

Up until now, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had refused to entertain any such scenario. It was part of the Senate Republican-administration tag-team squeeze play. But in remarks today, he seemed to soften his stance, saying that he might support a short extension to the PAA. But he didn't say for how much time, and it's apparently less than thirty days.

In the House tomorrow morning, they'll hold a vote on a bill that would extend the PAA by thirty days. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has indicated he'll try the same thing. But given the tactics the Republicans used last week, it's far from clear that the Republicans will even allow a vote on it. So-- we'll see you in the morning.

The fight goes on.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) cloture vote failed 48-45 just now, well short of the 60 votes necessary.

In the end, four Dems crossed over to vote with the Republicans: Sens. Mark Pryor (D-AR), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA). Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) was the lone Republican to vote with the Dems.

Now we're on to the question of whether an extension will be passed. We'll have more on that in a moment.

Update: Here's the official tally.

A prepared transcript of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) remarks before the vote today are below.

Some highlights:

Mr. President, in my twenty years in Congress, I have not seen anything quite as cynical and counterproductive as the Republican approach to FISA.

The American people deserve to know that when President Bush talks about the foreign intelligence bill tonight, he's doing little more than shooting for cheap political points - and we should reject his efforts....

The Republican leader filed cloture on this bill after it had been on the floor for just a few hours. He filed cloture after Republicans blocked every amendment they could from being offered and blocked all amendments from getting votes.

In simple terms, this means the Republicans were filibustering their own bill. Let me repeat that. The Republicans were filibustering their own bill. In my time in the Senate, I can't remember this taking place....

We are the deliberative body. Let us deliberate.

Full transcript below.

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Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the champion of the Senate intelligence committee bill that contains retroactive immunity, and one of the twelve Democrats who voted against the Senate Judiciary Committee bill last week, just said on the floor that he'll also vote against cloture. The administration is placing politics above national security, he says.

This isn't shaping up to be a close vote.

Update: His full statement is below.

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Not a good sign for the Republicans Just now on the Senate floor, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) spoke against the Senate Republican leadership's attempt to invoke cloture on the surveillance bill, indicating that he'll vote with the Democrats.

Among the amendments that the Republicans seek to block is one of Specter's own amendments, one he's sponsoring along with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). The amendment would, rather than granting the telecoms retroactive immunity for cooperating with the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, substitute the government as the defendant in the numerous lawsuits against the telecoms.

Update: We have a rough transcript of some of his floor remarks below.

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The race is on to determine which Republican can best walk and chew gum at the same time: that is, simultaneously fear-monger about the lapse of the Protect America Act while at the same time rejecting Democratic efforts to extend it for thirty days.

President Bush, in his weekly radio address, warned: "We need to know who our enemies are and what they are plotting. And we cannot afford to wait until after an attack to put the pieces together." Bush, remember, has threatened to veto any extension of the PAA.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), face underlit with a flashlight observed succinctly: "It’s not about frightening the American people. The American people should be frightened and remember full well what happened on 9/11."

And House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) ties it all up into a neat bow: "The implications of failing to act are real. If we let this law expire, we will go back to a system that last spring kept American soldiers in Iraq waiting on D.C. lawyers before they could look for a kidnapped colleague.... Our national security is far too important for another temporary patch."

For me, I have to say that Blunt takes the cake. Not only does it rely on the by-now debunked claim that the prior FISA law prevented the NSA from wiretapping Iraqi insurgents who'd kidnapped U.S. troops, but he claims that the old FISA law prevented the U.S. from even looking for those missing soldiers. And Blunt glancingly describes the administration lawyers who deal with surveillance authority as "D.C. lawyers." Gotta love that. His full statement, which is just bursting with distortions too numerous to catalog, is below.

Note: Any other outstanding examples we didn't note? Let us know in the comments.

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The White House surveillance bill squeeze stepped up to another level over the weekend. So the scene is set for an ol' fashioned cloture vote rumble this afternoon at 4:30.

To refresh your memory: the administration's far-reaching surveillance bill, which was passed last August in a similar White House squeeze play, expires February 1st.

To take the time pressure off and ensure that surveillance would be unaffected by the lapse, Senate Majority Leader has repeatedly proposed a 30-day extension to the Protect America Act. Republicans in the Senate have repeatedly blocked any effort to have a vote on it. They've also blocked attempts to hold votes on almost all of the offered amendments, leading to the situation today.

On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) filed for cloture, forcing a vote which would end debate, preclude any votes on the amendments, and lead immediately to a vote on the underlying Senate bill -- the administration-supported Senate intelligence committee bill, which contains a provision granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms. The Republicans need 60 votes to make that happen.

Now things are at the point where even if the Senate did manage to pass some sort of bill before Thursday, the process of hashing out the differences with the House version (which doesn't contain retroactive immunity) would drag on past the deadline. Reid has said as much: "The president has to make a decision. He's either going to extend the law... or there will be no wiretapping."

