independently assisting oversight of highly classified programs

[Philip Shaw]

On 19 Jan 2014, at 18:23 , grarpamp <grarpamp at gmail.com> wrote:

> US Constitution - Art 1, Sec 6:
> The Senators and Representatives ... shall in all Cases, except
> Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest
> during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses,
> and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or
> Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other
> Place.
> """
> 
> The bit after the semicolon is interesting. It appears to grant
> immunity outside Place of Congress for speech in Congress, and since
> Congress has no real internal law/police/judge/jail of its own,
> speak all you want. This has been subsequently developed...
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_or_Debate_Clause

IANAL, but the use of a semi-colon rather than a comma would seem to suggest that the except for treason, felony, etc. doesn’t apply to the speech or debate clause, so all matters of speech or debate can only be tried by that house (although what court-like powers the house would have would be an interesting legal problem - I’d say that the framers intended it to be reasonably extensive, since that was (and is) the case in Britain, but one could also argue that it only applies to enforcing the standing orders as written).

> Then there's Art 1 Sec 5 PP2 and PP3 and so on that might be applied
> after the fact. Though right now there is CSPAN and observation
> balconies for the public/press, so any speech bombs that someone
> drops would make it out to the world.

Gravell suggests that publishing an excerpt from the official records isn’t protected by the speech or debate clause, so although reading documents into the public record would be useful (since it would give us all legitimate access), it wouldn’t help subsequent publishers.
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