Democrats To Widen Conflict With Bush

The White House has also vowed to block two separate House bills that would extend whistle-blower protections to national security and rail security workers.

But it is the legislation coming down the pike that promises the real fireworks. Most Republicans are convinced the president will win his veto standoff over House and Senate war spending bills that would impose mandatory troop withdrawals from Iraq.

"It's going to be like the government shutdowns" of 1995 and 1996, predicted Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.). "The Democrats' honeymoon is fixing to end. It's going to explode like an IED."

That would slow their momentum as they challenge Bush on the territory he has made his political fortune on: terrorism. But Democrats are undaunted in their demands to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. They also want to reopen last year's law creating military commissions to restore the right of habeas corpus to terrorism suspects and to revise rules that allow convictions to be based in part on evidence yielded by interrogation methods that critics call torture.

"We have a very consequential and just system of justice. To create a system that is a dual system but not just is not acceptable, and that's Guantanamo," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

Democratic leadership aides are most skittish about the Patriot Act, saying they would only temper it by eliminating a provision that allows the indefinite appointment of U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation and by tightening the FBI's use of "national security letters" to obtain private information about U.S. citizens.

For Republicans, such legislative gambits could prove to be a political gift. When reports first surfaced of plans to close Guantanamo Bay and send terrorism suspects to military prisons in the United States, Republicans accused Democrats of planning to import terrorists to U.S. soil. Even after Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates suggested he could support the idea, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) pressed the attack Friday.

"The idea that we would import dangerous terrorists, like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, into American communities is dangerous," Hunter said at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, of which he is the ranking GOP member.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) has already raised the specter of justice grinding to a halt as terrorists use their access to federal courts under the right of habeas corpus to blitz the judicial system with lawsuits.

And Cole, the Oklahoma Republican, warned Democrats not to tamper with the national security laws that Bush secured after the 2001 terrorist attacks. "Americans don't want to reopen the programs that have protected them since 9/11," he said.