And over the weekend, the White House issued a veto threat. The game was clear:

“The president would veto a 30-day extension,” a senior administration official said. “They’re just kicking the can down the road. They need the heat of the current law lapsing to get this done.”

Bush even added a tweak of soft-on-terrorism in his weekly radio address to bring home the message:

"If this law expires, it will become harder to figure out what our enemies are doing to infiltrate our country, harder for us to uncover terrorist plots and harder to prevent attacks on the American people."

For the record, everyone agrees that surveillance initiated under the Protect America Act will be unaffected for another year. But surveillance on new targets would fall under the prior FISA law, the one superseded by the Protect America Act.

So.... what's going to happen this afternoon? The Senate will hold its much anticipated cloture vote, and we'll see if the Republicans will be able to lure over enough Dems over to get to 60. Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Barack Obama (D-IL) will be present to cast their "No" votes. If the vote fails, it seems likely that Reid will try for a vote on that 30-day extension. (For it's part, the House is set to hold a vote on a 30-day extension today.)

As for what happens at that point, I'll be the first to confess that I have no idea. We'll keep you updated.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) reacting to yesterday's goings-on:

"The conduct of Senate Republicans yesterday was shameless. After weeks of insisting that it is absolutely critical to finish the FISA legislation by February 1, even going so far as to object to a one-month extension of the Protect America Act, they obstructed all efforts to actually work on the bill. Now they want to simply ram the deeply flawed Intelligence Committee bill through the Senate.

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The squeeze is on.

You remember how it went last time: with time running out before the end of the congressional summer recess, the administration, with the help of some key Democrats, managed to push through a far-reaching surveillance bill.

And once again, five months later, some of the same conditions have been created. The administration's bill, the Protect America Act, is set to expire February 1st. Republicans and the administration have consistently opposed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's attempts to push that deadline back.

And yesterday they managed to vote down the Senate Judiciary Committee's surveillance bill (which does not have retroactive telecom immunity) and block votes on any amendments to the intelligence committee's version, which does contain such immunity. As the Republicans have demonstrated, the Senate's rules make it easy for the minority to make trouble.

The table is set for Monday, when the Senate will vote on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) attempt to end debate on the intel committee's bill. That motion to invoke cloture will need 60 votes to pass. If it does pass, then the Senate would immediately vote on the bill, which civil libertarians dislike for a number of reasons beyond its measure granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms.

The major papers took a look at what happened on the floor yesterday -- particularly the defeat of the SJC bill -- and declare that it was a great day for the telecoms.

Yes, the SJC bill, which contained no retroactive immunity, did get voted down 60-36 with the help of twelve Dems. But it's far from clear that those same twelve Dems would vote to invoke cloture and prevent votes on the various other amendments. One of those Dems, for instance, is Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) who is co-sponsoring an amendment by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) that would throw the immunity question to the secret FISA court. Will he vote to prevent a vote on his own amendment? That seems unlikely. The Republicans need all twelve of those votes in order to invoke cloture.

So it will become a question of who's getting squeezed. Monday's vote is sure to be in the spotlight. It will be right before the President's State of the Union speech, making it likely the presidential candidates will show. And if that vote for cloture fails (my timid prediction), Sen. Reid has signaled that he'll try to shift the emphasis to the Republicans' obstructionism. Yesterday on the floor he declared: "It appears that the minority, the President, and the Republicans want failure. They don't want a bill. So that's why they're jamming this forward." (You can read a longer transcript of his remarks here.) Whether a media narrative of Republican obstructionism can take hold -- something that certainly hasn't happened so far -- is another question.

OK, here's where things stand with the surveillance bill. There was just a flurry of activity on the Senate floor.

After this morning's vote, where the judiciary committee's bill was killed by Republicans and a handful of Dems, a number of amendments were to be offered -- among them, the Dodd/Feingold bill that would strip retroactive immunity. But the Republicans objected to any of these from coming up for a vote under simple majority rules.

Finally, about twenty minutes ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) moved for a vote on cloture -- that would force an end to debate and trigger a simple majority vote on the underlying Senate intelligence committee version of the bill (which has retroactive immunity). To do that, he'll need 60 votes.

Reid objected to this, said that he would vote against it, and then postponed the vote until Monday. We'll get you Reid's remarks as soon as we have them.

Update: A rough transcript of Reid's remarks are below.

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Here's House intelligence committee Chair Silvestre Reyes' entire statement on the White House's sudden decision to allow them access to documents concerning the warrantless surveillance program:

“I have pushed for eight months to review this material... I don't know why the White House refused to give us access. Now we will be able to view documents used to set up the President's warrantless wiretapping program.”

