WASHINGTON (Map, News) - In an act of immense irresponsibility, House Democrats purposely left town last week without voting on the Senate version of the Protect America Act. That’s the proposed renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which the intelligence community says is crucially important for American security.

The FISA program, as Vice President Dick Cheney told The Examiner, is “essential in terms of protecting the country against further attacks, vital — one of the most vital things the president has done since 9/11.”

Could Democratic House leaders’ desire to score political points against President Bush be so strong as to put politics over security in a way that risks untold American lives? Apparently so.

Because of the House leaders’ deliberate inaction, the nation’s existing program for electronic surveillance of terrorist suspects will lapse.

At issue is the updating of FISA, which was first written in 1978 — eons ago in technological terms. Its procedures are utterly antiquated for today’s world of instantaneous communications. A temporary fix for the problem expired on Saturday night, but the House adjourned for 12 days without passing a permanent solution — even though it had six and a half months to get its act together.

During that time, the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote and approved a new FISA with an overwhelming 13-2 majority. The full Senate then approved it by an encouragingly bipartisan 68-29 vote. But even though a clear majority in the House — most Republicans and 21 Democrats — had declared their support of the Senate bill, the House leadership refused even to allow a vote.

House leaders say they object to a provision in the bill that gives immunity to telecommunications companies that assisted the surveillance. Their argument is specious.

The telecoms acted on written assurances from the Justice Department that the program was legal. And without immunity from big-money class-action lawsuits, the telecoms would have every incentive not to cooperate with emergency requests in the future. And without the telecoms’ help, the law, and the whole surveillance program, will be toothless.

Reading between the lines, the Democratic House leaders seem to have two motives: first, to please the class-action lawyers and left-wing activists who provide so much campaign cash and energy to liberal incumbents, and second, to hold the telecoms hostage to a wider political battle against the administration’s anti-terrorism policies. In so doing, though, they also hold hostage a key element in our defenses against terrorists seeking to murder Americans.

Shame on them.