Yesterday, the Executive Branch faced off with the Legislative Branch.  The Senators blinked.

In cases of domestic surveillance, FISA requires that, before granting a warrant, a FISA judge must find probable cause to believe that the American targeted for surveillance -- not the overseas party -- is an agent of a foreign power or terrorist organization.

It's clear Bush's secret NSA eavesdropping program doesn't measure up to FISA requirements and, today, after eavesdropping on thousands of Americans for the past four years, how many terrorist suspects have intelligence officers prosecuted?

Executive Branch officials have publicly argued for weeks that FISA was too "cumbersome and burdensome" for the secret NSA spy program to proceed in a timely manner and have tried to refocus attention on the necessity for  the program in the name of national security.

Attorney General Gonzales argued than Congress's Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) provided adequate authority for the Administration's actions and he unexpectedly reversed his field by expressing support for FISA.

Now, it's the best of laws and the worst of laws! However, it was clear to the Senators that, by contending FISA was fine, as is -- requiring no amendments to accommodate the warrantless NSA program -- the Executive Branch had adroitly dodged the charge that it had violated the FISA law. Take that Co-equal Branch!

After the requisite indignant bombast -- in particular, asserting in no uncertain terms that the AUMF did not authorize the President to initiate the secret NSA program -- the Senators danced around the secret NSA program to avoid the appearance of undermining national security.

At the end of the day, the Committee had heard no witnesses other than Gonzales. It heard no new details of the secret NSA spying program that it was supposed to be inquiring about. And no request was filed for the Justice Department's internal legal memorandums about the legality of the NSA program.

Gonzales' dance on FISA makes the Administration's defense of the NSA program seem all the more like a power grab. The most important thing isn't to make sure that the agency has undisputed legal authority to spy, it's to make sure that Congress doesn't tell the president what he can and can't do.

And the bedrock democratic groundrules have changed.

Cooperation among government entities to promote and protect the public's welfare has been replaced by gamesmanship.

Truth is another casuality. Senator Spector's refusal to require sworn testimony from the Attorney General created a brouhaha but swearing "to tell nothing but the truth, so help me God" didn't prevent Gonzales from lying in his confirmation hearings about his knowledge of the very program he's now defending.

So, what's a responsible representative of the people to do? If Congress doesn't take back some of its war powers soon, there won't be anything left to fight over.

Most Americans would consider this a potential Constitutional Crisis. Others would label that thought "Liberal".