Trashing Constitution Is More Important To Bush Than Investigating Terrorist Suspects

Laurie Kellman for AP reports: Legislation aimed at President Bush's once-secret program for wiretapping U.S.-foreign phone calls and computer traffic of suspected terrorists without warrants shows all the signs of not moving ahead, notwithstanding President Bush's request this week that a lame-duck Congress give it to him. Senate Democrats, emboldened by Election Day wins that put them in control of Congress as of January, say they would rather wait until next year to look at the issue. "I can't say that we won't do it, but there's no guarantee that we're going spend a lot of time on controversial measures," Democratic Whip Richard Durbin of Illinois said Thursday. In Senate parlance, that means no. (…) The Bush administration has a backup plan. In speeches over the next few weeks, the Justice Department will launch a new campaign for the legislation by casting the choice as one between supporting the program or dropping it altogether — and appearing soft on al-Qaida. Because monitoring terrorist suspects isn't the important thing; eviscerating the Constitution and the rule of law is the much much more important thing, and if he can't do that, well, then why bother doing anything at all?