Washington Times
Editorial

Pandering Pelosi-crats

October 22, 2007

With all due respect to the Republican presidential hopefuls who
debated last night, perhaps the best argument for keeping the
Democrats out of power next November is the brazenly irresponsible way
they handle national security issues: behaving as if the major threat
to our national well-being is President Bush, not the jihadists, and
putting the political agenda of Turkey-bashing ethnic lobbies and the
hard left of the Democratic Party ahead of the war effort.

Exhibit number one is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who suffered twin
embarrassments last week: In one instance, Democrats, under pressure
>From left-wing bloggers and the ACLU, tried to bring to the floor
legislation updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
that would have crippled the ability of our intelligence agencies to
monitor al Qaeda and other foreign terrorist groups. They were forced
to pull that bill from the floor. In the second instance, a
mini-revolt among Democrats forced Mrs. Pelosi to remove from the
floor the Armenia genocide resolution that could do grave damage to
Washington’s relations with a key NATO ally, Turkey – which is
critically important in resupplying the 160,000-plus U.S. troops in
Iraq.

Last week we editorialized against both of these irresponsible pieces
of legislation, and temporarily at least, both have been stopped in
their tracks. The Democrats’ FISA bill, pushed by House Judiciary
Committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan, and House Intelligence
Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes of Texas, would have amended FISA
to grant due-process rights to aliens virtually anywhere in the world,
including Islamist radicals fighting us in places like Iraq and
Afghanistan. Demonstrating leadership at its best, House Republicans
led by Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio and Chief Deputy Whip Eric
Cantor of Virginia offered a motion to recommit the legislation with
instructions to prohibit the Democrats’ FISA measure from "interfering
with surveillance needed to prevent Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda or any
other foreign terrorist organization" from attacking the United
States. This created a huge political problem for the Democrats, who
were forced to choose between 1) killing their own bill and 2) voting
against giving the government the authority to spy on Osama in Laden,
al Qaeda and other terrorist groups seeking to murder Americans.

In the end, Mrs. Pelosi and other politically savvy Democrats,
realizing that a vote for preserving Osama’s Fourth Amendment rights
might be difficult to explain to constituents in "fly-over country,"
pulled the bill from the floor. But the Democratic leadership’s FISA
bill may well get a second life. The ACLU and left-wing bloggers
believe the Democratic bill, known as the Restore Act, does not go far
enough in protecting the "civil liberties" of innocent jihadists, and
suggest that the Democrats are caving in to the Republicans on FISA.
These people are spoiling for fight, and House Majority Leader Steny
Hoyer, who has said the Democrats will try to bring the bill back this
week, may oblige them. In the next few days, we will learn whether Mr.
Hoyer is bluffing, or whether the Pelosi-crats are politically
suicidal enough to try to bully enough of the conservative, 47-member
Blue Dog Coalition of moderate and conservative Democrats into siding
with Osama on the FISA issue.

But lately, Democrats have become more assertive about standing up to
Mrs. Pelosi, particularly on the Armenia genocide resolution. Last
week, at least nine House Democrats urged her to withdraw the Armenia
resolution from the floor, and the speaker, in a belated nod to common
sense, said Wednesday that she was reconsidering her pledge to force a
vote on the measure. Given the explosive situation in northern Iraq
created by Kurdish PKK terrorist attacks against Turkey, it is
grotesquely irresponsible for Congress to be beating up on this
important American ally.

Source: ITORIAL/110220005