Egg meet face:
WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 — Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches of American citizens and the collection of their business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said.
Administration officials acknowledged they had heard such concerns from Democrats in Congress recently, and that there was a continuing debate over the meaning of the legislative language. But they said the Democrats were simply raising theoretical questions based on a harsh interpretation of the legislation.
They also emphasized that there would be strict rules in place to minimize the extent to which Americans would be caught up in the surveillance.
Given the administration's tendency to use every tortured phrase to justify their actions, I'd say the Democratic Congress abdicated it's responsibility to understand what they were empowering the administration to do when rushing through this face-saving act.
Face-saving from what?! Are the Democrats so afraid of the Bush administration it feints at the sight of it's latest pantomine? When you are the majority party this is your legislation, your agenda.
Democrats are frittering away thier mandate to undo the damage 6 years of Republican rule.
[Note: I wasn't able to edit the diary properly - I lost some ranting at the end here... rant rant rant.]