The Myth of the Independent Republican Senators

In light of this latest outrage -- the "compromise" bill that legalizes torture -- Glenn Greenwald, referring to an article he wrote for Salon, says:

I have a plea (directed to myself as much as anyone) to declare dead -- forever -- the Myth of the Independent, Dissident Republican Senator and bury it in a coffin deep in the ground where it belongs. At this point, I think encountering the Lochness Monster is more likely than finding a genuinely independent Republican Senator willing to impose meaningful limits of any kind on the President.

From a trip down memory lane:

When the New York Times revealed on Dec. 16 of last year that the Bush administration has been secretly eavesdropping on Americans without warrants even though doing so is a felony under federal law, several Republican senators expressed what they called "grave concerns," and they both demanded and promised full-scale investigations. Two key Republican senators in particular, Olympia Snowe and Chuck Hagel ("key" because they are members of the Senate Intelligence Committee) emphatically vowed in a Dec. 21, 2005, letter that there would be hearings to investigate fully the National Security Agency's wiretapping program. They proclaimed: "We strongly believe that the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees should immediately seek to answer the factual and legal questions which surround these revelations, and recommend appropriate action to the Senate."

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But when Sen. Jay Rockefeller introduced a motion in the Intelligence Committee on March 8 to hold hearings to investigate the NSA program, each and every Republican senator -- including Snowe, Hagel and DeWine -- voted against it, and the motion thus failed by an 8-7 vote. With that complete capitulation, the Intelligence Committee -- which has as its prime function ensuring that intelligence activities (such as, say, government eavesdropping on Americans) comply with the law -- held no hearings on the NSA program, and as a result, we (meaning American citizens, as well as our senators) still do not know even the most basic facts about warrantless eavesdropping, including how many Americans have been spied on, which Americans were subjected to warrantless eavesdropping, how they were selected for eavesdropping, etc.

Anyone who, at any time over the past five years, has placed faith in those Republican senators who parade around as independent checks on the president has suffered nothing but one disappointment after the next.

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It is time for every honest and rational person who wanted to believe in the Myth of the Independent Republican Senators (and I include myself in that group) to declare this myth dead and bury it once and for all.