Sorry for the brevity of this diary, but since this seems to have slipped through the cracks here today, I figured it was worthy of attention.
Today's lead editorial in the New York Times reads as though it were written by the Daily Kos community: "With Democrats Like These . . .".
Okay, perhaps there isn't quite the same degree of righteous anger, and they refrain from use of expletives entirely, but it certainly seems to capture the sentiment of most folks around this place pretty well. The editorial takes Democrats to the woodshed for their complicity in assisting Bush shred the Constitution of the United States. See below for examples of what I'm talking about.
For those who think that the New York Times is basically just like any other newspaper in this country and unwilling to stand up to the depredations of the Bush Administration and Congressional Republicans, it's hard to read this editorial without coming away with the sense that they're about as fed up with Democratic caving to the excesses of this Administration as we are every day. And keep in mind that this is the official position of the paper and its publisher, as opposed to the often hacktacular reporting by people like Adam Nagourney, the fashion police stories on Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi, or the bobotastic op-ed columns by David Brooks.
The editorial starts off simply:
Every now and then, we are tempted to double-check that the Democrats actually won control of Congress last year. It was particularly hard to tell this week. Democratic leaders were cowed, once again, by propaganda from the White House and failed, once again, to modernize the law on electronic spying in a way that permits robust intelligence gathering on terrorists without undermining the Constitution.
Then it begins creeping in closer to attack position:
As the debate proceeds, Americans will be told that the delicate compromises were about how the government may spy on phone calls and electronic messages in the age of instant communications. Republicans have already started blowing hot air about any naysayers trying to stop spies from tracking terrorists.
No one is doing that. The question really is whether Congress should toss out chunks of the Constitution because Mr. Bush finds them inconvenient and some Democrats are afraid to look soft on terrorism.
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Democrats justified their votes for this bad bill [the August measure] by noting that the law expires in February and by promising to fix it this fall. The House bill did, in fact, restore most judicial safeguards. But the deal cooked up by Mr. Rockefeller and the White House doesn’t. It would not expire for six years, which is too long. And it would dismiss pending lawsuits against companies that turned data over to the government without a warrant.
And finally, it moves in for the kill:
This provision is not primarily about protecting patriotic businessmen, as Mr. Bush claims. It’s about ensuring that Mr. Bush and his aides never have to go to court to explain how many laws they’ve broken. It is a collusion between lawmakers and the White House that means that no one is ever held accountable. Democratic lawmakers said they reviewed the telecommunications companies’ cooperation (by reading documents selected by the White House) and concluded that lawsuits were unwarranted. Unlike them, we still have faith in the judicial system, which is where that sort of conclusion is supposed to be reached, not in a Senate back room polluted by the politics of fear.
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It was bad enough having a one-party government when Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. But the Democrats took over, and still the one-party system continues.
The highlighting is mine, of course. It seems to be like we have important allies on the Times editorial board, and perhaps we can use that to our advantage over the coming 12 1/2 months, and beyond.
As many of us have become fond of saying, what we need in this country are more and better Democrats. Just as we work to oust Republicans pretty much wherever they are found, we must use resources -- such as the traditional media -- to stiffen the spines of those elected officials who claim to be proud of the capital "D" after their names, yet scurry away every time Bush or his enablers threaten to claim that they are weak on terror or national security.
We have seen that weakness, however, and it exists in all those who are unwilling to stand up for the Constitution. Although "the Constitution is not a suicide pact," as Justice Robert Jackson put it in 1949, refusal to regard it as the supreme law of the land condemn it to be little more than a nice piece of parchment sitting under glass at the National Archives.
We know what the Bush Administration thinks of the document; it is well past time for Congressional Democrats to prove that this abomination of FISA "reform" is an insult to the Constitution.