Democrats duck Senate hearing on Bush censure motion

The five included liberals like Edward Kennedy, Charles Schumer and Richard Durbin, the deputy party leader in the Senate, as well as Diane Feinstein of California and Joseph Biden, a prospective candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Another Democrat, Herbert Kohl of Wisconsin, apparently attended only out of courtesy to his state colleague. He said nothing and did not ask a single question of the witnesses who appeared to argue for or against the censure motion.

Only one committee Democrat, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, indicated any support for Feingold’s resolution, saying, “We know the president broke the law. Now we need to know why.”

This brings the total number of avowed supporters of the resolution to four, with Leahy joining Feingold, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Barbara Boxer of California. None of these four has suggested that the NSA spying program, which violates the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, should be shut down, urging instead that it be retroactively legalized and brought under the jurisdiction of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secretive judicial body established by the 1978 law to review executive branch requests for such electronic spying.

The five Republicans who attended the hearing, headed by Chairman Arlen Specter, opposed the censure resolution, although both Specter and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina admitted that the NSA spying was of dubious legality. The other three Republicans, John Cornyn of Texas, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Orrin Hatch of Utah, were vocal defenders of the secret surveillance program, suggesting that those who leaked information about it to the press, not Bush, should be punished.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/apr2006/cens-a05.shtml