Oh my, the blogs and media generally have lite up today with the news of a bit of a Republican rebellion in Congress.

WASHINGTON - A rebellious Senate committee defied President Bush on Thursday and approved terror-detainee legislation he has vowed to block, deepening Republican conflict over terrorism and national security in the middle of election season.

...

The internal GOP struggle intensified along other fronts, too, as Colin Powell, Bush's first secretary of state, declared his opposition to the president's plan.

"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," Powell, a retired general who is also a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in a letter.

Add to this the apparent foot dragging on the Spectre of FISA elimination and legalizing Bush illegal wiretapping, and you have a pretty good basis to assume Republicans are concerned about public opinion.

Pardon me for being skeptical. I've been waiting for a patriot, to no avail, for several years through some of the greatest executive abuses in the history of the U.S. I can't help but believe that Bush, Frist, Hasert et. al. (including Graham and McCain) won't find a way to make this a Republican victory. The Dems had better be gearing up for filibuster, just in case the current behind-the-lines joshling turns into a frontal attack.

While I'm at it, I have a couple other things to write. First, didn't the Supreme Court say that Bush's tribunals/detainee policies were "unconstitutional"? As I read it, that means that even if Congress passes a law saying it's "legal", that doesn't make it so unless there is an amendment to the constitution? Help me out if I'm missing something here.

Second, I've been listening to the conservatives make their key point about the tribunals, namely that if we torture folks it opens our guys to being tortured. I've always been a offended by this argument. While it's true, isn't it a cop-out to the real reason we shouldn't torture ..... like .... it's wrong? The party of morality and values uses the logic of "I can speed as long as I don't get a ticket" argument to validate their position against torture. Don't get me wrong, at this point I'd take whatever support against brutality I can get. But as the cool bloggers would say:

I'm just sayin' ........