Michele Bachmann has grabbed George Bush’s shoulder and claimed knowledge of double-secret plans to partition Iraq. Today she has given Minnesota more reason to be embarrassed at her presence in our congressional delegation, this time on the Foreign Intelligence Services Act.

The House this week passed a FISA amendment bill that provided fixes for several issues in the 1978 law, but did not include retroactive immunity for telecom companies that may have assisted the Bush administration in breaking the law. Yet in a Star-Tribune op-ed Saturday morning, there’s Ms. Bachmann, claiming that responsibility for making Americans unsafe lies with the House Democratic Leadership — who allegedly have not allowed any FISA legislation to pass.

Reality disagrees with you, Congresswoman.

Continued: Click “Read more.”In her op-ed, Bachmann wrote:

…on Feb. 16, the Protect America Act expired — even though the Senate voted to reauthorize it with a strong, bipartisan vote, and even though the same bipartisan support exists in the House as well.

Why, then, has it expired?

Because the House Democratic leadership has simply refused to allow a vote — knowing it will pass. In fact, 21 House Democrats wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, urging her to bring the bill to the floor.

While this inaction may score cheap political points with the fringe elements of the Democratic caucus, American families are needlessly imperiled. This is not an exaggeration. This is not hyperbole. This is fact — confirmed by our intelligence community and agreed upon by Republicans and Democrats alike.

Actually, Bachmann’s claim is both hyperbolic and untrue. The House Leadership did bring the FISA bill to the floor for a vote, and it passed yesterday by a margin of 213-197. This bill does many things those same 21 House Democrats were looking for in FISA amendments, all except providing retroactive telecom immunity. This follows the passage of another FISA amendment in November (on a vote of 227-189), which did not make it past the Senate. That followed the temporary legislation, passed in August on a vote of 227-183, which established the rule about which Bachmann finds herself so hot and bothered.

On the second and third of those three votes, Bachmann votes against the bills.

Let us be crystal clear on that point: when voting on bills which had one major difference between the House and Senate — providing after-the-fact immunity to companies that may have knowingly assisted in criminal activity — Bachmann came down on the side of protecting the telecom companies.

Bachmann continues:

Since 2001, attack after attack has been averted — including a plot to destroy American-bound airliners with liquid explosives. Indeed, last year, the Heritage Foundation compiled a list of 19 confirmed terror plots against American targets that had been thwarted.

This sounds nice, except that the Protect America Act was the temporary legislation, put into effect last August, that expired this month. That’s nearly seven months of life for that legislation, which Bachmann characterizes as the sole barrier standing in the way of terrorist attacks against American citizens for the past seven years. Every one of those 19 attacks was thwarted before the passage of the Protect America Act.

The No. 1 job of the American government is to protect her citizens. House Democratic leaders, in forcing the expiration of the FISA updates, have shirked that most fundamental responsibility — the safety of the American people.

Ms. Bachmann should take another look at the Constitution. The Preamble reads: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense…” If “establish justice” truly ranks just as high as “provide for the common defense,” then it’s Bachmann (and not the House Democratic leadership) who’s in the hot seat and needs to explain how Republican obstruction of FISA legislation works to establish justice in American society.

Stop misleading Minnesota, Congresswoman. We deserve better.