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The last bill would have prohibited any "magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition" except for any "attached tubular device designed to accept, and capable of operating only with, .22 caliber rimfire ammunition." Large-capacity magazines were used in the Aurora and Newtown massacres.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has also promised to introduce an assault weapons ban when the new Congress convenes. That bill is modeled on the federal ban, which expired in 2004. Both new bills would not outlaw the possession of banned equipment that is already in circulation. Senator Feinstein has cited a Department of Justice study that the ban reduced gun deaths by 6.7 percent.

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The question arose ahead of a vote over reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a 1978 law permitting the government to spy on correspondence between Americans and foreign individuals. Wyden, leading the charge to challenge the reauthorization, argues that the "Senate cannot say that we passed the smell test with respect to vigorous oversight if we don't have some sense of how many Americans … are being swept up under the legislation."

A number of FISA provisions passed in recent years are set to expire at the end of this year, and as Politico reported, "[Wyden] has placed a hold on the bill as he seeks information from the federal authorities, who have told Wyden in the past that they can’t deliver that data [on how many Americans are caught up in the surveillance dragnet]. And Wyden said this week that he’ll maintain that hold unless the Senate allows a vote on his amendments to introduce new legal checks and transparency rules to the law."

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NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre dismissed efforts to revive a ban on assault weapons as a "phony piece of legislation" that's built on lies.

Democratic lawmakers in Congress have become more adamant about the need for stricter gun laws since the shooting of 20 children and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California is promising to push for a renewal of expired legislation that banned certain weapons and limited the number of bullets a gun magazine could hold to 10.

"I think we ought to be looking at where the real danger is, like those large clips," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

"I think we need a comprehensive approach," said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., a longtime gun rights supporter. "I'll look at all the proposals. . I think it looks at mental health, I think it looks at protecting our schools but I also think it looks at these high-volume magazines, you know, that can fire off so many rounds."

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Feinstein has not released all of her proposed bill’s specifics but in her short, remarkable press release it appears closely modeled on the federal assault weapons ban that was in effect from 1994 until 2004. Feinstein finds “A Justice Department study found the Assault Weapons Ban was responsible for a 6.7 percent decline in total gun murders. However, since the 2004 expiration of the bill, assault weapons have been used in at least 459 incidents, resulting in 385 deaths and 455 injuries.” In other words, after a national trauma that supposedly changed the debate, an anti-gun Senator can only argue for a bill that might reduce gun murders by 6.7 percent.

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"We write to express our deep disappointment with the movie 'Zero Dark Thirty,'" the Senators wrote. "We believe the film is grossly inaccurate and misleading in its suggestion that torture resulted in information that led to the location of Usama bin Laden."

They continued:

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Carney was speaking in a White House press briefing, and said that the president will support a push by Feinstein, D-Calif., for the ban, which she said she will introduce in the new session of Congress. Reuters reports that Carney also said that Obama would support closing gun-show sale "loopholes," if any such legislation was introduced.

"It's clear that as a nation we haven't done enough to address the scourge of gun violence," Carney said. He added that Obama "wants to move in the coming weeks."

Meanwhile, several other lawmakers have expressed a new openness to reviewing the nation's gun laws. Following Joe Manchin and Mark Warner, several other NRA-backed lawmakers said that it is time to reconsider gun policy.

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The law banned manufacturing, transferring and possessing "semi-automatic assault rifles.” It listed “several guns by name AK-47, Uzi, Colt AR-15, and Street Sweeper, as well as copies or duplicates of these named firearms in any caliber,” according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. It also banned magazines with more than 10 round capacity. Due to a grandfather clause, however, it did not touch banned guns and accessories that were already in circulation. As a result, the Brady Campaign wrote in 2004 that gunmaker Bushmaster "apparently stockpiled enough 'pre-ban' magazines that it still markets 40 round ammunition magazines as available for sale to the general public for only $24.95." (Bushmaster still does.)

