The Evil Petting Zoo

So, yesterday a good number of the Senate Democrats followed the lead of the House and capitulated to Bush. No, why use a word like capitulated? They bent over fucking backwards to give the administration what it wanted. They could have killed this legislation. They could have scrapped the provisions that effectively say, "It's not a crime if the president says it isn't." But they went along with it. Hell, even the media doesn't doubt for a minute that this was anything but a surrender.

Of course, it's an oversimplification to say that they surrendered, or that they were afraid of it. That is very likely the case for some of them; after months of being wrung up and down by Republican pundits and politicians as traitors and naive fools, they must have quaked before the might of a lame-duck president and the minority party. But there's another possibility, as John Cole brings up; maybe the Democrats who voted on this bill actually see it as necessary. Maybe they see it as necessary to cede more power to the executive branch, a branch that already says, "We don't have to comply with your subpoenas, ha ha ha ha." Maybe they think it's a good idea to give telecoms an easy out from betraying the trust of their customers all because their fancy lawyers didn't realize such a thing as the Fourth Amendment exists.

And that may be the one thing scarier than a party packed with cowards.