A week ago, I advised readers to watch for cosponsorship of Jane Harman’s bills to shut down the National Applications Office. It turns out that there hasn’t been that much to watch: Not one single member of the House of Representatives has added a cosponsorship to H.R. 2703 or to H.R. 2704.

That’s alarming, given that there’s a consensus among members of the House of Representatives that the Obama Administration has failed to address congressional concerns that the National Applications Office violates the civil liberties of American citizens. The National Applications Office takes information gathered by satellites, including military spy satellites, and coordinates the distribution of that information to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

That’s a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, and Posse Comitatus laws that forbid the military from engaging in civilian law enforcement activities. So why aren’t the Democrats doing anything about it?

David Price, chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, has acknowledged that the National Applications Office seems to violate the constitutional rights of Americans. Yet, in the Homeland Security Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2010, the National Applications Office is not listed as among the programs that are being cut or significantly reduced in funding. Why? On Friday, there was a markup session for the legislation, with the opportunity to eliminate funding for the satellite spy operations against American citizens. Why did the Democrats on the Price’s subcommittee fail to act?

Norman Dicks, co-author of H.R. 2703, is on the appropriations homeland security committee. Did he fail to request an elimination of National Applications Office funding, or did the subcommittee vote against such a request? Only a summary of Friday’s markup session is provided by the committee, so it’s difficult to tell.

It isn’t as if the committee refrained from cutting anything at all from the Homeland Security budget. For example, regional catastrophic preparedness grants, to help state and local governments deal with disasters, were eliminated completely. If these grants could be eliminated, why couldn’t the National Applications Office be defunded as well, as H.R.2703 would do?

The only answer I can come up with is that Congress is uninterested in protecting the constitutional rights of Americans. They’re content to let Big Brother satellite spying programs against Americans continue.