Howard Dean on FOX News Sunday & the Specter Proposal
Chairman of the Democratic National Committee Howard Dean joined Chris Wallace today to reflect on the five year anniversary of 9/11 and the war on terror.
I thought Dean did a good job but one thing bothered me; he hasn't read the Specter proposal. HOW HAS HE NOT READ THE SPECTER PROPOSAL? Or at least Glenn Greenwald like Senator Feingold?
The Specter-WH "compromise" would effectively legalize the President's illegal wiretapping. It's allows the secret FISA court to determine the programs legality even though federal courts have already ruled that it is illegal. For christs sake, FISA Judge James Robertson resigned in protest last December after the NSA story broke.
From ABC News:
"A federal judge has resigned from a special court set up to oversee government surveillance, apparently in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program on people with suspected terrorist ties.
U.S. District Judge James Robertson would not comment Wednesday on his resignation, but The Washington Post reported that it stemmed from deep concern that the surveillance program Bush authorized was legally questionable and may have tainted the work of the court."
The last thing we want is a secret court overseeing a secret program of a secret administration in secret! It's that simple. Congress and the courts have a role to play here. What we really need is for the Congress to fulfills it's constitutionally-mandated responsibility of oversight that it abdicated with the 2002 GOP-takeover and for the courts to be free from political pressure to rule honestly on the program. Congress is barred from speaking about the program but the courts have spoken quite loudly.
Wallace asks Dean if he stands by his Watergate comparison citing the difference as being that Nixon abused his power for "political purposes." That's the whole point -- noone knows WHO the President is spying on because he refuses to let Congress oversee and the courts rule on the controversial program. The only reason we knew Nixon was abusing his power to spy on political enemies was BECAUSE of the Watergate scandal.
The Democrats should be running on a platform of honesty and accountability. The Senate Intelligence Committee released a report this week that shows all of the pre-war intel was WRONG. The Democrats' own inquiry into pre-war intel failures found that it was highly manipulated and politicized. Paul Pillar, top CIA intelligence analyst, and Larry Wilkerson, right-hand-man to Colin Powell over at State, have testified to this already.
Why has noone been held accountable for mistakes that have gotten us where we are today? The incompetence excuse doesn't fly anymore.
I thought Dean did a good job but one thing bothered me; he hasn't read the Specter proposal. HOW HAS HE NOT READ THE SPECTER PROPOSAL? Or at least Glenn Greenwald like Senator Feingold?
The Specter-WH "compromise" would effectively legalize the President's illegal wiretapping. It's allows the secret FISA court to determine the programs legality even though federal courts have already ruled that it is illegal. For christs sake, FISA Judge James Robertson resigned in protest last December after the NSA story broke.
From ABC News:
"A federal judge has resigned from a special court set up to oversee government surveillance, apparently in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program on people with suspected terrorist ties.
U.S. District Judge James Robertson would not comment Wednesday on his resignation, but The Washington Post reported that it stemmed from deep concern that the surveillance program Bush authorized was legally questionable and may have tainted the work of the court."
The last thing we want is a secret court overseeing a secret program of a secret administration in secret! It's that simple. Congress and the courts have a role to play here. What we really need is for the Congress to fulfills it's constitutionally-mandated responsibility of oversight that it abdicated with the 2002 GOP-takeover and for the courts to be free from political pressure to rule honestly on the program. Congress is barred from speaking about the program but the courts have spoken quite loudly.
Wallace asks Dean if he stands by his Watergate comparison citing the difference as being that Nixon abused his power for "political purposes." That's the whole point -- noone knows WHO the President is spying on because he refuses to let Congress oversee and the courts rule on the controversial program. The only reason we knew Nixon was abusing his power to spy on political enemies was BECAUSE of the Watergate scandal.
The Democrats should be running on a platform of honesty and accountability. The Senate Intelligence Committee released a report this week that shows all of the pre-war intel was WRONG. The Democrats' own inquiry into pre-war intel failures found that it was highly manipulated and politicized. Paul Pillar, top CIA intelligence analyst, and Larry Wilkerson, right-hand-man to Colin Powell over at State, have testified to this already.
Why has noone been held accountable for mistakes that have gotten us where we are today? The incompetence excuse doesn't fly anymore.
posted by ChurchCommittee at 6:48 PM
1 Comments:
Gawd, I hate the American media, and FOX "news" worst of all. Bloody good blog, by the way. Recommend you hook up to some of the better free services; Haloscan commenting, technorati, and Sitemeter is a good start. The first allows you to control comments, stomp on trolls without making it harder for ordinary folks to comment. The other two help you to monitor your blog's growth, who links to it, how people are getting to it, etc.
It's essential to have a good message, but meaningless if no-one is listening. Check out Les Enragés at http://unrulymob.blogspot.com. We're new, we're pissed off about BushCo™, and we're gonna make our voice heard.
Post a Comment
<< Home