The Senate Is About to Decide the Future of NSA Spying

Will Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) be moved? That's the question the Senate is asking itself as it enters its last legislative week before key provisions that authorize some of the government's sweeping domestic surveillance powers are due to lapse at the end of May. And if May 17 is any indication, the answer is clear: No, not a chance. "This has been a very important part of our effort to defend the homeland since 9/11," Majority Leader McConnell said on ABC's This Week. "We know that the terrorists overseas are trying to recruit people in our country, to commit atrocities in our country. You saw a great example of just what I'm talking about in the Boston Marathon massacre. I don't want us to go dark, in effect."

Majority Leader McConnell hasn't flinched from his position that a full reauthorization of the Patriot Act's three expiring spy provisions -- including Section 215, the legal edifice the National Security Agency uses to justify its bulk collection of US call data -- is necessary to keep Americans safe and thwart terrorist plots. Majority Leader McConnell's intransigence has been unbowed despite an apparent groundswell of support over the past month in favor of NSA reform.