Post-mortem on the Intelligence Committee vote

Glenn Greenwald sums up:

The Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday rejected Sen. Rockefeller's motion to hold hearings to investigate the President's warrantless eavesdropping program by an 8-7, strict party line vote. Yet again, every Senate Republican followed White House instructions not to investigate the President, and this time did so despite the statements of several of those GOP Senators just within the last 8 weeks that such an investigation was urgent and necessary.

In lieu of fulfilling their pledge to discover the scope of the Administration's warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, Sens. Hagel and Snowe decided instead that they would support legislation which would create a 7-member Subcommittee (4 Republicans and 3 Democrats) to which the Administration is required to report all warrantless eavesdropping activities

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here are a few preliminary observations:

(1) Initially, it is almost unfathomable how little personal dignity these compliant GOP Senators have. Sens. Snowe and Hagel issued a statement in December pompously expressing their "profound concern" over the eavesdropping program and proclaiming that it is "critical" that the Senate hold hearings in order to learn what the Administration did when spying outside of FISA and without warrants on Americans.

After standing up and publicly making those statement and issuing those demands, they completely reverse themselves a few weeks later when the White House decrees that they do so. They thus vote against the very investigation which they both insisted, in public, was so critically important. If nothing else, just on a personal level, shouldn't they be way too embarrassed to be so blatantly manipulated and controlled, to the point where they demand hearings only to then vote against those same hearings a short time later all because that's what the White House demands?

(2) Let's think just for a brief moment about the always depressing topic of the role of the media here. Here are some rather critical and glaring questions which the hearings would have answered but which, now, remain unanswered:

Did the Administration engage in warrantless eavesdropping on Americans who have no connection to Al Qaeda or to other terrorist groups?

As part of any program, did the Administration engage in warrantless eavesdropping on the purely domestic communications of Americans?

Did the Administration initiate any other warrantless eavesdropping programs aimed at Americans besides the one revealed by The New York Times?

Why did the Administration never seek revisions to FISA if it believed that the law was inadequate or too cumbersome to permit necessary eavesdropping?

It is so obvious as to be painful to point out that the purpose of the Senate Intelligence Committee is to find out answers to those questions. But the White House has exploited its control of the Committee to block that from happening.

But in our system of government, we have multiple checks on government abuse. Congress is but one check. The media, intended to be the "Fourth Estate," is another. Are they really going to just walk away from this story without finding out the answers to these questions and informing Americans as to the answers?

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The issue which is left unresolved by all of these Congressional shenanigans is the issue that lies at the core of this scandal and several others: namely, we are a country in which the President has seized the power to break the law.

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As far as I can tell, there is nothing in any of this proposed legislation which would immunize the Administration from future investigation or criminal liability for its past law-breaking. I doubt Congress even has the power to immunize the Administration from liability, and it certainly couldn't bar a future investigation into these matters. Howard Dean issued a warning yesterday to Republicans (h/t to a scared Kathryn Jean Lopez) reminding us of why that is so significant:

"I am not ready to say we will take back the House and Senate,'' Dean said in an interview. "But we will take back the House and probably the Senate if we run a national campaign.'' If Democrats do gain control, he said, Republicans should expect to be investigated: "If we get subpoena power'' in congressional committees, "the corruption will come out on America's TV screens, and that scares the daylights out of the Republicans.'' he said.

Continuing to pound these scandals in order to persuade the public of their significance is of vital importance both because there is an election only 7 months away and because if, as it appears it will, that election ends the one-party rule under which we live, all of these matters can be aggressively investigated and pursued, and serious consequences imposed on the Administration, no matter what the GOP Congress does now.