Meanwhile Congress was reluctant to challenge Bush (members feared being termed "unpatriotic" since Bush argued that the safety of Americans depended on the secret surveillance done by NSA) immediately, but in the past few months Congress (the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees) has demanded - and in part received - access to internal documents on the wiretapping program. "That access could ultimately help persuade skeptical lawmakers in the House, which so far has rejected the immunity idea, to sign on to the White House's Plan" (Lichtblau 2008) according to the New York Times.

Indeed the Senate in January 2008 gave immunity for the phone companies that helped the NSA tap phones secretly, which means Verizon, at&T, et al., cannot be sued for assisting the Bush Administration with its warrantless wiretapping program (there are over 40 lawsuits pending over the phone companies' roles in the wiretapping). So here is a case...
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