Bush's Unlikely Co-conspirators

By G. Pascal Zachary, AlterNet. Posted January 10, 2006.

At least seven House Democrats learned about the NSA's secret spying program four years ago. So why didn't anyone blow the whistle?

President Bush deserves plenty of blame for secretly authorizing domestic spying by the National Security Agency. But some of the president's fiercest critics in Congress gave him the political cover to do so. The question why they did so says much about the nation's brittle democracy and how Democrats have covertly joined with Republicans to restore the imperial presidency and effectively remove any checks on the executive branch of the U.S. government.