"An evisceration of the Fourth Amendment..."

The imminent cave by House Dems to Bush's FISA bill demands finally makes sense.

The FISA bill, as we all know by now, gives the telecoms retroactive immunity for illegal wiretaps at the behest of the administration as well as broad new powers to spy on Americans. In this, it renders the Fourth Amendment a quaint relic of a braver and simpler age.

All the time, it was obvious that the sine qua non of the bill was the retroactive immunity. It would shut down cases already in motion and by doing so, keep the details of the administration's machinations forever secret, safe from pre-trial discovery. In other words, the immunity wasn't so much for the telecoms, it was for the lawbreakers in the administration, from John Yoo to Dick Cheney to George W. Bush and all the little Republican eavesdroppers in-between.

I've been so naive, actually thinking that it was the usual spinelessness of the Democratic leadership that kept the abominable bill alive -- that, and the fact that the telecoms have been most generous in their contributions to all concerned.

On Countdown tonight, however, Jonathan Turley and Olbermann suggested the real motive for Pelosi, Hoyer, Rockefeller and Reid's eagerness to cave in and move on -- the real reason the bill never died but came back each time with more urgency -- was that too many Dems, especially in the leadership, are just as guilty of colluding with the administration and enabling Bush's clearly illegal spying.

Essentially what we're witnessing is a bi-partisan "evisceration of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution," according to Turley. He also characterized the bill as "reverse engineering, the type of thing the Bush administration is famous for, and now the Democrats are doing, that is, to change the law to conform to past conduct."

It's simple: If Bush had been robbing banks for the past seven years, he's about to get the law changed to make bank robbery legal. He'll be off the hook, and so will his gang and the Dems driving the getaway cars.

How could I be so stupid and naive? It's all very, very demoralizing. I was furious with Congressional Dems as it was. Now I'm just utterly deflated. I don't even hold out that much hope for real change with Obama. Right now, he's busy tacking rightward for the general election and I've always thought it's where he's most comfortable anyway. Is he about to risk standing up in the Senate and devoting a little of his eloquence in defense of the Fourth Amendment?

By the way, can I tell you how much I adore Jonathan Turley?