Dahlia Lithwick rocks. I’m damn near homicidal with rage at Congressional Democrats these days, and here Ms. Lithwick eloquently explains one of the primary reasons for my condition:
Make no mistake about it. The vote to update FISA rewarded the AG for years of missteps and misstatements by giving him expanded authority to enforce the president’s alarming constitutional vision. Sans oversight. Sans judicial approval.
. . .
Imagine that the Democrats had been hollering for the past six months that Gonzales was an out-of-control drunk. With their eavesdropping vote, they’ve handed him the keys to a school bus. Nobody was forcing these Democrats to impeach or censure the AG. But this warm pat on the back they have offered him is beyond incredible.
With this FISA vote, the Democrats have compromised the investigation into the U.S. attorney scandal. They’ve shown themselves either to be participating in an empty political witch hunt or curiously willing to surrender our civil liberties to someone who has shown—time and again—that he cannot be trusted to safeguard them.
Word.
Thanks to Howard Bashman, the James Brown* of the blawgosphere, for the link to Lithwick’s essay.
*That’s James Brown as in the hardest working man in legal blogging, not James Brown as in cocaine, domestic violence and deceased.
