Snowe Job

Maine Republican Senator Olympia Snowe was one of the moderate Senators (which also includes Chuck Hagel) on the Senate Intelligence Committe who voiced some serious concerns over the NSA warrantless wiretapping program that was revealed last December and suggested an investigation might be warranted. After flopping around on the issue like a freshly caught Northern Pike at the bottom of an aluminum fishing boat, it seems her concerns have been downgraded. Here's the latest skinny on Snowe and where we're at with the NSA wiretapping investigation, courtesy of Salon's War Room:

Catching Snowe on a good day, the Bush administration managed to dodge a Senate investigation of its warrantless spying program Tuesday in exchange for agreeing to give regular briefings to a few more lawmakers and maybe supporting legislation that would provide express congressional approval for spying without the warrants that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act now requires.

If that doesn't sound like much of a deal, it isn't. In a moment of unintentional candor, Pat Roberts -- the White House water carrier who serves as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- said, "I prefer accommodation over confrontation whenever possible."

As a result of Tuesday's party-line vote, the Senate Intelligence Committee won't investigate whether the president and his aides broke the law or violated the Constitution when they began spying on Americans without warrants. Instead, the committee will form a seven-member subcommittee to receive additional briefings on the program. Translation: The White House once provided semiregular briefings to the chairman and the ranking member of the committee; now it will have to provide briefings to seven members instead.

That doesn't seem like much of a sacrifice, so there must be more, right? Not much. Four members of the committee have proposed legislation that would provide specific congressional authorization for the warrantless spying, at least for a 45-day period, and the Republicans who backed the "accommodation" Tuesday would like you to think that they've forced the White House to sign off on that legislation as part of their deal. But it's clear that the White House hasn't committed to anything just yet. As Republican Sen. Mike DeWine tells Reuters, the White House has agreed to support such legislation only in "broad concept." White House Scott McClellan was heard to say Tuesday that the legislation was an "interesting" idea.

And even if the White House eventually commits to the legislation, it still would fall far short of the existing legal protections with which the president was pretending to comply. While the legislation would limit future warrantless spying to 45-day periods, there's an exception if the attorney general tells the subcommittee that there's good reason to keep spying without getting a warrant.

At least for now, that would be the same attorney general who has been less than candid about the National Security Agency program. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter said this week that Alberto Gonzales' answers to his committee's questions have been so equivocal that he may need to come back to testify a second time on the program. In the meantime, Specter's committee may provide the last remaining hope for some kind of meaningful investigation into the warrantless spying program. Specter said Tuesday that he may offer legislation cutting off funding for the program if he can't get more answers from the administration otherwise.

AmericaBlog puts it succinctly:

No matter how much Olympia Snowe tries to spin this, she caved to Bush, again. [...] This quote from Snowe is just a joke:

"We are reasserting Congressional responsibility and oversight," Ms. Snowe said.

The GOP doesn't know how to do oversight.

ThinkProgress also throws in this nugget about the Intel Committee's chair, Pat Roberts (R-KS):

This isn’t the first time Pat Roberts has covered up for the Bush administration. Far from it.

Pat Roberts has been instrumental in the cover-up of virtually every national security scandal of George W. Bush’s presidency. ThinkProgress has produced a comprehensive report showing how Roberts and his Senate Cover-up Committee have obstructed investigations into everything from false Iraq intelligence to detainee torture to the CIA leak scandal.