Craig is brilliant!

See Below for Republican leadership's support of the items you mentioned as being problematic. My point here is to point out to you that there are concerned legislators on both sides of the aisle that (i) are extreme and propose crazy ideas for political reasons or (2) are patriots that want to balance national security versus civil liberties. I lean towards national security, especially in a time of war against an enemy that is not a recognized nation state that we can engage in traditional diplomatic discussion, but think a debate is worthwhile. Thus, I would object to your characterization that "the democratic leadership" has supported weakening national security when there is a strong contingent of significant Republicans that also support similar legislation. So next time we talk, you can say that both the Republican and Democratic Leadership do x, y, and z. But, I know O'Reilly doesn't cover it when President Bush, or Lindsey Graham, or John McCain want to end torture or close Gitmo.

As for the democrats, here's an excerpt from the Democratic Leadership Counsel's web-page policy paper of the week from a few weeks ago:

Targeting the Enemy
To target the hard core of jihadists, intelligence is key. This means that the U.S. must:
Prioritize intelligence and police work. Day-to-day counterterrorism is mostly police and intelligence work, which means that continued intelligence reform is critical;
Build anti-terrorism coalitions. Breaking up terror plots requires the cooperation of foreign authorities, so good international working relationships must be a top priority;
Avoid civil liberties absolutism. The primacy of police and intelligence work means that Americans will have to make new tradeoffs between security and civil liberties;
Invest in area and language knowledge. Counterinsurgents need to have an intimate knowledge of the language, culture, and history of the host population.

(emphasis added) full article available at: http://www.ppionline.org/documents/Counterinsurgency_Doctrine-113006.pdf. I haven't read this full article either, so if its a total communist manifesto, I'm sure your point this out to me. In any event, since I haven't read it, I can't endorse it, but I didn't want to cite the executive summary without giving you the full text.