Why Did We Vote For Democrats?

From E. J. Dionne's, column, Why The Democrats Caved in the Washington Post:

Shortly before noon last Saturday, about 20 House Democrats huddled in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office to decide what to do about a surveillance bill that had been dumped on them by the Senate before it left town.

Many of the Democrats were furious. They believed they had negotiated in good faith with Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence. They sought to give the Bush administration the authority it needed to intercept communications involving foreign nationals in terrorism investigations while preserving some oversight.
....

At one point, according to participants in the Pelosi meeting, the passionate discussion veered toward the idea of standing up to the administration -- even at the risk of handing President Bush a chance to bash Democrats on "national security," as is his wont.

Several members from swing districts -- including Reps. Heath Shuler of North Carolina and Patrick J. Murphy of Pennsylvania -- expressed openness to having Congress stay in town to fight if important constitutional issues were at stake.

But that did not happen. The Democrats voted to give Bush the bill that he wanted, and then left for a month-long recess.

According to this article, also in the WP, by Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick:

The bill would give the National Security Agency the right to collect such communications in the future without a warrant. But it goes further than that: It also would allow the monitoring, under certain conditions, of electronic communications between people on U.S. soil, including U.S. citizens, and people "reasonably believed to be outside the United States," without a court's order or oversight.

That means that the Bush administration is allowed to spy on its own citizens without oversight. The secret FISA court is, in itself, constitutionally questionable, but even that supervision is gone with the bill that passed.

The administration said that its bill is aimed at bringing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 into step with advances in technology, primarily by restoring the government's power to gather without a warrant foreign intelligence on targets located overseas.

Because the law has not kept up with advances in telecommunications, McConnell said in congressional testimony, the government "is significantly burdened in capturing overseas communications of foreign terrorists planning to conduct attacks inside the United States."

One would think that the same advances in telecommunications available to potential terrorists would make it easier and faster to communicate with the FISA court judges to quickly obtain a warrant whenever necessary.

Civil liberties and privacy advocates and a majority of Democrats said the bill could allow the monitoring of virtually any calls, e-mails or other communications going overseas that originate in the United States, without a court order, if the government deems the recipient to be the target of a U.S. probe.
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In place of a court's approval -- which intelligence officials worried might come too slowly -- the NSA would institute a system of internal bureaucratic controls.

Yes, of course, bureaucratic controls. That's the answer. The technology won't allow quick action by FISA court judges, but that same technology will allow rapid flow of information through the bureaucracy. Tell me another one.

Here's how the bill will work:

Under the administration's version of the bill, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general could authorize the surveillance of all communications involving foreign targets. Oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, composed of federal judges whose deliberations are secret, would be limited to examining whether the government's guidelines for targeting overseas suspects are appropriate. The court would not authorize the surveillance.

The surveillance will be authorized by that sterling example of probity, Alberto Gonzales, and Mike McConnell, who seems to take orders directly from the White House.

The bill's six-month sunset clause did not assuage some critics.

"I'm not comfortable suspending the Constitution even temporarily," said Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a member of the House intelligence committee. "The countries we detest around the world are the ones that spy on their own people. Usually they say they do it for the sake of public safety and security."

The six-month sunset clause doesn't assuage this critic either.

Back to E. J. Dionne:

The entire display was disgraceful because an issue of such import should not be debated in a political pressure cooker. It's not even clear that new legislation was required; [Rep.] Holt, for one, believes many of the problems with handling interceptions involving foreign nationals are administrative in nature and that beefing up and reorganizing the staff around the FISA court might solve the outstanding problems.