| Wednesday, February 08, 2006 |
| Karl Rove Blacklist Entry No. (unknown) |
The Republican chairwoman of the House committee that oversees the NSA -- and the only female veteran in Congress -- has broken with the administration and called for a full Congressional inquiry into the NSA domestic spying program. According to the NYT:
The lawmaker, Representative Heather A. Wilson of New Mexico, chairwoman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, said in an interview that she had "serious concerns" about the surveillance program. By withholding information about its operations from many lawmakers, she said, the administration has deepened her apprehension about whom the agency is monitoring and why.
Ms. Wilson, who was a National Security Council aide in the administration of President Bush's father, is the first Republican on either the House's Intelligence Committee or the Senate's to call for a full Congressional investigation into the program, in which the N.S.A. has been eavesdropping without warrants on the international communications of people inside the United States believed to have links with terrorists.
The congresswoman's discomfort with the operation appears to reflect deepening fissures among Republicans over the program's legal basis and political liabilities. Many Republicans have strongly backed President Bush's power to use every tool at his disposal to fight terrorism, but 4 of the 10 Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voiced concerns about the program at a hearing where Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales testified on Monday.
The right wing position on domestic spying is ultimately untenable, on legal grounds, on Constitutional grounds and on common sense grounds (how do you know the program is not being abused if no one outside the administration is overseeing it? Simply taking the president's word for it flies in the face of logic, history and the barest responsibilities of the Congress and judiciary.) A growing number of Republicans are coming to that conclusion, too. And what happens if -- or when -- we ultimately find out that for all their defensiveness, the administration did, even once, use information gleaned from its vast upsweep of information, against a political opponent, or to monitor a member of the press or even a member of Congress? What will be the justification then?
Tags: politics, News, Bush, national security, NSA, government, spying, president, hearings, impeachment |
posted by JReid @ 10:43 AM   |
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