The House Intelligence Committee's top Democrat disclosed late Tuesday that he is ready to accept a Republican-brokered deal to rewrite the nation's electronic surveillance laws, signaling that a long-running congressional impasse could soon be coming to an end.

House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes told CongressDaily that he is "fine" with language offered by Senate Intelligence ranking member Christopher (Kit) Bond and other Republicans to overhaul the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Notably, the GOP language, which was offered a day before the recent congressional recess, would leave it up to the secret FISA court to grant retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have helped the Bush administration conduct electronic surveillance on the communications of U.S. citizens without warrants.

I guess that is a solution everyone whose ready to suck up those telecom dollars can applaud.  It grants immunity without Congress expressly having to do so, knowing full well that the majority of the American public is against immunity.  So, now the immunity can be granted in secret by an unaccountable and secretly operating judicial bench.  And the Democrats, those irksome creatures liberals seem to believe are going to save the republic, are marching in lockstep with Republican and corporate interests.

Oh, but wait! There's more…

House Democrats are likely to drop a 13-week extension of unemployment insurance benefits from a major spending package that includes continued funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and that would create a new education benefit for military veterans returning from the battlefields.

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said yesterday that the unemployment insurance provision would "probably not" be part of the final package of war and domestic spending… .

It is appropriate that an extension to unemployment benefits not be included in this bill. That should have gone into the "stimulus" package or the housing relief bill.  That wouldn't work, of course, because Republicans blocked that bill, so no employment benefit extension was going to be coming out of that.

Relevance is irrelevant to Congress, however, because inappropriate supplements are added to irrelevant bills all the time.  The GOP have been masters of slipping in supplemental -- usually pork barrel -- junk but the Democrats, when it comes to providing public relief programs, fold at the first breeze of Republican bluster.

It is tempting to think -- possibly believe -- that the Democrats are just feckless pantywaists who simply cannot muster effective collective action.  But collapse after collapse after collapse is evidence of something else as well.  It is evidence of a front, a facade, a guise of appearing righteous, while having zero commitment to righteousness.  They adopt adorable rhetoric that makes them sound caring and concerned, when, in fact, they really don't give a shit.  And they clearly don't.  They have given Bush everything he has wanted and then some.  The only time they defied a Bush veto was when the entire Congress was behind the massive dole handed out to agribusiness in the corpulent farm bill.

In fact, the Democrats act exactly like a front organisation for the Republicans, who are in turn a front for corporate interests.  But at least the GOP doesn't pretend they aren't; the GOP are quite open about their allegiance, something we obviously don't see with the Democrats, who flail about, making hacking noises about the American People, and then fold up at the slightest resistance, which usually amounts to nothing more than name-calling by the GOP.

Some faction of Democrats have been looking for a way to grant immunity, but have been pounded by their voting base and so have balked at outright commutation of the law.  Well, thanks to their less publicly troubled brethren, the Democrats have found a way to "move forward" on the issue of immunity by handing off that particular sticky bun to the FISA court, which will be able to hand out telecom immunity and so beyond the purview of public glare.

Unemployment benefits extension is now likely to meet a similar fate: trumpeted loudly by the Democrats to help Americans in this time of stress, the chairs at the concert are quickly folded up now that the headlines have moved on.  They sure looked good there for awhile, promising extended benefits to long unemployed citizens.

And now, with the klieg lights gone, the curtains closed, the Democrats walk off the stage, their performance over as they once again demonstrate little concern for the American public and an abiding disdain for their putative democratic values.