Last night, Mark Levin pointed out that, “Your House of Representatives [has been] very, very busy looking out for the enemy.”

The House approved legislation yesterday that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, drawing an immediate veto threat from the White House and setting up another political showdown over what constitutes torture. The measure, approved by a largely party-line vote of 222 to 199, would require U.S. intelligence agencies to follow Army rules adopted last year that explicitly forbid waterboarding. It also would require interrogators to adhere to a strict interpretation of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. The rules, required by Congress for all Defense Department personnel, also ban sexual humiliation, “mock” executions and the use of attack dogs, and prohibit the withholding of food and medical care.
…
The White House vowed to veto the measure. Limiting the CIA to interrogation techniques authorized by the Army Field Manual “would prevent the United States from conducting lawful interrogations of senior al Qaeda terrorists to obtain intelligence needed to protect Americans from attack,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement.

Key Republicans also opposed the measure. Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.), the House intelligence committee’s ranking GOP member, said applying the unclassified Army Field Manual to all interrogations would give terrorist groups full knowledge of U.S. interrogation techniques. “Too many details on the counterterrorism programs that have kept America safe since 9/11 have already been illegally leaked,” Hoekstra said. “Congress should not be in the business of voluntarily giving al-Qaeda or any of our adversaries our playbook.”

Mark then asked, “What the hell does Barney Frank know about interrogating somebody?”

As noted, the House vote was 222 to 199, with five Republicans, Roscoe Barlett (R-MD, 6th), Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD, 1st), Timothy Johnson (R-IL, 15th), Walter Jones (R-NC, 3rd), and Chris Smith (R-NJ, 4th), joining 217 Democrats to approve the measure.

Yet I wondered why this group of very liberal Democrats voted against the bill:

Danny Davis (D-IL, 7th), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH, 10th), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX, 18th), John Lewis (D-GA, 5th), Jim Marshall (D-GA, 8th), David Scott (D-GA, 13th), Jose Serrano (D-NY, 16th), Pete Stark (D-CA, 13th), Maxine Waters (D-CA, 35th), and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA, 6th), opposed the bill.

In the Congressional Record, I discovered that the Senate-House conference removed Representative Sheila Jackson Lee’s amendment that would, “require a report to House and Senate Intelligence committees describing any authorization granted during the past 10 years to engage in intelligence activities related to the overthrow of a democratically elected government.”

In addition, the conferees dropped a House provision that would have made the, “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance may be conducted to gather foreign intelligence information.”

In other words, H.R. 2082 (the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2008) did not undermine our national security enough. Those ten Democrats wanted to legislate the revealing of our nation’s secrets and to leave it solely up to un-elected judges to decide when to electronically spy on the enemy.