Senate Panel Rejects NSA Probe

In a none-too-startling development, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence rejected a Democratic proposal to investigate the NSA domestic surveillance program, and are instead seeking to create a 7-member panel to oversee the program:

Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) told reporters after the closed session that he had asked the committee "to reject confrontation in favor of accommodation" and that the new subcommittee, which he described as "an accommodation with the White House," would "conduct oversight of the terrorist surveillance program."

Democrats are of course none-too-happy with this development:

The panel's vice chairman, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), took a sharply different view of yesterday's outcome. "The committee is, to put it bluntly, basically under the control of the White House through its chairman," he told reporters. "At the direction of the White House, the Republican majority has voted down my motion to have a careful and fact-based review of the National Security Agency's surveillance eavesdropping activities inside the United States."

I guess if this were to be some sort of serious and effective oversight, we might have something to cheer about. Alas, Kevin Drum sums it up better than I can:

Senate Republicans, who were dangerously close to showing some spine as recently as a week ago, have decided that a genuine investigation of the NSA's domestic spying program would simply be too painful, so they've decided instead to simply let George Bush do whatever he wants. They have no interest in serious oversight at all.

Yep, pretty much.