Justice Opens Probe into NSA Leaks

"Liberal outrage" seems to be more accurately described as "American outrage" for future reference.

That's sig material!

 

If the point is about polls, which you apparently think is important based on your previous post about poll numbers for this issue, then yes, the fact that Bush gets low marks in everything should be important news to you.

 

You'd prefer a less-than-open nomination confirmation without all the facts? It amazes me when people think it would be better had we not known and simply confirmed him with less information. It sounds like a serious distrust of the American people.

 

LOL, what the hell are you even talking about? You think USA Today is part of a sinister conspiracy?

The incompetence and corruption of Porter "John" Goss and Dusty and 9-Fingaz, which is par for the course from this admin, is the reason why we're having Hayden's nomination in the first place. GWB29 only has himself to blame for this.

 

Frank Rich seems to agree with you Sam.

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Frank Rich in 'NYT' Defends Newspapers, Rips 'Traitors' in Washington

NEW YORK In his Sunday opinion column for The New York Times, Frank Rich, who returned from book leave just last week, shook off the cobwebs to launch a vigorous defense of newspapers -- and an attack on the real "traitors," including top officials.

Rich opens by recalling charges of treasons against the late New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal when he published the Pentagon Papers in 1971. "Today we know who the real traitors were: the officials who squandered American blood and treasure on an ill-considered war and then tried to cover up their lies and mistakes," Rich observes.

Now history is repeat itself, as the Bush administration and tis defenders "are desperate to deflect blame" for the Iraq fiasco, "and, guess what, the traitors once again are The Times and The Post. This time the newspapers committed the crime of exposing warrantless spying on Americans by the National Security Agency (The Times) and the C.I.A.'s secret 'black site' Eastern European prisons (The Post). Aping the Nixon template, the current White House tried to stop both papers from publishing and when that failed impugned their patriotism....

"When reporters at both papers were awarded Pulitzer Prizes last month, administration surrogates, led by bloviator in chief William Bennett, called for them to be charged under the 1917 Espionage Act.

"We can see this charade for what it is: a Hail Mary pass by the leaders who bungled a war and want to change the subject to the journalists who caught them in the act. What really angers the White House and its defenders about both the Post and Times scoops are not the legal questions the stories raise about unregulated gulags and unconstitutional domestic snooping, but the unmasking of yet more administration failures in a war effort riddled with ineptitude. It's the recklessness at the top of our government, not the press's exposure of it, that has truly aided the enemy, put American lives at risk and potentially sabotaged national security. That's where the buck stops, and if there's to be a witch hunt for traitors, that's where it should begin."

Rich also suggests that perhaps the recently exposed NSA database on phone records "may have more to do with monitoring 'traitors' like reporters and leakers than with tracking terrorists. Journalists and whistle-blowers who relay such government blunders are easily defended against the charge of treason. It's often those who make the accusations we should be most worried about. Mr. Goss, a particularly vivid example, should not escape into retirement unexamined. He was so inept that an overzealous witch hunter might mistake him for a Qaeda double agent."

He closes with a denunciation of Gen. Michael Hayden for new CIA chief, based on his leadership at NSA. "If Democrats — and, for that matter, Republicans — let a president with a Nixonesque approval rating install yet another second-rate sycophant at yet another security agency, even one as diminished as the C.I.A.," Rich declares, "someone should charge those senators with treason, too. "

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002502419

To continue reading this article, you must be a subscriber to TimesSelect.

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/tsc.h...kxQ2AXlltQ2AlfQ2Ab8Q2AkQ7CGLGkLQ2Ab8IGArMrx4Y

 

I know, right? Shameful!

Dont know how dead eye and Jr are taking it. What a bad review!

 

Senator slams Cheney for lobbying Congress on wiretaps


In a terse and highly unusual letter to Vice President Cheney, Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) today rejected the Bush administration’s insistence that a secret wire tapping program being conducted on U.S. civilians by the National Security Agency is legal, complaining that efforts by the White House to stonewall Congressional inquiries into the program “denigrates the constitutional authority and responsibility of the Congress and specifically the Judiciary Committee to conduct oversight on constitutional issues," ROLL CALL reports Wednesday.

#
Specter’s anger peaked Tuesday after he learned that Cheney had been lobbying Republican members of the committee to “oppose any Judiciary Committee hearing, even a closed one” that involved telephone companies that have cooperated with the NSA. “I was surprised, to the say the least, that you sought to influence, really determine, the action of the Committee without calling me first, or at least calling me at some point,” Specter wrote in the letter, adding that “this was especially perplexing since we both attended the Republicans Senators caucus lunch yesterday and I walked directly in front of you on at least two occasions en route from the buffet to my table.”

Specter has authored legislation to require the NSA program be brought under the jurisdiction of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which would require wire taps be signed off on by a judge prior to being initiated.

Specter warned Cheney that this stonewalling must end and that “if an accommodation cannot be reached ... The Judiciary Committee will consider confronting the issue with subpoenas and enforcement of that compulsory process if it appears that a majority vote will be forthcoming.”

DEVELOPING....

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Senator_slams_Cheney_for_lobbying_Congress_0607.html

 

Specter's full letter to deadeye.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/specter-cheney/?resultpage=1&