Outrageous? Yes. Astonishing & Unbelievable? Nope

Double-H is a lot more slack-jawed at Crazy Nancy's latest death-wish antics than I am:

The House broke for a week’s recess Thursday without renewing terrorist surveillance authority demanded by President Bush, leading him to warn of risky intelligence gaps while Democrats accused him of reckless fear mongering.

The refusal of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, to schedule a vote on a surveillance measure approved Tuesday by the Senate touched off an intense partisan conflict over the national security questions that have colored federal elections since 2002 and are likely to play a significant role again in November.

Hugh's radio show producer has more details:

Nancy Pelosi and Co. had one simple task today - pass the FISA law permanently.  FISA is already in effect to make sure the country stays protected.  It has led to the breakup of terrorist cells, and it's prevented attacks on American soil.  And it expires tomorrow, meaning as of Saturday, our national intelligence agencies legally can't intercept phone calls outside the country between two parties planning attacks here or in the countries of our allies.  

The Senate passed a clean version of the FISA bill Tuesday in a bipartisan manner.  The President has already said he's willing to sign the Senate version....all that had to happen was for Nancy Pelosi to stop playing games with our country's defense and bring up the Senate version for a vote.  But...[i]nstead of putting the country ahead of partisan politics, she substituted another twenty-one day extension of the existing law as a stop-gap.  That was rejected immediately by House Republicans, the President, and even the hard left members of the House Democrats, who have their collective heads so far in the sand that they see no foreign threats.  They want the bill to go away period.

First off, "the sand" is not where House Donk heads are impacted.  Secondly, Crazy Nancy proposed the additional three-week extension knowing damn well that it would be shot down in a murderous bipartisan cross-fire.  It's her fig-leaf behind which she can hide her national security game-playing.  And third, "tomorrow" is now today.  As of right now and going forward until a permanent FISA revision is enacted, the United States of America is completely open to mass-casualty terrorist attack, and the government is, for all intents and purposes, forbidden by law from doing anything to stop it. 

But most to the point, the very fact that congressional Democrats continue to play these "games" with American civilian lives after getting their heads handed to them repeatedly by the Bush White House on war-related issues in 2007 speaks volumes about how they perceive the direction of their political fortunes.  They obviously believe that the proverbial "wind" is at their backs, and at hurricane-force velocities.  And they're not wrong think so; all the "experts" forecast moderate to massive Donk gains in both houses this November as well as Senators Clinton and/or Obama as prohibitive favorites to re-take the presidency.  Indeed, they retook Congress in 2006 on the heels of six years of loud, bellicose seditions and treason.  Why, then, would they become more circumspect about their Ameriphobic pacifism now, much less tack away from the neoBolshevik fringe and back towards sanity?  The logic of the current political climate argues for their becoming even more radical and nationally suicidal.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but who cares if minority House Republicans walked out in protest?  In Donk minds, they're like the dinosaurs - their day is done.  They're irrelevant, along with everything they may still stand for.  Americans have finally "gotten it," and are about to restore unified control of the federal government to the Democrats.  They've repudiated Bush, the GOP, conservatism, the "illegal" war, the Reagan legacy, the whole nine yards.  Hell, Republicans have even nominated a de facto Democrat to be their 2008 presidential dive-taker.  If that doesn't prove the ascendancy of the hard Left, what else could?

This, in turn, speaks to the foolish wishful thinking of those 'Pubbies urging ranks-closing behind Darth Queeg.  They simply have to ignore too much contrary evidence, even on national security.

Here's the tactical approach, per Mr. Patterson:

Today is another reason why those of you upset with the specter of a John McCain candidacy need to realize why this election in November does matter so much.  Obama and Clinton don't view FISA as important enough to even vote on.  In fact, Obama was there and voted for amendments to weaken the overall bill that eventually failed.  But when the final passage vote came up, Obama walked away and didn't cast a vote.  John McCain was there, and McCain voted to pass it.

1) McCain was there because he's all but clinched the GOP nomination; otherwise he'd have been on the primary campaign trail and not present to vote;

2) I'm not particularly surprised that Sailor voted for the "bipartisan" Senate version of the FISA reform bill, since it was largely gutted in order to purchase passage - in essence, it's the intelligence equivalent of the one-eyed man being king of the blind (which would be the House version).  One can only speculate where McCain would have landed if the Senate bill hadn't been gutted and had led to a partisan showdown instead.  Though I know where my betting money would lie.  As it is, his vote can be dismissed as politically motivated at zero cost to his White House ambitions or his raucously cultivated "maverick" reputation.

Ex-Romneylan Preator Hewitt takes the strategic route:

Chris Cillizza assesses some of the reasons behind yesterday's news, as well as some interesting details of how [the Romney endorsement of McCain] came to occur.

But he and many other commentators skip over the most important explanation - the one that will gather even the Arizona senator's toughest critics into his camp over time: The need for a president committed to pursuing victory in the war across each of its many fronts trumps every other difference, no matter how many or how deep.  It is that simple.  If you believe Senators Obama and Clinton, they fundamentally fail to understand the consequences of withdrawal in Iraq or the contours of the menace in Iran.  Neither appears to grasp the jihadist threat.  Senator McCain does.  Because Mitt Romney cares deeply about the safety and security of the country, he was certain to endorse Senator McCain.  That he did so quickly is a testament to the starkness of the choice facing America, McCain's complete commitment to victory, and Romney's understanding of the stakes.

Romney's understanding of the stakes for his 2012 presidential bid, you mean.  Plasticman endorsed McCain for the same reason he quit the race: he doesn't want to bury himself in preclusion of a future comeback attempt.  It's that simple.

As to McCain's "complete commitment to victory," that's...well, maybe not complete BS, but mostly so.  The facts - which Hugh himself was flogging like a wildman just a few weeks ago - are that Senator McCain is functionally AWOL on homeland security, being stridenly opposed as he is to interrogation of captured jihadis, in favor of lavishing them with constitutional rights, and bitterly against border control and for another blanket immigration amnesty, all of which would be a "complete" allah-send to al Qaeda.  There's also not inconsiderable doubt, given his Rumsfeldphobia, as to whether a President McCain would have pulled the trigger on Operation Iraqi Freedom.  And remember in the reference to his flip-flop from initial foe of Balkans intervention to wild-eyed interventionist that that was precisely the time - the mid-to-late 1990s - when McCain was devolving from a true "footsoldier in the Reagan Revolution" to the nefarious, lefty-embracing Darth Queeg.  He underwent that devolution in support of a left-wing Democrat president.

John McCain, in short, is not committed to victory.  He will say that he is, because it is evidently dawning on him how tough a general election sell his nomination will be to most conservatives who, Double-H's party hackery swatted aside, know better than to believe an ostensibly partisan word that comes out of his mouth.  But once he was elected, his pandering to the Right would end, and he'd litter the Executive Branch with center-left advisors who would produce policy indistinguishable from that of a Rodham/Obama administration.

That's why congressional Democrats are so gleefully and openly running interference for Osama bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, et al: they know that even if they're wrong about a majority of the country supporting their defeatist stance on the war (or any other issue), there won't be any political consequences for it.  Their majorites are destined to expand, and even if the Republicans miraculously manage to hold onto the White House, it will be in name only.

You want to know what's truly astonishing and unbelievable?  The only hope for the longer-term survival of America as we have known it - by which I mean returning the Congress to GOP control, as the presidency is gone either way - may be another 9/11 before Election Day as a direct result of Crazy Nancy's game-playing on FISA reform.

Which is why she'll probably allow a vote on the bill next week.  Late on Friday or Saturday night when press attention will be minimal.

That's just the way the game is played.