Harry Reid: Loyal Opposition?

Isn’t Harry Reid, Majority Senate Leader, supposed to support the “Loyal Opposition” in the Senate? And if I am not mistaken he has sworn to protect and uphold the U.S. Constitution along with every other member of Congress. I know, I know, that the President has likewise sworn to uphold the Constitution as well, but he doesn’t believe in the Constitution in the first place so I won’t bother to go there.

That said, I am perplexed by the FISA debate, or lack thereof, and can’t get my head around what is going on in the U.S. Senate and what these Senators are thinking. I know, I know, the Repubs are just following along with the anti-democratic leanings of their leader, GWB, but what is with the Dems under Reid?

Here is today’s editorial from the NYT’s:

January 26, 2008

Editorial

The FISA Follies, Redux

The Senate (reportedly still under Democratic control) seems determined to help President Bush violate Americans’ civil liberties and undermine the constitutional separation of powers. Majority Leader Harry Reid is supporting White House-backed legislation that would expand the administration’s ability to spy on Americans without court supervision and ensure that the country never learns the full extent of Mr. Bush’s illegal wiretapping program.

The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA — which Mr. Bush decided to ignore after 9/11 — requires a warrant to intercept telephone calls and e-mail messages between people in the United States and people abroad.

It needed updating to keep pace with technology, and the technical fixes were included in a bill that Congress passed last summer. The problem was that Mr. Bush managed to add measures that sharply undercut the court’s role in monitoring eavesdropping. Fortunately, lawmakers gave them an expiration date of Feb. 1.

The House has passed a reasonable new bill — fixing FISA without further endangering civil liberties. But Mr. Bush wants to weaken FISA as much as he can. And the Senate leadership has been only too happy to oblige.

With the help of Republican senators and the misguided chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller, the White House got a bill that, once again, reduces court supervision of wiretapping. It also adds immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the illegal spying.

Mr. Bush says without amnesty, the government won’t get cooperation in the future. We don’t buy it. The real aim is to make sure the full story of the illegal wiretapping never comes out in court.

Mr. Reid — who is still falling for the White House’s soft-on-terrorism bullying — set up deliberations in a way that ensured that a better Judiciary Committee version of the bill would die a procedural death and that the Intelligence Committee bill would pass.

The Judiciary bill died this week, with the help of other bullyable Democratic senators like Mr. Rockefeller, Claire McCaskill, Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson. The Republicans repaid them by announcing they would block any further attempts to reach a compromise.

It is now up to the House to protect Americans’ rights. Mr. Bush has already started issuing the ritual claims that if his bill is not passed instantly, Osama bin Laden will be telephoning his agents in the United States and no one will know. Let us be clear, Mr. Bush has always had the authority to order emergency wiretaps — and get court approval after the fact. That has never been the problem with FISA.

The House should vote to extend last summer’s flawed rules for at least 30 days and go on recess, forcing the Senate to do the same thing, and then bring the whole matter to a conference committee. There will then be plenty of time for a real debate.

Lawmakers and the rest of the nation should bear this in mind: Mr. Bush’s version of this law does not make intelligence-gathering more robust. Opponents like Senators Christopher Dodd and Patrick Leahy want to spy on Al Qaeda, too. They’re just not willing to do it in a way that undermines the very democracy that the spies, Congress and the president are supposed to be protecting.

I am beginning to think that the wiretapping done by this Administration is actually paying off. Not by catching “terrorists” mind you because there is no evidence of that, but by collecting dirt on its ostensible opponents (ala J. Edgar.) What else can explain Harry Reid and Jay “Jello” Rockefeller? You have to wonder what telephone calls and emails Bush, et al., have that they are holding over their heads. It must be really damning. Because, these American Citizens, whose job is to uphold the Constitution, are willing to sellout the rule of law in order to protect themselves.

That may sound like tinfoil hat talk folks, but I can’t come to any other conclusion. But then maybe it has to do with how much money the telecoms have donated to Harry, et al.

Can you imagine the government giving amnesty to all of those low level drug dealers and/or ordinary tax payers who may or may not have cheated on their taxes? If not, why should Telecoms, with very well paid lawyers who ostensibly understand the law, get amnesty?

Who is to say?

Go Senator Christopher Dodd!