It appears that there will be no Congressional probe into the Whitehouses domestic spying program.
According to the Washington Post:
an all-out White House lobbying campaign has dramatically slowed the effort and may kill it, key Republican and Democratic sources said yesterday.
Translation: Some got to those waivering Republicans....
Flash back to December 2005 where Republican Senators like Olympia Snowe "expressed 'profound concern' about recent revelations that the U.S. government 'may have engaged in domestic electronic surveillance without appropriate legal authority.'"
More below...
Now..
Snowe said, "I'm not sure it's going to be essential or necessary" to conduct an inquiry "if we can address the legislative standpoint" that would provide oversight of the surveillance program. "We're learning a lot and we're going to learn more," she said.
She cited last week's briefings before the full House and Senate intelligence committees by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and former NSA director Michael V. Hayden.
"The administration has obviously gotten the message that they need to be more forthcoming," Snowe said.
So did last weeks closed door hearings show that the the Whitehouse acted within the legal boundaries?
Who cares says Senator Hagel:
As for Rockefeller's bid, Hagel said: "If some kind of inquiry would be beneficial to getting a resolution to this issue, then sure, we should look at it. But if the inquiry is just some kind of a punitive inquiry that really is not focused on finding a way out of this, then I'm not so sure that I would support that."
So the Constitution and its brilliant system of Checks and Balances is now officially dead.
I'd say this calls for a grassroots blitz on your local representative, but it's pretty clear that Republican Senators have no intention of upholding the Constitution.
BTW - Why is it every bi-partisan effort always ends when "Cheney conducted a Republicans-only meeting"