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To understand what Feinstein and other gun control advocates are up against, it’s worth recapping the history of the assault weapons ban, which was first enacted in 1994 and expired without congressional action in 2004. Since then, there has been intermittent talk of trying to bring it back, generally in the wake of mass shootings like the one in Connecticut last Friday. But in the eight years since it lapsed, neither the House nor the Senate has ever voted on restoring the ban, and even though President Obama says he supports doing so, he’s not made it a legislative priority.

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"A note here this morning: We reached out to all 31 pro-gun rights senators in the new Congress to invite them on the program to share their views on the subject this morning," he said. "We had no takers."

Since Adam Lanza shot 20 children and 6 adults dead with a semiautomatic, few defenders of gun rights have spoken publicly as cries for greater gun control have amplified. On Sunday, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, was the lone pro-gun voice to grace the talk show circuit. He said on "Fox News Sunday" that Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung should have been armed:

"I wish to god she had had an m-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out ... and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids," Gohmert said.

Watch Gohmert's comments, via Fox News:

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Following the horrifying murder of 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school, the debate over gun control has reached fever pitch. Following the mass shooting in July at a Colorado movie theater, Feinstein also called for the ban on assault weapons to be renewed (it was introduced by Bill Clinton in 1994 but has since expired). Feinstein noted that she and her colleagues had been working on the bill for a year, not only in the wake of the Newtown massacre.

Feinstein's new bill will  "ban the sale, the transfer, the importation and the possession [of assault weapons], not retroactively, but prospectively, And it will ban the same for big clips, drums or strips of more than 10 bullets. So there will be a bill," she said Sunday.

[h/t Huffpo]

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"I believe it to be one of the most significant oversight efforts in the history of the United States Senate," said chair of the intelligence committee Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.  She noted that the report is "a comprehensive review of the CIA’s detention program that includes details of each detainee in CIA custody, the conditions under which they were detained, how they were interrogated, the intelligence they actually provided and the accuracy — or inaccuracy — of CIA descriptions about the program to the White House, Department of Justice, Congress and others."

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Within hours of the amendment's approval, civil liberties advocates pointed out significant problems that remain in the NDAA, while lawyers noted that the amendment may even fail to achieve its intended purpose regarding the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Under the 2012 act, any person suspected of terrorism or substantial support for terrorism in the U.S.could be held without trial indefinitely. To ensure the writ of habeas corpus, the newest draft includes the following:

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Benghazi:

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), the top Republican in the Senate Intelligence Committee, told "Fox News Sunday" that he expects Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, will testify before the Senate about the Benghazi attacks. "At some point [Rice] needs to come in and say what the president or the White House directed her to say," Chambliss said.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," host David Gregory also pushed chair of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), on whether the White House and Rice had misled the public in saying early on that the attacks were spontaneous protests, while intelligence pointed to a terrorist plot.

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Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Wednesday that Petraeus, who resigned from the CIA post on Friday because of an extra-marital affair, indicated his willingness to testify. No date for his testimony has been set.

She said his testimony to her committee will be limited to the Benghazi attacks that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others. No date for his testimony has been set. Petraeus was CIA director at the time.

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The New York Times reports that the FBI came across information about the affair after the woman, who knows Petraeus and Broadwell, complained:

"When F.B.I. agents following up on the complaint began to examine Ms. Broadwell’s e-mails, they discovered exchanges between her and Mr. Petraeus that revealed that they were having an affair, said several officials who spoke of the investigation on the condition of anonymity. They also discovered that Ms. Broadwell possessed certain classified information, one official said, but apparently concluded that it was probably not Mr. Petraeus who had given it to her and that there had been no major breach of security. No leak charges are expected to be filed as a result of the investigation."

A Congressional official who was briefed on the affair told the Times that the FBI said the investigation  “started with two women," but “it didn't start with Petraeus, but in the course of the investigation they stumbled across him."

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