Specter: Special p3 cave-in countdown

(Update: Congressional Republicans hate and fear Feingold's censure motion; Congressional Democrats merely fear it; but Democratic voters--remember them?--think it's a pretty good idea.)

The official countdown clock is started:

The Senate Judiciary Committee has set a hearing for next Friday on the call by Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, to censure President Bush for his approval of a program to allow electronic eavesdropping without warrants.

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the panel, said he had decided to schedule the session after Mr. Feingold, in a television interview, pressed for hearings on the censure proposal.

This is Part 1 of Specter's trademark two-part M.O.: First he makes some handwringing public statement indicating his concern that this time the Bush administration has gone too far. That the American people won't stand for it. That he's going to get to the bottom of it. That, if they think they can just run roughshod over our constitution and the people, they've got another think coming.

Here's Specter's lock-and-load moment from the censure debate:

"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.''

Specter was one of the first Republicans to publicly question the National Security Agency's authority to monitor international calls -- when one party is inside the United States -- without first getting court approval.

(Remember that it was Bush's flouting of the Fourth Amendment and FISA law--and the resolute refusal of the GOP-controlled Congress to exercise its proper oversight function in the matter--that prompted Feingold to introduce the censure motion in the first place.)

Then, in Part 2, Specter collapses like a wet taco and not only allows Bush to get whatever he wants, he uses his position as Judiciary chair to abet it.

Part 2 will come next Friday, when Feingold's censure moment is killed in the Judiciary Committee, in some procedurally nasty fashion.

And that's the thing--here's what will make it a uniquely Specter-rific moment: Specter won't just sit back passively and let it die in the predictable party-line vote. He'll find some way to use his power as committee chair to hand the motion an anvil as it goes over the cliff. Perhaps he will rule all discussion by the Democratic committee members out of order. Perhaps he will simply require that all questions or statements by Democrats must be in pig-Latin, or maybe Esperanto. Perhaps he'll invoke some little-known Senate rule requiring that votes for censure must be written in blood from the still-beating hearts of supporters on the committee.

No one has established precisely why he does this. After all, he certainly doesn't have to go to the bother of all that Capraesque foot-stamping; he could simply fall in line enthusiastically with the worst of the Bush administration's tendencies from the start like, say, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, Specter's GOP counterpart on the House Judiciary Committee. Not for Sensenbrenner the wasted motion of feigning bipartisan sympathy.

Perhaps Specter is simply that cynical. It could be.

Or it could be that he genuinely means to do the right thing, but then Karl Rove messengers over to Specter a package--perhaps containing the severed finger of a loved one, or maybe photos of Specter playing bocce with Satan. And a beaten, cowed Specter slinks back inside the fence, secretly hoping that next time--next time!--will be his chance to see justice done.

Either way, it doesn't make much difference. Friday will come and Specter will not only oversee the defeat of the censure motion in committee like the loyal Republican button man that he is; he'll add some gratuitous shiv-in-the-back that will be all his own.

Think I'm wrong? This is Specter, looking ahead to Friday's hearing:

Mr. Specter said his intent was not to use the session as a political forum but to explore issues surrounding the proposed censure. He said he believed the proposal was baseless.

"I am prepared to deal with it," Mr. Specter said. "I am sure not going to sit back and have Feingold spout off."

(Handy decoding hint: When a Republican vows "not to use the session as a political forum," it means "the session will be exclusively for the purpose of saving our partisan political hides.")

The clock is running.

(Update: And while Specter postures and plots, Bush continues his extra-constitutional power grab--you know, the one Specter says is "plain wrong.")