It may be a good thing that not even Chuck Schumer is coming tomorrow

If he were here, I might have to ask Bob Geiger to ask him if he now regrets so strongly supporting the nomination of Bob Casey for the Pennsylvania Senate in 2004. Casey was one of 16 Senators to vote to give President 26% the authority to wiretap Americans for any reason at any time:

A furious push by the White House to broaden its wiretapping authority appeared on the verge of victory on Friday night after the Senate approved a measure that would temporarily give the administration more latitude to eavesdrop without court warrants on foreign communications that it suspects may be tied to terrorism.

The House is expected to take up the White House-backed measure on Saturday morning before going into its summer recess.

Democratic leaders acknowledged that the bill would probably pass.

Democrats in both the House and the Senate failed to pass competing measures on Friday that would have included tougher judicial checks and oversight on the eavesdropping powers.

The White House and Congressional Republicans hailed the Senate vote as critical to plugging what they saw as dangerous gaps in the intelligence agencies’ ability to detect terrorist threats.

Last November, Americans elected a Democratic Congress to provide some measure of checks and balances against an executive branch that has gone completely out of control. Today, sixteen Democrats voted against the American people.

In addition to the aforementioned Bob Casey, the other sellouts are:

Evan Bayh (Indiana)
Tom Carper (Delaware)
Kent Conrad (North Dakota)
Dianne Feinstein (California)
Daniel Inouye (Hawai‘i)
Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota)
Nancy Landrieu (Louisiana)
Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas)
Claire McCaskill (Missouri)
Barbara Mikulski (Maryland) (WTF???)
Bill Nelson (Florida)
Ben Nelson (Nebraska)
Mark Pryor (Arkansas)
Ken Salazar (Colorado)

and tragically:

Jim Webb (Virginia)