Where Was Patty?

Friday night's Senate vote on the amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was, according to the Democrats who spoke so forcefully against it, a repeal of the Fourth Amendment even while striking damage to a number of other constitutional provisions from which our country will never recover. They argued that the vote was the most important of the year and of the country's history. A number of them argued that it empowered the devils incarnate—Bush, Cheney and Gonzales—to ride roughshod over a fearful populace.

Given its overriding importance, I was amazed to see that Washington's senior senator (now that's hard to write!), Patty Murray, was absent from the vote.

I wonder what took her attention away?

There was a time when Washington could boast two fairly impressive senators. Even when the pairing was reduced to Slade and Patty, we could at least comfort ourselves that the two averaged out somewhere near a median Senate IQ. Now, however, the less said about IQ the better. Even as the invisible rheostat has dimmed the Senate chandelier generally, our two bulbs lead handily in the race to dimness.