This is short and to the point:
The 57 Democrats who capitulated to White House demands for broad FISA changes have only one reasonable excuse for their actions. That excuse carries along with it a built-in accountability moment, and the 57 should be held accountable when that moment comes due.
The only excuse for their capitulation is their fear that a terrorist attack is imminent and that it cannot be prevented without giving-in to Bush's demands. You may not personally agree that there is any such imminent threat; you may not personally agree that even if there is such a threat, that the trade-off of civil liberties is justified; but for a Senator or Representative who does not share your assessments, there is at least a colorable argument that giving the Bush administration increased surveillance authority for the next six months is the right policy.
Some of you may be so violently in disagreement with their assessments of the threat and the balance of civil liberties that you are already willing to regard the 57 as beyond redemption. But even if you are willing to give the 57 the benefit of the doubt, they can and must be held accountable for their judgments.
- If in six months the 57 can show us no evidence of a terrorist plot that was thwarted because of the new surveillance authorities that they granted the Executive, then at a minimum they must be labeled and held politically and electorally accountable for having bad judgment of both terrorist and constitutional threats.
- If in six months the 57 can show us no evidence of a terrorist plot that was thwarted because of the new surveillance authorities that they granted the Executive, and they then proceed to reauthorize those expanded surveillance activities, then they will deserve every bit of political opposition that can be mustered against them.
Once again, my point is not that the actions of the 57 are correct or excusable, but rather that even if we accept their assessment, then there is a hard and fast accountability moment in six months that the 57 should not be allowed to evade.