According to the New York Times, some Democratic senators do:
In one pointed exchange, Senator Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, a Democrat, asked Mr. Negroponte whether there were any other intelligence programs that had not been revealed to the full intelligence committees.
The intelligence chief hesitated, then replied, “Senator, I don’t know if I can answer that in open session.”
A similarly revealing sparring session came when Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, pressed the intelligence officials about whether a controversial Pentagon data-mining program called Total Information Awareness had been effectively transferred to the intelligence agencies after being shut down by Congress.
Mr. Negroponte and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, both said they did not know. Then came the turn of Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who headed N.S.A. for six years before becoming the principal deputy director of national intelligence last spring.
“Senator,” General Hayden said, “I’d like to answer in closed session.”
Well, doesn’t that just want to make you send out a big hey-howdy to all the big brother types sniffing your IP packets?
What an interesting strategy — if Congress says no to a defense intelligence project, move it more directly into the Executive branch, and claim that war powers overrides Congress’ prohibition.