The Senate's pathetic performance last night really did not come as a surprise. It has proven time and time again to be filled with Democratic members who talk tough and then capitulate at the first resistance (Senator James Webb comes to mind as possibly the biggest tough guy phony in that body.) Unlike many folks, I know that Leader Reid has no hand to play in the Senate.

To me the only hope for resolve against Bush comes in the House. But there is little evidence for my hope. Consider this from today's Times story on the FISA Capitulation:

The House is expected to take up the White House-backed measure on Saturday morning before going into its summer recess. Democratic leaders acknowledged that the bill would probably pass.

The question is why? Why can not Democrats in the House just say "Mr. President, we have offered you a bill that addresses the problem." Sign that bill. This is, of course, a reprise of the Iraq Supplemental Capitulaton.

More.

The Dem House version failed to get 2/3 votes needed, under the special rule to provide for immediate consideration. The Senate completely caved in to Bush and passed the McConnell-Bond-Bush version with the requisite 60 vote total. The Dem version, the Levin-Rockefeller bill, is presently in the process of failing to get the requisite 60 vote for passage.

What does it mean? That the just passed Senate GOP version will be offered in the House tomorrow and pass and the President will sign it. It is amazing how a President with a 25% approval can roll this Congress so easily. Pathetic.

Now guess what? This bill will sunset in 6 months. We'll be in an election year. Are you confident that these spineless Congresspersons and Senators will have more guts then? Me neither.

This ranks with the torture approving bill passed with the support of many Dem congresspersons prior to the 2006 election. Later we will provide the names of all the Dem Senators whose cowardice allowed this to happen.

It appears that the latest developments are pathetically bad for Democrats on President Bush's FISA amendment. The latest in the rumor mill is that there will be side by side up or down votes on a Dem alternative (Levin-Rockefeller Amendment) and a Republican alternative (McConnell-Bond amendment) and the Republican alternative is likely to pass.

No details on what is in the legislative proposals but one expects the Republican alternative is precisely what Bush wants.

A pathetic display by our Democratic Congress. Good thing they are not showing for Yearly Kos, they might get run out on a rail. Just pathetic.

We know that our Unitary Chief Executive is The Decider of all questions in the executive branch. Now it appears that President Bush is also The Decider of issues before the legislative branch.

President George W. Bush said Friday that Congress must stay in session until it approves legislation modernizing a U.S. law governing eavesdropping on foreigners. ... The president said that lawmakers must not leave for their August recess this weekend as planned unless they "pass a bill that will give our intelligence community the tools they need to protect the United States."

They must, must they? What constitutional provision empowers the president to order the legislature to remain in session so that it can enact another one of his bad laws?

President Bush insists that it should be Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, not the FISA court, that should review the Administration's surveillance program.

And he will not sign a bill unless he gets his way. Bush makes the bizarre claim that having Gonzo, not the courts, review the program is necessary to keep us safe. Who in the heck believes that?:

The president threatened to veto any bill by the Democratic-led Congress that his intelligence director deemed unable "to prevent an attack on the country. . . McConnell and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would oversee the eavesdropping process, according to the White House plan. That prompted howls of protest from Democrats who distrust the attorney general to protect privacy rights. "We need a legal framework around this program," Reid said. "No more blank check for this attorney general, no more blank checks for any attorney general."

If the President seriously thinks this change is necessary, then he would accept court review, not the review of the most incompetent and discredited Attorney General since John Mitchell.

The President's attitude betrays either unseriousness on the issue, or dishonesty in his claims, or both. Probably both. He is the worst President in the history of the nation.

This RNC ad is hilarious

Al From must be touched by the GOP's concern. Hat tip TPM.

At 4:00 pm today in Room 100a-c, I'll be moderating the voting rights panel at Yearly Kos.

"Ensuring Every Vote Counts" features former Gore campaign Manager Donna Brazile, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's Director of Litigation Debo Adegbile, the Brennan Center's Justin Levitt and George Washington University law professor Spencer Overton, author of the book "Stealing Democracy," about voter suppression.

Donna will be highlighting Howard Dean's 50 state voter protection plan and providing tools and checklists to protect the vote in 2008. She'll also talk about voting problems affecting minorities. Debo will talk about voter denial and intimidation, including caging lists.

Justin Levitt will talk about the Department of Justice's alarming trend of using its authority in ways that limit rather than protect voting rights. Check out the Brennan Center's site, Truth About Fraud.

I hope they also discuss my favorite voting rights issue, restoring the right to vote to ex-offenders.

Hope to see you there!