With the battle over retroactive immunity in the Senate looking pretty good for the administration, they're no doubt looking to the House as the next battleground. And they apparently decided that it would help if they shared a little. They certainly haven't suddenly been struck with a love of inter-branch comity.

As for House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI), he decided that this was an offer he couldn't refuse -- ten Dems on his committee and nine Republicans will get to see the docs, an apparently arbitrarily limitation -- but he remains "disappointed," he said, that the administration is still withholding some documents from this and other programs.

Well, one down. The Senate just voted to kill (table) the Senate Judiciary Committee's surveillance bill, which did not contain retroactive immunity for the telecoms. The vote was 60-36 to table, with a number of Dems crossing over. As we said earlier, a number of other amendments will also go up for votes this afternoon.

Among the Democrats voting to kill the SJC bill were Sens. Mark Pryor (AK), Daniel Inouye (HI), Claire McCaskill (MO), Mary Landrieu (LA), Ken Salazar (CO) and Tim Johnson (SD).

Update: The final tally was actually 60-36, not 60-34, and the full list of Dems voting to kill were: Sens. Evan Bayh (D-IN), Tom Carper (D-DE), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Tim Johnson (D-SD), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), and Ken Salazar (D-CO).

From the AP:

Ending months of resistance, the White House has agreed to give House members access to secret documents about its warrantless wiretapping program, a congressional official said Thursday.

The Bush administration is trying to convince the House to protect from civil lawsuits the telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on Americans without the approval of a court. Congress created the court 30 years ago to oversee such activities.

House Intelligence and Judiciary committee members and staff will begin reading the documents at the White House Thursday, said an aide to Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas.

They asked for the documents last May and finally got them now as the debate over the surveillance rages and will probably culminate this weekend. Nice.

Remember that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) asked for the full Senate to have access to such documents last year, a request that seems to have been ignored.

So here is where the FISA debate, which kicked off in earnest this morning, stands.

The first vote today will be on the Senate Judiciary Committee's version of the surveillance legislation, which contains no retroactive immunity for the telecoms who collaborated with the administration's warrantless wiretapping program. That will be at two o'clock this afternoon. There is no agreement that such a vote meet a 60-vote threshold, so when the Republicans move to block that bill, the vote will be held on a 50-vote threshold. If they win that vote, then the bill will revert back to the Senate intelligence committee's bill, which has a retroactive immunity provision.

After that will come a number of amendments, among them Sens. Chris Dodd's (D-CT) and Russ Feingold's (D-WI), which contains a provision to strip the immunity from the bill. Reid says that he supports such a bill. And he said today that Republicans will have to actually filibuster if they want to stop any of the amendments from getting a simple majority vote:

"As I have said before, if there are Senators who don't like these amendments and think they should be subjected to 60-vote thresholds, these Senators are going to have to engage in an old-fashioned filibuster. These amendments are by and large germane, and I believe they should be adopted if a majority of the Senate supports them."

You can Reid's entire statement here.

When Reid said something similar yesterday, a number of people interpreted it as in reference to Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) who has said that he would filibuster any bill that contained retroactive immunity. Now it seems as if that remark was meant for everyone.

As for what happens next, I think we'll just have to wait and see. We'll keep you updated.

Speaking to reporters today, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) said that he would again filibuster any bill that a provision in it granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms -- or as he put it, "use every tool at my disposal as a Senator" to stop it. So if you were wondering whether anything has changed since Dodd dropped out of the presidential race, nothing has.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) sent a letter to President Bush today to ask that he support an extension to the existing surveillance bill -- which seems very unlikely to happen. That letter's below.

Update: Sure enough, Cheney said at the Heritage Foundation today that "We're reminding Congress that they must act now."

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With Republicans blocking any attempts for an extension to the administration's surveillance bill, the pressure is on (last time that didn't go so well).

The Senate will have two choices when debate begins this Thursday: the Senate intelligence committee's version, which would grant retroactive immunity for the telecoms that participated in the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, or the Senate Judiciary Committee's version, which would not. Although Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) himself opposes retroactive immunity, he struck a deal with the two committee chairmen to hold a vote first on the intelligence committee's version, and then have a vote on Leahy's version as an amendment. Civil liberty advocates say that move slants the debate in favor of a bill with immunity.

The New York Times takes the lay of the land:

“In the end, I think something like the Intelligence Committee bill would pass — with the immunity,” said a senior Democratic official who opposes the immunity plan and insisted on anonymity. “I don’t know that it’s possible to get anything through the Senate that doesn’t grant the telecom companies immunity.”

Meanwhile, the White House seems primed to force the issue. And what PR push would be complete without a Dick Cheney speech at the Heritage Foundation? He's scheduled to give one today.

So much for that 30-day extension. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) shot that down for the second time just now, setting the stage for what's sure to be an engaged debate later this week -- which Sen. Reid said will occur "maybe Thursday."