About To Be Derailed

While shooting somebody in the face with a shotgun is not illegal if it's accidetal, during a hunting trip, and the other guy's fault, setting up a spy ring to bypass existant surveillance law in order to dodge any congressional, judicial, or popular review, still is illegal.

And that's exactly why The Administration has done everything in their power to derail an official congressional investigation into the program:

Congress appeared ready to launch an investigation into the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance program last week, but an all-out White House lobbying campaign has dramatically slowed the effort and may kill it, key Republican and Democratic sources said yesterday.

The Senate intelligence committee is scheduled to vote tomorrow on a Democratic-sponsored motion to start an inquiry into the recently revealed program in which the National Security Agency eavesdrops on an undisclosed number of phone calls and e-mails involving U.S. residents without obtaining warrants from a secret court. Two committee Democrats said the panel -- made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats -- was clearly leaning in favor of the motion last week but now is closely divided and possibly inclined against it.

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.

The Administration views the closed-door sessions with Congress to be a great "concession," when in actuality, it is Congress who apparently is ready to concede.

We're concerned with two things when it comes to the domestic spying program by the president: a) the privacy and civil liberties of every American citizen, and b) the attempt to consolidate absolute power in the Executive branch.

And that's what's frightening: if Congress doesn't officially and openly represent the 50% of Americans who are very concerned about this program and it's effects, then they're just giving up whatever shreds of power they have. If our representative body concedes to these guys desires- then effectively they've forced it upon a public that doesn't agree.