The Real Hunting Party

In between shooting 78 year-old men in the face, the Vice President has been busily shooting down any calls for a Congressional investigation into the NSA illegal spying program. Indeed, now he's got the "moderates" (I hasten to use the word) on the Intelligence Committee begging to sanction lawbreaking:

Senate intelligence committee member Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) said in an interview that he supports the NSA program and would oppose a congressional investigation. He said he is drafting legislation that would "specifically authorize this program" by excluding it from the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which established a secret court to consider government requests for wiretap warrants in anti-terrorist investigations.

The administration would be required to brief regularly a small, bipartisan panel drawn from the House and Senate intelligence committees, DeWine said, and the surveillance program would require congressional reauthorization after five years to remain in place.

Snowe said she is inclined to support DeWine's plan. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who also signed the Dec. 20 letter seeking an inquiry, said yesterday that the FISA law should be amended to include the NSA program and to provide for congressional oversight.

As for Rockefeller's bid, Hagel said: "If some kind of inquiry would be beneficial to getting a resolution to this issue, then sure, we should look at it. But if the inquiry is just some kind of a punitive inquiry that really is not focused on finding a way out of this, then I'm not so sure that I would support that."

I initially called for this mess to be fixed through legislation, but there's a huge difference between fixing and simply allowing warrantless wiretapping to occue as long as "you tell us about it once in a blue moon." That's simply abdicating responsibility. This dismisses judicial review and seemingly puts no check on the power of the President, unless Congress figures out what the word "oversight" means sometime in the next decade. So, for you future Presidents out there, here's how it goes: you do whatever the hell you want to do, then if you get caught, you say "Yeah, I did it, and I'll keep doing it," and then Congress will pass a law for you saying you can keep doing it, as long as you keep them in the loop.

Isn't that easy?

And spearheading this effort is none other than Deadeye Dick:

They attributed the shift to last week's closed briefings given by top administration officials to the full House and Senate intelligence committees, and to private appeals to wavering GOP senators by officials, including Vice President Cheney. "It's been a full-court press," said a top Senate Republican aide who asked to speak only on background -- as did several others for this story -- because of the classified nature of the intelligence committees' work [...]

John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the Senate intelligence committee's vice chairman, has drafted a motion calling for a wide-ranging inquiry into the surveillance program, according to congressional sources who have seen it. Rockefeller declined to be interviewed yesterday.

Sources close to Rockefeller say he is frustrated by what he sees as heavy-handed White House efforts to dissuade Republicans from supporting his measure. They noted that Cheney conducted a Republicans-only meeting on intelligence matters in the Capitol yesterday.

Hope nobody in that room was wearing an orange tie.

Meanwhile the Justice Department, never more an official law enforcement arm of the White House than now under the direction of Abu Gonzales, is going after the bastards who let America know that their President was ignoring statute and the Constitution.

So go ahead, get upset about a hunting accident, guys. I mean, it's great for the late-night talk-show circuit and all, and I'll laugh and even write jokes about it for the rest of my natural born life, but under the radar there's some very dangerous shit going down. Our Congress is turning in its badge as a co-equal branch of government. And the whole country should be up in arms.