Friday, March 24, 2006

Cave troll

Sen. Arlen Specter wants you to know he is shocked--shocked!--to discover that Bush administration continues to engage in warrentless domestic spying:
"They want to do just as they please, for as long as they can get away with it," Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I think what is going on now without congressional intervention or judicial intervention is just plain wrong."
This might be newsworthy on its merits--a top Senate Republican calling the President out on extraconstitutional actions--except for two things:

First, Bush has long made clear that he does not consider himself or his administration bound by any law that Congress might happen to pass anyway, including Constitutional protections against warrentless invasions of privacy.

Second, Specter, as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee (although a chair without a backbone is really more of a stool) refuses--out of political cowardice or misplaced loyalty, you decide--to provide exactly the congressional intervention whose absence he bemoans, since he's prevented the Judiciary Committee from properly investigating Bush's domestic spying program. Most recently, he blocked attempts by Committee Democrats last month to require Attorney General Gonzales to be placed under oath before giving his testimony on the subject.

This pattern by Specter--public handwringing for the health of the republic followed by craven obeisance to the Bush ideological agenda once the gavel bangs down--has become so familiar it's surprising the AP covers it as news anymore.

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