Senators' Shame

New York's senators, Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, who started out with votes in favor of the war in Iraq and in favor of funds to fight it, are chickening out now in the choice between defending America and enriching the trial lawyers. That was the message of yesterday's vote on amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Centrist Democrats such as Senators Bayh, Feinstein, Lincoln, McCaskill, Webb, and even the post-primary Barack Obama voted in favor of the amendments, which authorize the Bush administration to do something it already has a constitutional right to do, which is listen to phone calls between suspected Al Qaeda members abroad and the individuals with whom they are speaking in America. Mr. Schumer and Mrs. Clinton joined with the minority of hard leftists — Barbara Boxer, Bernie Sanders, Russell Feingold — who opposed the amendments.

The legislation passed yesterday also provides retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies, such as New York-based Verizon, that facilitated the administration's wiretapping. That is trouble for trial lawyers, who hope that the phone companies are the next tobacco, asbestos, silicone breast implants-style target for a class action legal-fee jackpot. Back in the voting over the Iraq War, both Mr. Schumer and Mrs. Clinton spoke movingly of their special responsibility as the senators representing ground zero, where the terrorists took so many lives.

Now, less than seven short years later, they have gotten to the point of putting the agenda of the trial lawyers ahead of protecting our country by allowing the administration to listen to the terrorists' telephone calls. Mr. Schumer and Mrs. Clinton have wound up to the left of Mr. Obama, which is no doubt why they are stuck in the Senate and he stands a good chance of being the next president of America, a position in which he will want every power he can get to keep Americans, including New Yorkers, safe and to preserve and defend our Constitution.