Dear Senate Democrats,
There will be no extension of the Police America Act (a.k.a. Protect America Act or P.A.A.). Despite your best efforts to the contrary, you somehow managed to hold together a filibuster and block the horrid intelligence bill, and the Republicans were dumb enough to filibuster every alternative including extensions.
There isn't enough time for an extension now. It will expire.
Republicans have all they need to try and portray you as opposed to spying on terrorists who will kill us all. Nothing you can do will prevent the attack ads this fall. Nothing. In the end, it won't matter that it was actually you who tried to work the bill through only to be thwarted by the G.O.P.; it won't matter when you're pictured with Osama Bin Laden on T.V. for 30 seconds while a guy with a mean voice utters Republican talking points over creepy music. So let it go.
Given that you have no possibility for obtaining legislative cover, why even bother with any changes to F.I.S.A.? After all, letting the P.A.A. expire won't stop any surveillance; we will merely default to the slightly less secretive authoritarian system we had from 1978-2007, when government had virtually unlimited surveillance authority. Under the F.I.S.A. court system, all government has to do is obtain a secret warrant from a secret court that says yes 99.99% of the time; they even have a full week after they do the surveillance to go and get a retroactive warrant.
Requiring a F.I.S.A. warrant for foreign-to-foreign calls that get routed through the U.S. isn't even a bad thing, really. As I said, getting a warrant is easy as pie and can be done after the spying. We can change the warrant requirement for foreign-to-foreign over U.S. lines next year if we really want to, when there is a Democrat in the White House. But it is obvious now that Republicans will hijack (again) any attempt you make to change foreign-to-foreign requirements without demolishing the FISA court. It simply isn't worth it. Obviously it wasn't very important to the G.O.P.'ers in the executive branch, since they decided scoring political points was more important than renewing P.A.A.
Let it die. Democrats have nothing to lose and everything to gain. How about making some scary ads attacking Republicans, for once? Instead of worrying to death about ads attacking you for being best friends with Osama Bin Laden (or whatever nonsense they cough up this year) you could cook up some ads attacking Republicans for trying to take away vital American freedoms. Who knows, maybe they will be so good that Republicans will start capitulating for once:
It is "Live free or die!", not "Live free, or don't," Democrats. You have the stronger electoral ground here. If you would just stop running from your own shadows you would do well.
Be bold for once, you spineless wussies. Stand up for your core principles.
Sincerely,
The people who voted for you.
P.S. Harry Reid is a terrible Senate Majority Leader. He is really very tepid, very weak. A cup of tea that's been sitting on the counter for a few weeks. ... You wouldn't want to drink that tea. You wouldn't want that tea to be your leader in the Senate. Give that job to Chris Dodd.