The Political Chase

Senate Rejects Patriot Act Renewal

The Senate rejected the Patriot Act renewal legislation. That’s two strikes against Bush in a week.

Tags : Patriot+Act, Senate

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How the president deals with CIA leaks

The president clearly operates with a double standard when it comes to unauthorized disclosures of classified information. If Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney or others within the president’s inner circle release information, Bush stands still, makes no comment – just like a deer that has just been “struck” with light. After a few moments, he quietly goes back to whatever it is he does and it’s not an issue to be dealt with.

But, let the release of classified information just be assumed to come from a source other than the boys, he takes swift and decisive action.

Reportedly “furious” about what he apparently believed to be unauthorized disclosures of classified information by Congress, President Bush on Oct. 5, 2001, ordered that the provision of classified information and sensitive law enforcement information be restricted to the Republican and Democratic leaders of both the Senate and House, and to the chairmen and ranking members of the two congressional intelligence committees. Until the President issued his order, and in keeping with prior practice, all Members of the intelligence committees had access to most such information. Bush agreed to rescind his order after several days, following a personal telephone conversation between the President and Sen. Bob Graham, then-chairman of the Senate’s intelligence committee, and after negotiations between White House staff and Graham.¹

The president needs to be questioned about his double standard.
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1. See Bob Woodward, Bush at War, pp. 198-199. (Simon and Schuster); See also Congressional Research Service to Sen. Diane Feinstein “Congress as a Consumer of Intelligence Information” http://feinstein.senate.gov/crs-intel.htm (last visited December 16, 2005).

Tags : George+Bush, CIA, leaks, classified+information, Plamegate, Politics

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Slip Slidin’ Away

Absolutely unbelievable. How friggin’ stupid is this? Or was it stupidity – think about it.

From CNN:

Iraqi security forces caught the most wanted man in the country last year, but released him because they didn’t know who he was, the Iraqi deputy minister of interior said Thursday.

Hussain Kamal confirmed that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — the al Qaeda in Iraq leader who has a $25 million bounty on his head — was in custody at some point last year, but he wouldn’t provide further details.

Tags : Iraq, Zarqawi, war+on+terror

Bush Lied About National Intelligence

The President and his partner in crime, Dick Cheney, have said repeatedly all over the globe that Congress saw the same intelligence information he/they did. They have tried to put the decision making process on an equal plane, with the objective of defending themselves personally, ad nauseam.

Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) took them to task over the issue and had the non-partisan Congressional Research Service investigate the administration’s claims. The report is back. George Bush and Dick Cheney have been proven to be liars again.

Read the report.

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Doesn’t Sound Good

This doesn’t sound good.

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny.

Bush Allows Domestic Spying by NSA

This one could be big. The New York Times has released a 10–page (online) article that says, without required court approval, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on people within the United States.

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval represents a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.

I have only read the first four paragraphs, therefore I don’t know what all it entails. Since it is 10 pages long, I decided to post this first, and will discuss it a little later. Must be big – this is the first 10 page news article I have seen the Times do.

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