Falling Snowe

Glenn Greenwald has an excellent piece on the non-action by the Senate Select Commiittee on Intelligence concerning illegal warrantless wiretapping by the Bush administration, and so-called ``moderate'' Republican legislation to legalize it:

In lieu of fulfilling their pledge to discover the scope of the Administration's warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, Sens. Hagel and Snowe decided instead that they would support legislation which would create a 7-member Subcommittee (4 Republicans and 3 Democrats) to which the Administration is required to report all warrantless eavesdropping activities...The Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings are still ongoing and, when he was last heard from a day or so ago, Sen. Specter was still squawking about being angry that Gonazles lied to the Committee and insisting that the Committee would at least find out whether there were other warrantless eavesdropping programs in place...Sen. Specter is, of course, of the same rancid strain as Sens. Snowe and Hagel -- the group that struts around self-lovingly preening as some sort of "independent Republicans" only invariably to fall in line, meekly and without exception, with White House commands.