I read that Congress will likely hold a special session in August to address the issues raised in the 9/11 Commission report.
Do you think there is a chance that they may attached an AWB Renewal to any 9/11-related laws that they may pass during this special August session of Congress?
Here is a link to the story:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0724terror-congress24.html
Lawmakers plan August follow-up on 9/11 findings
Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Philip Shenon
New York Times
Jul. 24, 2004 12:00 AM
WASHINGTON - Moving swiftly to tackle the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, House and Senate leaders on Friday announced rare August hearings to draft legislative changes.
President Bush, who began a weeklong vacation on Friday in Crawford, Texas, ordered his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., to lead an administration-wide review of the panel's suggestions, and to report back to him "as quickly as possible," a spokeswoman said. Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has already embraced most of the recommendations.
In Congress, which came under withering criticism in the report for lax oversight of the country's intelligence apparatus, House and Senate leaders stopped short on Friday of calling for a special session. Still, it was clear that they felt enough urgency to work through the August recess, a time that in even years is traditionally devoted to campaigning.
"The threat of terrorism will be with us for a long time," Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said Thursday night on the Senate floor. "We need to fix the problems and correct the shortcomings cited by the commission so that we can make America safer."
To that end, Frist and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle deputized Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who chairs the Senate Government Affairs Committee, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., the committee's ranking member, to produce legislation by Oct. 1 that would carry out two of the Sept. 11 panel's central recommendations: creating a national director of intelligence and a new national counterterrorism center.
The Senate leaders also vowed to name a bipartisan task force to address the recommendation that Congress change the way it oversees intelligence agencies, a politically thorny task. The task force would also be charged with making recommendations by Oct. 1. Changing the way Congress does oversight is more a matter of changes in Congressional rules than passing legislation that must be signed by the president.
As the Senate leaders took action, House leaders raced to keep pace. First, they announced that they had ordered committee chairmen to work through the recess to examine the report. Then, late Friday afternoon, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert abruptly declared that a hearing schedule would be announced next week.
******
Do you think there is a chance that they may attached an AWB Renewal to any 9/11-related laws that they may pass during this special August session of Congress?
Here is a link to the story:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0724terror-congress24.html
Lawmakers plan August follow-up on 9/11 findings
Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Philip Shenon
New York Times
Jul. 24, 2004 12:00 AM
WASHINGTON - Moving swiftly to tackle the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, House and Senate leaders on Friday announced rare August hearings to draft legislative changes.
President Bush, who began a weeklong vacation on Friday in Crawford, Texas, ordered his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., to lead an administration-wide review of the panel's suggestions, and to report back to him "as quickly as possible," a spokeswoman said. Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has already embraced most of the recommendations.
In Congress, which came under withering criticism in the report for lax oversight of the country's intelligence apparatus, House and Senate leaders stopped short on Friday of calling for a special session. Still, it was clear that they felt enough urgency to work through the August recess, a time that in even years is traditionally devoted to campaigning.
"The threat of terrorism will be with us for a long time," Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said Thursday night on the Senate floor. "We need to fix the problems and correct the shortcomings cited by the commission so that we can make America safer."
To that end, Frist and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle deputized Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who chairs the Senate Government Affairs Committee, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., the committee's ranking member, to produce legislation by Oct. 1 that would carry out two of the Sept. 11 panel's central recommendations: creating a national director of intelligence and a new national counterterrorism center.
The Senate leaders also vowed to name a bipartisan task force to address the recommendation that Congress change the way it oversees intelligence agencies, a politically thorny task. The task force would also be charged with making recommendations by Oct. 1. Changing the way Congress does oversight is more a matter of changes in Congressional rules than passing legislation that must be signed by the president.
As the Senate leaders took action, House leaders raced to keep pace. First, they announced that they had ordered committee chairmen to work through the recess to examine the report. Then, late Friday afternoon, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert abruptly declared that a hearing schedule would be announced next week.
******
