Political Quotes

“I thank the Chair, and I thank my colleague. My colleague did address issues regarding the Merkley-Lee amendment, which has three stages in it designed to be sensitive to national security. It says that if the Attorney General determines that an opinion is not dangerous to national security, it asks them to release it to the public. It says that if the Attorney General finds that it is sensitive to national security, to release only a summary so written as to protect national security. Then it goes even further to say that if, in the Attorney General's opinion, that is not possible, then please just give us a report on the process the executive branch has already said they are doing, which is to go through a systematic process of determining what they feel should be released independent of any advice we in the Senate might have. So in these three stages, national security is given full consideration at each step. What it means is that in a situation where we have language such as ``the government can collect information relevant to an investigation,'' and the public wonders, well, is that investigation any investigation in the world, is it--what does ``relevant'' mean? What does ``tangible information'' mean?…”