Congressional Probe of NSA Spying Is in Doubt
Congress appeared ready to launch an investigation into the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance program last week, but an all-out White House lobbying campaign has dramatically slowed the effort and may kill it, key Republican and Democratic sources said yesterday.
The Senate intelligence committee is scheduled to vote tomorrow on a Democratic-sponsored motion to start an inquiry into the recently revealed program in which the National Security Agency eavesdrops on an undisclosed number of phone calls and e-mails involving U.S. residents without obtaining warrants from a secret court. Two committee Democrats said the panel -- made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats -- was clearly leaning in favor of the motion last week but now is closely divided and possibly inclined against it.
They attributed the shift to last week's closed briefings given by top administration officials to the full House and Senate intelligence committees, and to private appeals to wavering GOP senators by officials, including Vice President Cheney. "It's been a full-court press," said a top Senate Republican aide who asked to speak only on background -- as did several others for this story -- because of the classified nature of the intelligence committees' work
As Billmon says, maybe darth cheney threatened to take them hunting.
Can we stop talking about "moderate" republicans doing the right thing now? It's never going to happen.
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This has depressed me immeasurably. There are petitions by several civil liberties organizations to try to put some teeth back in an investigation...but with so many venal GOPers in Congress, I have not much hope.
Alas! Must Bush bite off the head of a white Christian baby and drink its blood before Congress and the Department of Justice admit a crime has been committed?
(If the infant were poor and something other than white and Christian, I know DofJ and Congress would all claim to have been looking out the window and to have seen nothing.)
Egad, we've gone insane as a nation!)
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