Earlier today I’d posted that it seemed likely that the Protect America Act would be allowed to sunset this weekend, based on a combination of Republican obstructionism on getting an extension and that the PAA expiring will not impact our intelligence community’s ability to monitor suspected terrorists. It now seems certain that the PAA will sunset, as the House is going to go into recess without trying to pass another extension.

Jason Rosenbaum at The Seminal has the details of what’s happened:

Nancy Pelosi has stated that the House will go into recess without another vote on FISA, which means the Protect America Act will expire.

Let’s review what happened, shall we?

• The House passed the RESTORE Act in November, an update of FISA that did not include retroactive immunity.
• The Senate was forced to stop debate on FISA after Dodd’s filibuster, leaving the issue open until the new year.
• The Senate took up FISA again, and on Tuesday passed a version of the bill with retroactive immunity and everything else Bush and his fearmongers wanted.
• The President tried to bully the House into passing the Senate version of the FISA bill.
• After an extension failed in the House yesterday, and debate went nowhere today, Nancy Pelosi refused to back down and put away FISA for another day. The Protect America Act will expire.

McJoan at Daily Kos has statements from Pelosi and Steny Hoyer.

House Judiciary Chair John Conyers has said he’ll stick around to work on the legislation and it looks like other key members of the House and Senate will continue to work on next steps with this legislation:

“I have told my colleagues in the House that I am committed to working through this recess and will be discussing this legislation with Chairman Reyes and Senators Leahy and Rockefeller. I appreciate the President’s dedication to seeing this through and hope that he will join me in putting Americans before corporate interests.”

We shall see what this produces, but with House Dems standing strong hopefully retroactive immunity can be removed from whatever bill is sent to the President.

Cross posted at the CREDO Blog.