Russ Feingold: “I say to the Senator that I meant what I said about his efforts and his sincere desire to try to fix these provisions…”

“I say to the Senator that I meant what I said about his efforts and his sincere desire to try to fix these provisions, and that is what we started to do in the Senate version. Second, I do think this is an excellent process, that we need to come out here on the floor and be very specific about what is right and what is wrong about these provisions. It is neither sufficient to say to our colleagues that we have to pass it as it is because the time is running out, nor is it sufficient for somebody on my side to say, look, this is an enormously dangerous, unfixable provision and the whole thing should go down. Neither of those positions is defensible. What is defensible is to look at each of these provisions as we have been doing and ask if we have done enough to protect law-abiding Americans. I come to the conclusion that we were very close, had maybe even achieved that with regard to section 215. But the conference report failed in that regard, and it brings us back far too close to the original mistake. On the national security letters, I am not impressed by the improvements of the Senate version, which I didn't find to be adequate in the first place. So with regard to both of those, not to mention the sneak-and-peek searches that we will discuss later on, the conference report simply does not do the job.…”