Obama's NSA Defense: Says Congress Can Raise Objections, BUT it Can't as a Whole!

[struggle4progress]

27. (1) The charges against Manning do not include treason

(2) The constitutional immunity for congressional speech and debate appears to cover at least any speech and debate associated with legislative process; see

GRAVEL v. UNITED STATES
408 U.S. 606 (1972)

Opinion of the Court by MR. JUSTICE WHITE, announced by MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN.

... It appeared that on the night of June 29, 1971, Senator Gravel, as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Buildings and Grounds of the Senate Public Works Committee, convened a meeting of the subcommittee and there read extensively from a copy of the Pentagon Papers. He then placed the entire 47 volumes of the study in the public record ... The last sentence of the Clause provides Members of Congress with two distinct privileges. Except in cases of "Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace," the Clause shields Members from arrest while attending or traveling to and from a session of their House. History reveals, and prior cases so hold, that this part of the Clause exempts Members from arrest in civil cases only ... Senator Gravel disavows any assertion of general immunity from the criminal law. But he points out that the last portion of 6 affords Members of Congress another vital privilege - they may not be questioned in any other place for any speech or debate in either House. The claim is not that while one part of 6 generally permits prosecutions for treason, felony, and breach of the peace, another part nevertheless broadly forbids them. Rather, his insistence is that the Speech or Debate Clause at the very least protects him from criminal or civil liability and from questioning elsewhere than in the Senate, with respect to the events occurring at the subcommittee hearing at which the Pentagon Papers were introduced into the public record. To us this claim is incontrovertible ...