Coverup Congress At It Again

This time they decide not to investigate the NSA spying program, but instead to write illegality into law:

Several moderate Senate Republicans are coalescing around legislation that would give President Bush's much-discussed domestic surveillance program the force of law, more than four years after the program was secretly initiated.

The prospects for the draft legislation are far from certain. But Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, has support from at least three moderate Republicans who have helped shaped the debate on intelligence issues: Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina [...]

DeWine's bill would exempt the president's surveillance program from a 1978 law aimed at governing electronic intelligence collection inside the United States.

A draft proposal, now being circulated on Capitol Hill, would allow the government to monitor suspected terrorists for up to 45 days without first seeking approval in a secretive federal intelligence court. Like the president's program, the bill covers only communications where one party is overseas and one is inside the United States.

This is despite Arlen Specter's repeated warnings at Judiciary to cut off NSA funding if he doesn't get more information about the program. But one Republican senator spitting into the wind won't make a whole lot of difference.

And get this, the legislation actually WIDENS the net:

If passed, DeWine's legislation would write into law exactly what that new subcommittee would do. It would also give the president the authority to create a list of terror organizations to be monitored.

His bill does not require that the terror groups must be foreign. Nor does it rely on the State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organization list, which is often used in government as a reference about which organizations are considered most dangerous.

When asked last week why he didn't use the State Department's list, DeWine said he wanted to give the president flexibility, particularly so he did not have to come to Congress to update the organizations that could be monitored.

"You might have a terrorist group come up in six months that would be equally as bad as al-Qaida," DeWine said.

Like the Quakers, for example.

We all need to stop being surprised and stop being shocked. The official response to this from the Democrats needs to be "we can expect nothing less from this coverup Congress. They've been covering for the White House for the last 6 years. The elections in November will be a referendum on that."

The Congress is practically begging to be tied to Bush in November. We must oblige.

UPDATE: Sen. Rockefeller listens to me!

"This committee is basically under control of the White House,'' Rockefeller told reporters after the two-hour meeting today in Washington. "It's an unprecedented bout of political pressure from the White House.''