Martin Heinrich: “Yes. I thank my friend from Kentucky and ask him if he would yield for a question without losing his right to the floor.…”

“Yes. I thank my friend from Kentucky and ask him if he would yield for a question without losing his right to the floor. I want to start out by prefacing this for a few minutes, from my limited experience--just over the past a little over 2 years, and I am on the Intelligence Committee now--by saying there is simply no question that our Nation's intelligence professionals are incredibly dedicated, patriotic men and women who make real sacrifices to keep our country safe and free and, in that, they should be able to do their job, secure in the knowledge that their agencies have the confidence of the American people. And Congress--those of us here--needs to preserve the ability of those agencies to collect information that is truly necessary to guard against real threats to our national security. The Framers of the Constitution, as my colleague from Kentucky knows, declared that government officials had no power--no power--to seize the records of individual Americans without evidence of wrongdoing. And it was so important that they literally enshrined and embedded this principle in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. In my view, the bulk collection of Americans' private telephone records by the NSA in this program clearly violates the spirit--if not the letter--of the intentions of the Framers here.…”