However, leadership has far more tools at its disposal to block such legislation (especially in the House), yet they clearly chose not to do so. Indeed, if the Democratic leadership were serious about their rhetoric, then the bill wouldn’t have made it to the floor in the House and would never have escaped the Senate.

I have little doubt that there was a willingness to allow the bill to pass and take away a campaign issue from the the GOP while hoping to use the six-month clock as a way to blunt attacks and criticisms from the left.

The leadership of the Democratic party howled in pain when the program first came to light. However the Democratic Senators that voted for it — Feinstein (CA), Salazar (CO), Lincoln and Pryor (AR), McCaskill (MO), Nelson (FL) (and 10 of their friends) just aren’t the career obsessed politicians you’re describing. This is the serious center-left that thinks the intelligence services should have the tools necessary to find out what’s happening in the world.

A much better case would be that a good chunk of the Democratic party’s right wing reject the extremist demands of the nutroots. The leadership of both the house and senate demanded unilateral disposal of an intelligence asset. The DiFi and friends figuratively flipped them the bird.

I take your point. Still, my fundamental point is that one would have expected at least some GOPers to be concerned about the issue, if not because of the alleged libertarian leanings of some in the party, but also to guard the prerogatives of the legislature. Alas, neither was the case.

I understood the original to mean “do not have a stake in,” look the other way because it doesn’t matter, etc. And my response was that they (GOP congress members) gained greatly from it for 6 years. They were quite interested (in the sense of having a stake).

I guess my answer to Jan is: Kucinich or Gravel in the primary, and someone without a D or R by his or her name in the general. But we’ve been over that before: I vote sincerely, strategic voting never making any sense to me (unless it’s organizationally coordinated as part of a votes-for-policy-concessions deal, that is).