NYT Editorial: The Death of the Intelligence Panel

[Pirate Smile]

The Death of the Intelligence Panel

Published: March 9, 2006

-snip-
The Senate panel has become so paralyzingly partisan that it could not even manage to do its basic job this week and look into President Bush's warrantless spying on Americans' international e-mail and phone calls. Senator Pat Roberts, the chairman, said Tuesday that there would be no investigation. Instead, the committee's Republicans voted to create a new subcommittee that is supposed to get reports from the White House on any future warrantless surveillance.

It's breathtakingly cynical. Faced with a president who is almost certainly breaking the law, the Senate creates a panel to watch him do it and calls that control. This new Senate plan is being presented as a way to increase the supervision of intelligence gathering while giving the spies needed flexibility. But it does no such thing.
The Republicans' idea of supervision involves saying the White House should get a warrant for spying whenever possible. Currently a warrant is needed, period. And that's the right law. The White House has not offered a scrap of evidence that it interferes with antiterrorist operations. Mr. Bush simply decided the law did not apply to him.

It was no surprise that Mr. Roberts led this retreat. He's been blocking an investigation into the domestic spying operation for weeks, just as he has been stonewalling a promised investigation into how the White House hyped the intelligence on Iraq. But it was disappointing to see a principled Republican like Senator Olympia Snowe go along. The Democrats are not blameless, either. Too often, their positions seem like campaign tactics, and Senator John Rockefeller IV fumbled by not consulting Ms. Snowe, who is up for re-election and under intense White House pressure.

But the Republicans deserve the lion's share of the blame. It was Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney who hyped the intelligence on Iraq — and the Senate Republicans who helped them evade accountability. And it was Mr. Bush who approved the warrantless wiretapping, which is part of Mr. Cheney's crusade to expand presidential powers. (Unlike the rest of us, Mr. Cheney thought the lesson of Watergate was that the president was not strong enough.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/09/opinion/09thur1.html?hp

[Nomen Tuum]

1. but the front page of the SCREW YORK TIMES says it's OK

Incredible, the front page of this rag gives pass after pass to Bush and the "editorial" page wacks Bush.

[wug37]

2. Faced with a president who is almost certainly breaking the law

It would have been better if they had just come out and said that he was indeed breaking the law, but this may be about as good as we can get from the media.

[fencesitter]

3. Oh geez, dontcha know..

If you want a senate investigation or a special prosecutor you have to do something really illegal or serious like lie about having an affair.

[teryang]

4. oversight of intelligence has been ineffective for decades

We didn't get to a police state in just five years.