Two months after insisting that they would roll back broad eavesdropping powers won by the Bush administration, Democrats in Congress appear ready to make concessions that could extend some crucial powers given to the National Security Agency.
According to a report in the New York Times from Eric Lichtblau and Carl Hulse, the Democrats are prepared to cave again. Why? What possible justification is there for allowing another sock in the gut of the Constitution?
There's the spurious "soft on terrorism" argument.
“Many members continue to fear that if they don’t support whatever the president asks for, they’ll be perceived as soft on terrorism,” said William Banks, a professor who specializes in terrorism and national security law at Syracuse University and who has written extensively on federal wiretapping laws.
There are the cop-outs, the undignified squirmings.
“We are giving the N.S.A. what it legitimately needs for national security but with far more limitations and protections than are in the Protect America Act,” said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California.
There are the slippery excuses that it could have been worse.
Perhaps most important in the eyes of Democratic supporters, the House bill would not give retroactive immunity to the telecommunications utilities that participated in the eavesdropping. That has been a top priority of the administration. The temporary measure gave the utilities immunity for future acts, but not past deeds.
Worst, there are vain and baseless hopes that the White House will behave itself this time.
Democrats say they plan to push the administration to turn over internal documents laying out the legal rationale for the program, something the administration has refused to do.
Civil liberties experts turn out to be politically smarter than the Democrats.
"We think they’re putting themselves in more danger by not standing on principle.”
Principle? Principle? What's that?
