What a difference a year - and electoral disaster - makes. As Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defended the Bush administration's illegal NSA domestic spying last February, Republicans Senators rushed to the defense of the President and his program. Fast forward to yesterday's announcement by Gonzales that the White House was backing away from wiretapping without FISA court warrants and the GOP's histrionics seem all the more comical.
As Perrspectives detailed last year, President Bush's amen corner on Capitol Hill offered the "Give Me Death" defense of warrantless wiretapping of Americans. Senators Jeff Sessions (R-AL), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Pat Roberts (R-KS) offer case in point.
During brief comments to the press last February, Sessions referring to the rightness of Bush's domestic spying after 9/11 declared melodramatically:

"Over 3,000 Americans have no civil rights because they are no longer with us."

The Republican leadership is singing from the same Karl Rove fear-mongering hymnal to justify the President's lawbreaking. On February 3rd, Kansas Senator Pat Roberts, who has stonewalled the Phase II investigation into the misuses of pre-Iraq war intelligence, similarly claimed:

"You really don't have any civil liberties if you're dead."

Roberts, who also authored a vitriolic 19-page letter defending the NSA domestic surveillance program, merely followed in the footsteps of Senator John Cornyn. Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said on December 20, 2005:

"None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead."

Certain illegality. Bad politics. Potential constitutional crisis. Looming subpoenas. Apparently, the FISA process isn't such a problem for the White House after all. Yes, what a difference a year makes.