It's been shocking to see the extent to which the Democratic leadership in Congress has now officially put themselves on-board with actual criminal malfeasance by the Bush administration. We now have multiple examples where Congress learned about administration activities that violated felony statutes, and they either did absolutely nothing about it, or even more disheartening (as in the case of the recent FISA legislation), voted for and ratified it. I think it's fair to describe virtually the entire Republican Congressional delegation (with perhaps Arlen Specter being the lone wishy-washy exception) and the entire Democratic congressional leadership, as criminally negligent.

It's a statement of fact that the Bush administration has broken multiple felonies, and that none of them will suffer any consequences for having done so. Since Congress refuses to take any action against their lawbreaking, the laws of our land and significant parts of our Constitution have been rendered moot. All we're now left with are vague assurances about how leaders who are not bound by laws, who have misled Congress and the nation about their activities on numerous occasions, would never, ever abuse their power by violating the rights of good, decent, ordinary Americans. And it's not just rubes and simpletons and professional shills on Fox News who seem to be OK with that notion, but the leaders of both of our major parties.

There seems to be an underlying assumption that our leaders must know something that the rest of us don't, and that therefore things can't really be as bad as they might seem. But as Arlen Specter admitted during the recent FISA debate, even they don't know what's going on, and they signed off on it anyway! As Specter said:

There's an old expression: buying a pig in a poke. It means buying something that you don't know what it is you're buying. Well, that's what the Senate is being asked to do here today — to grant retroactive immunity to a program where the members don't know what the program is.

I've always been against term limits, but I'm almost starting to wonder. If the raison d'etre of our members of Congress is to cover their asses and take no risks for the sole sake of being re-elected -- even if it means refusing to stand up for human rights, the rule of law and the Constitution -- then maybe the rules of the game need to be changed. But as always, we're faced with the same conundrum: if Congress refuses to take care of it, then who will?