Why in the world, other than to damage Bush at the expense of the national interest, would Leahy aid and comfort the Al Qaeda propaganda machine by saying Bush is spying on little old ladies in the United States instead of suspected international terrorists? Leahy certainly isn't doing it to vindicate the Constitution. It's just a wild guess, but I doubt that many Quakers are on the average Jihadist's Rolodex.

Leahy and other Democrats conveniently cite the Constitution on the NSA issue for the same reason they accuse Bush of authorizing torture when Bush has expressly denied it and when he's made it clear that torture is not the administration's policy. Their statements are designed to damage the Bush administration.

Let's admit Bush and Republicans favor tougher interrogation techniques than do Democrats. How could it be otherwise, given the Democrats' knee-jerk propensity to sympathize with the plight of the enemy combatant, their tendency to take the Guantanomo terrorist detainees' word over the Bush administration on how the detainees are being treated, and their reckless desire to afford full-blown constitutional rights to such detainees?

On that point, seriously, how can Leahy and friends, with straight faces, contend it is the Constitution they are vindicating when they want it to apply with full force to enemy combatants? How can anyone take these people seriously about their allegiance to constitutional principles when they are the ones who champion twisting the Constitution to achieve any policy end -- like the promotion of abortion rights?

Yet Leahy had the audacity to claim, in the Politico interview, that the Roberts Supreme Court, in rolling back some of the liberal activist decisions of the Court, has become "an arm of the Republican Party."

Black is white and white is black. Just repeat a distortion often enough and it moves from laughable to possibly believable to conventional wisdom. That's Leahy's and the Democrats' m.o. They are constitutionalists, all right, as long as being or saying so serves their political interests.