Congress is partly to blame for Bush's warrantless wiretaps

[Thom Little]

Congress is in an uproar over the Bush administration's use of warrantless wiretaps in the United States against American citizens. And well it might be. But to find the culprit, Congress has only to look in a mirror. The sad truth is that Congress does not want to exercise effective oversight of intelligence activities.

.......

The president and the attorney general have repeatedly made the point that Congress has been briefed on warrantless wiretapping a dozen times. The briefings consisted of assembling eight members of Congress out of 535: the chairmen and ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, the speaker of the House, the House minority leader, and the majority and minority leaders of the Senate. This select group was brought to the White House, sworn to secrecy even with respect to their peers on Capitol Hill, and told - not asked - about what the administration was doing. We still don't know if they were told everything.

Some of them were troubled. So far as we know, only Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D) of West Virginia was troubled enough to do anything about it. What Senator Rockefeller did was to send a handwritten letter (if his secretary had typed it, she would have learned what he had sworn not to tell her) to Vice President Dick Cheney saying he was "concerned."

Given the circumstances, was there something else Rockefeller or others in the select group could have done? For one thing, they could have refused to accept the information on the strict terms under which it was offered. They could have gone to the president himself. If they were still dissatisfied, they could have demanded a secret session of the Senate and/or House and laid the problem before their colleagues. This has been done in the past, and such sessions have been remarkably leak-free.

.......

When the intelligence committees were established in the 1970s, they put in place elaborate security procedures but did not follow through in pressing tough questions. As a House staff member once put it, "There's a marked lack of curiosity around here." That's as good a description as any of what's wrong.



http://csmonitor.com/2006/0105/p09s01-coop.html

[BrainRants]

1. As a co-equal branch of government, they share the blame equally.

As the branch of government responsible for oversight, they shoulder the majority of blame. And to take it a step further, the majority leadership has failed to uphold its constitutional duty to perform as a check on the legislative branch.

The poor public polls on their performance are well deserved.

The question is: Which party can step forward in '06 to capitalize on the lack of leadership?

[fasttense]

2. Just like when the German government gave a pass on Hitler's

grab for power. Crazy King George is in collusion with Congress.

[sandnsea]

3. This is great

We're helping the right point fingers at Democrats over the Abramoff money. Now we're helping Bush point fingers at Congress. How many freakin' times are we going to help this administration pull themselves out of the fire. Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results, insanity. Apparently the entire country needs therapy.

[HereSince1628]

4. And the People are responsible because they elected the idiots.

How many degrees out do we want to go with this?

It is really very clear that the legislators were told that revealing this information would be a national security violation.

Knowing the ruthlessness of Cheney, and the "fuck anyone who crosses" us standard operating procedure of Rove do you really think ANY Democrat would have blown the whistle?

No. People didn't want to end up in a window well with their shoes off.

Congress as a whole really cannot be responsible to monitor something that was intentionally kept hidden from them.

And even so, Bush has pledged to go on in his law-breaking ways. Even with the revelations now out in the open, Bush remains defiant.

[emulatorloo]

5. WHY DOES DU CONTINUALLY LET BUSH OFF THE HOOK?

Nothing that Bush does is ever Bush's fault on DU.

[HereSince1628]

6. That's just plain incorrect.

[emulatorloo]

8. since I came to DU I have seen 1000s of posts that blame Democrats

or Cheney or Rove or whoever for the policies and actions of George Bush.

Anybody but Bush.

Sure not every post is that way, but keep your eyes open and you will see what I mean.

The most basic of these claim that "Bush is too stupid" to be held accountable.

Others make more sophisticated/tortured arguements to prove that others are to blame.

The worst one I ever saw claimed that every DUer was responsible for Bush's policies because we "didn't work hard enough in '04"

[ixion]

7. uh, not sure what you mean

I see posts of this nature all the time. :shrug:

[emulatorloo]

9. see my reply #8 and sandnsea's reply #3 n/t

:kick: