HISTORY OF THE USA
Early 21st Century
As we have seen, the Republican party had, by the 2006 midterm elections, largely taken control of the country including the traditional press and broadcasting. One of the very few arenas in which the Democrats had any real power left that year was in the Senate Intelligence Committee, created just 30 years earlier to oversee and study intelligence activities and programs. Its rules, uniquely among Senate Committees, permitted the vice chairman to authorize an investigation, to issue a subpeona and to authorize witness interrogation.
Few among the American public realized the importance of the Senate Majority Leader's threat to have the full Senate rewrite this Committee's rules to render minority party members powerless, here as in other Senate Committees. However an even easier remedy was found, as the same Majority Leader needed only to replace the wavering Republican members with more docile Senators. This was the end of meaningful opposition to the President's domestic surveillance programs.
While the restrictions on the use of the Internet, which came later, are widely credited for the degeneration of the USA into a one-party state, it may be argued that the taming of the Senate Intelligence Committee was most critical. It allowed for unrestricted surveillance which, in turn, facilitated regulation of the Internet.
</Fiction?>
Credits: Glenn Greenwald