He Blew It
Steny Hoyer took some time off from fellating the Bush administration and the legal teams of several of the country’s major telecoms to gratify himself . . . with a goose-stepping interview over at Politico. The subject? What a great job he and the Democrats did on that FISA legislation that just passed the House:
In an interview with Politico on Monday, Hoyer called the FISA legislation a “significant victory” for the Democratic Party — one that neutralized an issue Republicans might have been able to use against Democrats in November while still, in his view, protecting the civil liberties of American citizens.
Hunter, over at DailyKos responds:
Call me old fashioned, but I’m suspicious about anything “protects” the civil liberties of American citizens by acknowledging that those civil liberties were being violated — then declaring amnesty for those acts. Or by protecting those civil liberties by granting that they can be taken from you using secret evidence, presented secretly, banning review, explicitly banning judicial leeway to determine whether laws were violated, or civil liberties infringed upon, or to determine anything at all but whether the administration said it was OK to do the thing in question. Oh — and that evidence is to be presented by the same people who broke the law in the first place, of course.
Greenwald is in the mix too:
In other words, Democrats achieved a “significant victory” because — by giving Republicans everything they demanded — Republicans are no longer able to criticize Democrats on this issue. What a shrewd strategy: “if we comply with all their demands, then they can’t criticize us for anything.” That’s the Democratic Party’s plan for winning, according to Hoyer.
I wish we had a few more like Chris Dodd in Congress.
