House Votes to Continue Phone Taps

The House of Representatives voted down a measure on Wednesday that would have stopped the government from indiscriminately collecting the phone records of millions of Americans. By a vote of 217 to 205, lawmakers rejected Republican Rep. Justin Amash's proposal to end the program leaked by contractor Edward Snowden. The White House, national-security experts, and the Republican establishment lobbied against the measure, which would still have required passage in the Senate and the president's signature before it ended the wiretapping.