Cheney rallies Rethuglicans against Specter

The NY Times reports this morning that Dick Cheney huddled with all the Rethuglican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee except Arlen Specter and got them to agree to shun Specter because of his anti-White House views on the NSA spying programs. He was not even invited to caucus meetings. This apparently explains the decision not to force Telco executives to testify.

Specter's response was to send a whiney, wimpy letter of complaint to Cheney.

If, instead, he switched his vote, there might be a nine-to-nine tie, with the eight Democrats and Specter on one side and the nine Thugs on the other. That probably would not be sufficient for the Committee to act, but at least it would make a statement.

I don't think I feel much better about Specter after learning this than I did before. Oh, well, maybe just a little better:

In a letter to Mr. Cheney that the senator released to the news media, Mr. Specter said the vice president had cut him out of discussions with all the other Republicans on his own committee about oversight of the administration's eavesdropping programs, a subject on which Mr. Specter has often been at odds with the White House.

The trigger for Mr. Specter's anger was a deal made by Mr. Cheney with the other Republicans on the committee to block testimony from phone companies that reportedly cooperated in providing call records to the National Security Agency.