As predicted yesterday, the Senate Intelligence Committee today confirmed its status as a rubber stamp for the White House. The Committee, led by staunch Bush ally Pat Roberts (R-KS), rejected vice-chairman Jay Rockefeller's call for an investigation of the President's illegal NSA domestic spying program.
Bowing to pressure from the White House, Majority Leader Frist and its chairman, the Intelligence Committee agreed only to institute a seven-member subcommittee, which along with staff, would receive full briefings on the program. Rockefeller was blunt about the impact of White House arm-twisting, "This committee is basically under control of the White House. It's an unprecedented bout of political pressure from the White House."
The collusion of the panel's supposed moderates Republican members was especially galling. Republican Senator Chuck Hegel yielded to his party, only five week after declaring that President Bush "can't unilaterally decide that that 1978 law is out of date and he will be the guardian of America and he will violate that law." The capitulation of Maine's Olympia Snowe was even more dramatic. Snowe, who supported new defanged oversight legislation declared after the committee vote, "Today we are setting a constitutional marker." That is a complete turnabout from her December call for a joint inquiry by the Intel and Judiciary committees:

"Revelations that the U.S. government has conducted domestic electronic surveillance without express legal authority indeed warrants Congressional examination. I believe the Congress - as a coequal branch of government - must immediately and expeditiously review the use of this practice." (Olympia Snowe, R-ME, 12/21/05)

President Bush got a major boost today in his effort to conduct unchecked and illegal domestic surveillance operations within the United States. And once again, the Republicans in the Senate chose party over patriotism.