…and this is the treatment you should expect: Despite rolling over for Dubya on his formerly-illegal wiretaps, the Senate still put up a show of outrage after Karl Rove simply skips a Senate hearing on the persecuted prosecutors scandal. (Citing executive privilege once again, Dubya instead dispatched a lower-level flunkie, Scott Jennings, to the meet.) “The privilege claim can be challenged in court. But Specter has said the courts would be unlikely to resolve any challenge before Bush leaves office.“
Tag: Surveillance
Steel yourself, America.
In a document dump of both exhilarating and terrifying proportions, the CIA announced it will release its “family jewels” next week: close to 700 pages of documents chronicling secret Agency activity from the fifties to the seventies. (A preview of what’s to come includes reports of detentions, wiretapping, surveillance, and other sordid current administration favorites.) “CIA Director Michael Hayden on Thursday called the documents being released next week unflattering, but he added that ‘it is CIA’s history.’ ‘The documents provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency,’ Hayden told a conference of historians.” Hmm, we’ll see.
Nope, can’t have those either.
Think I’m being shrill? Ok, here’s another: After listening to former Attorney General John Ashcroft discuss internal differences over Dubya’s illegal surveillance program yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13-3 to issue subpoenas for White House and Justice Department documents regarding the eavesdropping system. “The White House made no move to comply.“
Above the Law.
“The story isn’t who picked on a sick guy or even who did or didn’t break laws. The story is who gets to decide what’s legal. And the president’s now-familiar claim, a la Richard Nixon, is that it’s never illegal when he does it.” Dahlia Lithwick drives home the disturbing message of last week’s Comey revelations. And, also in Slate, Frank Bowman offers another reason why Alberto Gonzales should be impeached: the firing of David Iglesias. Update: In related news, Specter thinks Gonzales will soon quit, particularly if the Senate passes a no-confidence vote on him. (The White House, thus far, disagrees.)
A Mockery of Justice.
“James B. Comey, the straight-as-an-arrow former No. 2 official at the Justice Department, yesterday offered the Senate Judiciary Committee an account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source.” By way of Medley, the WP blanches at a ridiculous attempt by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to secure warrantless wiretaps against the will of the Justice Department. “Having failed, they were willing to defy the conclusions of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and pursue the surveillance without Justice’s authorization. Only in the face of the prospect of mass resignations — Mr. Comey, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and most likely Mr. Ashcroft himself — did the president back down.“
A Chicken in every pot, a plunger in every terrorist.
“If one of them gets elected, it sounds to me like we’re going on the defense. We’ve got a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. We’re going to wave the white flag there. We’re going to try to cut back on the Patriot Act. We’re going to cut back on electronic surveillance. We’re going to cut back on interrogation. We’re going to cut back, cut back, cut back, and we’ll be back in our pre-September 11 mentality of being on defense.” Meanwhile in related news, Rudy Giuliani lapses into aggro fearmonger mode to try to shore up his right-wing cred. That accompanying giant sucking sound you might hear is all of Hizzoner’s legitimately-earned but now hopelessly squandered Churchillian cred going right out the window…He seems to have reverted to his true colors much earlier than I anticipated. Said Barack Obama, correctly, of Rudy’s pathetic stunt, “[Giuliani has] taken the politics of fear to a new low…We know we can win this war based on shared purpose, not the same divisive politics that question your patriotism if you dare to question failed policies that have made us less secure. The threat we face is real, and deserves better than to be the punchline of another political attack.” Touche.
Are You on the List?
“The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it. At any stage, the process can lead to ‘horror stories’ of mixed-up names and unconfirmed information, Travers acknowledged.” The WP plunges into the rising TIDE (Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment), a.k.a. the terrorist watch list that has quadrupled in size over the past four years. (And, here I thought we were winning the war on terror.) “Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said last year that his wife had been delayed repeatedly while airlines queried whether Catherine Stevens was the watch-listed Cat Stevens.“
The GOP’s Finest.
“It was a running joke that some of the new faces were 25- to 32-year-old males asking, ‘First name, last name?'” A front-page story in today’s NYT discloses that the NYPD spied on possible RNC protesters for over a year before the 2004 convention, including several unlikely candidates — such as Billionaires for Bush — for anything other than lawful political protest. “‘The police have no authority to spy on lawful political activity, and this wide-ranging N.Y.P.D. program was wrong and illegal,’ Mr. Dunn [of the ACLU] said. ‘In the coming weeks, the city will be required to disclose to us many more details about its preconvention surveillance of groups and activists, and many will be shocked by the breadth of the Police Department’s political surveillance operation.’”
The Ghost of J. Edgar.
“‘We concluded that many of the problems we identified constituted serious misuse of the FBI’s national security letter authorities,’ Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said in the report.” A Justice Department audit finds the FBI has been systematically misusing NSA letters to procure personal information without a court order, prompting a mea culpa from director Robert Mueller and the prospect of possible hearings into the matter. “‘It appears that the administration has used these powers without even the most basic regard for privacy of innocent Americans,’ [Sen. Dick] Durbin said in a statement.“
Power Mad.
“In some sense, the president is now as much a prisoner of Guantanamo as the detainees…The endgame in the war on terror isn’t holding the line against terrorists. It’s holding the line on hard-fought claims to absolutely limitless presidential authority.” Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick discerns the method in Dubya’s madness on the civil liberties front: “expanding executive power, for its own sake.“