Tomorrow morning is the Yearly Kos "Ask The Leaders" Forum where the Democratic Congressional Leadership will meet with the 1,500 progressive bloggers convening in Chicago. The first question they should be asked is why are they caving on FISA? Rachel Perrone reports by e-mail:

Congress could vote as early as TODAY on a bill that many of them haven't even read. According to the most recent proposal we've seen, the new language would permit warrantless wiretapping of Americans so long as they believe the person on the other end of the line is in a foreign country, and/or that the foreign person is the target of the wiretap. I believe - but am not 100% sure - it also contains a six-month sunset provision - which, we know, worked out so well in the case of the PATRIOT Act.

Democrats are preparing to cave on warrantless wiretapping simply because they're afraid of being branded soft on terrorism. Whateverhappened to "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself?" Well, if that's the case, we ought to be petrified right about now, because it seems the sole motive on the Hill these days is fear. Well, politics and fear.

It goes without saying that this whole situation is about politics, not real surveillance needs. We're hearing that Democrats had hammered out a deal last night with Director of National Intelligence but had that deal voided by the White House. Why? The White House seems bound and determined to take the most confrontational, hard-line approach possible - civil liberties be damned.

Incredible.

It isn't clear whether the bribery prosecution of Rep. William Jefferson will be jeopardized by the FBI's seizure of every document it could find during a raid of his office, in light of a ruling today by the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The three-judge panel unanimously ruled that the search itself was constitutional but that FBI agents crossed the line when they viewed every record in the office without giving Jefferson the chance to argue that some documents involved legislative business. ... "The review of the Congressman's paper files when the search was executed exposed legislative material to the Executive" and violated the Constitution, the court wrote. "The Congressman is entitled to the return of documents that the court determines to be privileged."

The impact of the appellate ruling will be decided by the district court, which will be tasked with deciding whether papers seized from Jefferson's office and which support the charges against him were privileged legislative materials. It seems unlikely that documents evidencing bribery must be kept privileged to protect "the integrity of the legislative process," but that is a question the district court will need to answer.

More ...

Here's a Catch-22 for you: Laws regulating where former sex offenders may live are so restrictive that, in urban areas, former offenders can find no housing (forcing them, in this famous example, to live under a bridge). But former sex offenders have to register their addresses, and the homeless have no address to register. So if they find a home, they're breaking the law by living too close to (for instance) a park or school; if they remain homeless, they're breaking the law by not registering.

It should be obvious that due process is violated when the government makes it impossible to obey the law and then punishes an individual for violating it, but that hasn't stopped Georgia from prosecuting Larry Moore for failing to register, or from seeking a life sentence against him, all because Moore was homeless.

At least 15 sex offenders have been arrested because of homelessness since the law took effect in July 2006, according to documents gathered through pretrial proceedings in a lawsuit brought by the Southern Center for Human Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Attaturk and Sam Boyd at TAPPED have misunderstood what the problem was with Obama's "nuke" gaffe and what was right wth Hillary Clinton's response. Attaturk writes:

But isn't it rather indicative of sanity to say you "won't nuke" a city in Pakistan "JUST" to kill Osama?

But that is not how Obama said it, and thus Attaturk ignores the problem with Obama's statement. Let's review again what Obama said:

Q: In Afghanistan or Pakistan, is there any circumstance where you would be prepared or willing to use nuclear weapons to defeat terrorism and Osama bin Laden[?]"

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday he would not use nuclear weapons "in any circumstance." "I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance," Obama said, with a pause, "involving civilians." Then he quickly added, "Let me scratch that. There's been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That's not on the table."

(Emphasis supplied.) "Scratch that." Why did Obama say "scratch that" you think? Because he remembered, in the middle of his answer, that it is a bedrock doctrine of nuclear deterrence that you do not discuss how and when you would use nuclear weapons. It may be rational and wise to discuss it as Obama initially did, but in a political campaign, such a departure from doctrine should not come in an off the cuff answer to what was a ridiculous question. Thus, Obama's "scratch that." Discussing it was the gaffe. Policywise I think it is obvious that no one will use nukes in that secenario or, indeed, in any first strike scenario. But the politics demanded something better from Obama. More.

Glenn Reynolds links to Victor Hanson writing:

Apart from the notion that it would be as hard to distinguish civilians in a Waziristan from terrorists as it is in Iraq, which the senator has written off, other questions arise. As a US Senator why not now introduce an October 11, 2002-type resolution, authorizing such an invasion? Or why hasn't he in the past? . . .

It is funny how the Right will defend the notion that the September 18, 2001 AUMF activated Article II in such a way that the Commander in Chief can engage in torture, spy on American persons and do just about anything BUT actually attack Al Qaida. For the record, the President has ample authority to attack Al Qaida in Waziristan based on the September 18, 2001 AUMF:

[T]he President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.