Our Constitution is a political issue?

Domestic spying tests GOP lawmakers' loyalties

By Maura Reynolds - Los Angeles Times

... The tenor of the hearing rests on a central question: Do the Republicans who control Capitol Hill have greater loyalty to Congress as an institution or to the president who heads their political party?

The National Security Agency (NSA) controversy may be the first of the Bush presidency to place Republicans' roles as lawmakers and politicians so directly in conflict. Some GOP lawmakers have been less vocal than usual in defending the president, a sign that many have not made up their minds which role to put first. ...

... The controversy strikes a nerve with senators from the GOP's libertarian wing, who banded together late last year to help stall reauthorization of the Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law passed in response to the Sept. 11 attacks.

"You have a substantial group of genuine conservatives who are very uneasy about 'Big Brother' and who have a long-standing, outspoken drive on privacy issues," said Norman Ornstein, an expert on Congress and head of the American Enterprise Institute think tank. "It doesn't matter who the president is, they don't like the idea of the government looking over people's shoulders.

"I think if you took a secret ballot in the Senate and House, you'd get a majority of Republicans joining on to those [libertarian] concerns," Ornstein said. "But the majority of Republicans in both houses see themselves more as field soldiers in the president's army than as independent actors in an independent branch of government. ...

[That group is] very reluctant to challenge their president and to do so in a way that gives Democrats a political issue." ...

But apparently Tom Vilsack is still loyal to the Unitary Executive

Vilsack: Opposing wiretapping dangerous for Democrats

By THOMAS BEAUMONT - REGISTER STAFF WRITER

January 31, 2006

Gov. Tom Vilsack said Monday that Democrats risk political backlash if they object to the Bush administration's wiretapping but cannot show that Americans' civil liberties are at risk. ...

..."If the president broke the law, that's unacceptable. But I think it's debateable whether he did," Vilsack told Des Moines Register editors and reporters.

"And I think Democrats are falling into a very, very large political trap," he said. "Democrats are not going to win elections until they can reassure people they are going to keep them safe." ...

... Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean has compared the practice to President Nixon's practice of monitoring his political adversaries' communications.

Vilsacks readiness to toss our Constitutional Rights into the dumpster of history has gained him praise from that bastion of right-wing propaganda the WeeklyStandard: "Iowa Gov. and DLC Chair Vilsack Won't Be Led Around by the Nose by the Far Left"

So the WeeklyStandard and the DLC think the Constitution is a Far Left Document?

As well as being the leader of the DLC, Tom Vilsack is still Governor of Iowa. He really needs to get up, walk across his office to the Iowa State Flag and read the states motto:

"Our Liberties We Prize and Our Rights We Will Maintain"