Print
Email Friend
Add to Favorites
del.icio.us
Digg It!
Slashdot It!
This may sound like the allegory of Sabu, the elephant herding moron-boy, after all, but politics often blends truth and fantasy so seamlessly that one can't tell where one ends and the other begins.
Remember freshman Representative Schmidt (R-OH) who called Representative John Martha (D-PA) "a coward" on the House floor? Well, she'd eked out a narrow victory, in a heavily Republican district, against political unknown opponent Paul Hackett, attorney, Iraq War veteran and newly-discovered darling of the Ohio Democrats. Last August, following his defeat and after Representative Sherrod Brown declined the opportunity, Hackett announced his 
candidacy for the Ohio Senatorial seat that's up for grabs in November.
Last week, the Hackett campaign was torpedoed by Brown's announcement that he was tossing his hat into the Senatorial race after all with the full backing of the National Democratic machine. That resulted in a classic brouhaha that's given the Democratic Party another well-deserved public black eye that the Party's famous for -- but that's just a sideshow playing out in the shadow of the elephant.
Hackett's opponent was, and Brown's opponent is, incumbent Senator Mike DeWine, the man whose sole mission in life seems to be to overhaul the FISA to the extent that it will officially and legally, once and for all, conceal the elephant. DeWine's involvement, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, dates back to 2002 and has been cited in the Elephant Chronicles and the postings thereto. It's difficult to tell whether DeWine has been carrying the NSA water for the White House for four years but his tenacity is enough to make one wonder.
However, there can be no question that DeWine figured into Vice President Cheney's recent elephant hunting expedition on the Hill and earned himself the undying animosity of the Democratic Party. Brown and a big buck Democratic warchest have been thrown against DeWine's re-election bid in Ohio.
As reported in my post to the previous installment of the Elephant Chronicles: Yesterday, the Senate Intelligence Committee adjourned after a 2 hour closed session without voting on Senator Rockefeller's motion for a thorough investigation of the NSA warrantless domestic spying program.
Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) said he and the White House had reached an agreement to both provide more information to the Senate about the nature of the NSA program and to consider legislation to modify existing laws to accommodate it.
Sounding remarkably like Big Gamer Cheney, Roberts said, "an investigation at this point ... would be detrimental to this highly classified program." He went on to say that the investigation would also be detrimental to his efforts to reach some accommodation with the White House. Roberts also promised to consider the Democratic request for a vote on the Rockefeller motion at the March 7 meeting.
Another political whirlpool swirling about the elephant involves Representative Heather Wilson (R-NM) who faces strong Democratic opposition in her re-election bid this fall. When the secret domestic spying program first surfaced, Wilson, Chair of the House Subcommittee with NSA oversight, defied the Republican party-line by calling for an investigation.
Following Cheney's recent Hill expedition, Wilson's thrust has changed markedly. She's still going to conduct the "investigation", but...
"This is the way we do oversight," she said, indicating the House hearings would not have the sharply investigative tone that Senator Rockefeller sought in his motion, which would have required the administration to detail its rationale for starting the secret NSA domestic eavesdropping program in late 2001 in defiance of the FISA.
Wilson continued, "Sometimes minority parties call for oversight" of government programs for strictly partisan reasons, noting that "the intelligence committees in my view are an exception to that rule. This is not political theater…We ask tough questions, and we expect straight answers."
Okay, got that? No investigation, but tough questions, straight answers!
Political evolution? Hah! We may not know the caliber of the weapon that Cheney used in his elephant hunt on the Hill but we know something about the ammo he used!
Recall, Karl Rove sent out the word that any Republican who sided with the Democrat's call for both a full disclosure, in closed session, of the depth and scope of NSA's domestic eavesdropping on Americans and a reconciliation of the Bush Administration's reauthorizations with the FISA would face excommunication -- no White House backing or fundraising for incumbents seeking re-election?
That's heavyweight, industrial grade elephant-hunting ammunition in Washington, D.C.! It's used to prevent the nurturing of pesky notions, like legality and constitutionality. It prevents those notions from flourishing, unfettered and free.
Some might say that encourages a dark, dismal, political swamp.
Just where the NSA eavesdropping program stands in Congress is a very big question mark.
Reports on the White House briefing of the Intelligence Committees by Gonzales and Hayden have split committee members along partisan lines. The Republicans found the briefings informative, useful, etc., while the Democrats said the briefings broke no new ground.
Rdrover, I think your original Elephant article demonstrates the NSA domestic eavesdropping program violates the Constitution but I think there's more wiggle room for debate on a constitutional basis than on the basis of the program's legality under FISA.
As much the Bush Administration wants to avoid any hint that they've been breaking the law for four years now, they're relying on congressional Republicans to find a way to legitimize the NSA program under FISA. Your quote of Rep. Heather Wilson shows what a delicate balancing act that is when the Democrats and some skeptical Republicans seem convinced that, in fact, the White House been breaking the law.
Wilson says she wants the "investigation" she's always advocated while a spokesman for Rep. Hoekstra, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is quoted as, "This is not an inquiry into the [NSA] program. It's a comprehensive review of the FISA statute… Mr. Hoekstra wants to set up a process to move forward and look at the entire statute and ways to modernize it."
On the Senate side, DeWine contends the Bush Administration backs his bill which would explicitly authorize the warrantless NSA eavesdropping and establish congressional oversight subcommittees - no questions asked.
Yet, Specter is reportedly circulating a proposal that would require FISA Court approval for NSA's domestic wiretapping. Just how that gets around the touchy issue of evaluating the program's current legality hasn't been explained anywhere that I can find.
Of course, all these Republican balancing acts are against a backdrop of Democrats who want a thorough investigation of the NSA program and a determination of whether the White House has violated FISA as the means of determining the appropriate legislative adjustments necessary for the program to proceed on a firm legal base.
The pressure that Cheney has been forced to exert shows the NeoCons can't rely on congressional Republicans any longer to follow them in lockstep any longer in spite of Rove's threats of excommunication (I like that observation). Where does the White House find any more leverage? I shivver to think of those alternatives.
Thanks for all the political insights, Rdrover. Please keep the Elephant series going!
Report Abuse