Because of you, dear Senators, fear is back on Bush’s menu of tactics to get whatever the hell he wants regardless of who controls Congress. As you may know by now, last night the Senate, by a vote of 60-28, passed a Republican sponsored bill that was essentially written by the Bush administration, giving the President everything he wanted, including the right to issue warrantless wiretaps at the discretion of the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, the man who never met a lie he wasn’t willing to tell if it protected the President’s hindquarters.

Amazing, isn’t it? No different from the good old days when Republicans had control of that body of corrupt, incompetent, cowardly and weaselly men and women. The days of Frist and Santorum running wild. The days of GOP Congressmen using their investigative powers to besmirch and attack the reputations of global climate change scientists in an attempt to intimidate them, or to force a brain dead woman in Florida to keep a feeding tube installed in her gut against the better judgment of her husband and the Florida courts.

How little has changed, despite all the rhetoric emanating from Harry Reid. When push came to shove, the bully in the bully pulpit still got a filibuster proof number of senators to vote for one more brick in the wall cordoning us off from our constitutional rights. More proof that the Democrats are scared of their own shadows, and interested only in keeping their butts firmly planted in their pitiful, and increasingly irrelevant, Congressional offices than they are in doing the people’s business.

Here we are entering the 8th month of Democratic control of Congress and what have we accomplished for our country? Very little of substance. War funding is still bleeding out of our treasury just as our soldiers and Iraqi people are still bleeding (and dying) in Bush’s farcical war in Iraq. The Patriot Act has not been repealed, secret and probably illegal government spying programs remain unchecked, our government is still torturing “detainees” in its so-called “War on Terror” and Bush and Cheney are no closer to being impeached for all their crimes and misdeeds. Hell, no one is even threatening to impeach Gonzales, a known liar, and remove him from his perch at the Department of Justice.

Meanwhile Senator Schumer (Democrat) promises his buddies on Wall Street that he has their back regarding the taxes they don’t pay because they got a sweet heart deal when tax reform was last passed by Congress. Hillary Clinton (Democrat) lambastes another Democrat, Barrack Obama, for daring to suggest that he won’t use nuclear weapons against Pakistan, and for having the nerve to suggest he would speak to leaders of other countries, even those who aren’t on Bush’s BFF list. And then there was last night, when only 28 Senators opposed giving Bush’s sockpuppet the right to decide when to issue orders to spy on Americans without any interference from the courts, not even the secret FISA court, which many civil libertarians such as Law Professor Jonathan Turley (a constitutional scholar and frequent guest on Countdown) already contend violates the 4th amendment.

We are nothing more than a banana republic. If you had any reason to hope that would change when Democrats regained control of Congress, now you know those were false hopes. So I say again, “Thank-you Senators.”

“Thanks for nothing.”