A somewhat stunning admission comes from Arlen Specter today with regards to the president's illegal wiretapping program.

Specter also agreed with Democrats who say that any of the bills to tighten guidelines for the National Security Agency program and increase congressional oversight could be flatly ignored by an administration with a long history of acting alone in security matters.

"It is true that we have no assurance that the president would follow any statute that we enact," Specter said. He said he's considering adding an amendment to stop funding of the program to an Iraq war-hurricane relief bill being debated by the Senate this week and next.

So now they're even admitting publicly that they are a do-nothing, irrelevant body. That's great. They don't even think about passing legislation to restrict the president's activities, because they know they have no power to affect anything he does. Unitary executive is no longer a hypothetical, it is now practice.