A few nights ago, Bill Maher guest-hosted Larry King and made a statement that surprised me: that he’s OK with warrantless searches if it’s in the name of fighting terrorism. But one problem with Maher is that he doesn’t always do his research. And he’s not alone–I’ve been hearing a lot of people say the same thing. And everyone who’s said this obviously has not studied the matter or has otherwise bought into the Bush administration BS. The fact is: the warrants in no way, shape, or form hindered or delayed the legitimate search for terrorists. The retroactive 72-hour warrant allowed for immediate eavesdropping. The court approved more than 99.9% of all requests for warrants, and only objected to a few minor technicalities. The FISA court in no way hindered the intelligence-gathering that could have stopped 9/11–that was the fault of the Bush administration in not asking for the warrants in the first place. Hell, even Arlen Specter can see it was unnecessary and illegal.

But the right wing is excellent at lying, at making the public believe patent untruths. Almost as good as they are at corruption. Tom DeLay is now well on his way to prison, and his well-gerrymandered home district knows it–only 28% would vote for him. Republican poster boy for honesty Bob Ney is going up the river with DeLay–not just for taking bribes from Abramoff, but also for lobbying for Iran (where are all the conservatives who claimed Gore took money from Buddhists?). Who’ll replace DeLay? Already the Republicans are eating their own, with Shadegg accusing Blunt and Boehner of being tied to the lobbying scandals–and the media is starting to pay close attention to Blunt, who claims he’s locked up the leadership position. Even Ralph Reed is going down.

So, with all this and Bush at 39%, do the Democrats have a shot at gaining control of Congress next year? Bizarrely enough, that’s far from a lock. The Dems should have it all sewn up, but are still so damned timid that they’re not giving the people too much of an alternative. The Democrats should have put their foot down with Alito, daring the Republicans to trigger the nuclear option, whilst pouring out a river of outrage over the Congressional corruption and government spying in the media. I’m still waiting for them to grow some big brass ones. Until that happens, I am not overly hopeful that the Republicans’ overt corruption and lawbreaking will be enough to repulse a public which seems ready to accept all that out of apathy and fear.