Right on, Sen. Feingold. This is truly sickening. The Democratic party establishment are just a grotesque parody of a genuine and much needed political opposition in this country. This latest sell-out might just be the last straw (that and the Hackett debacle).

If Democrats aren’t going to stand up to an executive who tramples on the rights of innocent Americans, what do we stand for?

It seemed like a watershed moment for the Democratic Party. At the end of 2005, Democrats, along with a small band of Republicans, stopped a bad Patriot Act reauthorization bill in its tracks. For me, it was gratifying to have so many in my party openly share — and act on — the concerns I had voiced about the Patriot Act back in 2001. But, more importantly, Democrats had decided to stand up to the White House’s scare tactics and stand for protecting the rights of law-abiding Americans. Finally, Democrats were refusing to be intimidated by suggestions that protecting our freedoms is inconsistent with fighting terrorism aggressively. This moment was long overdue.

Unfortunately, it was also short-lived. Just two months later, a number of Democrats have agreed to support a reauthorization of the Patriot Act that is basically the same as the deal we rejected in December, and doesn’t solve any of the significant problems with the law that Democrats claimed they were concerned about.

Read Sen. Feingold’s full piece in Salon