The Bush administration is unlikely to allow the incoming Democratic majority in Congress to learn details about its domestic spying program and interrogation policy, a Republican senator said on Thursday.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who has criticized the Bush White House's secrecy about national security issues, said he would welcome detailed congressional oversight of the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping.
"It would be ideal," said Specter, whose committee was blocked by the administration this year from conducting a full review of the program, despite an outcry among some lawmakers that the spying was illegal.
"We have to really get into the details as to what the program is, as to how many people they are tapping, what they're finding out," he told an American Bar Association conference on national security.
But he said he had "grave reservations" that Congress would end up getting the information from the administration.
Talk about destroying the village in order to save it. Who would have thought that so-called conservatives would support the complete evisceration of American freedoms because we're afraid of terrorists. Newt Gingrich is practically salivating at the prospect of being not elected to, but called to the Presidency so that he can "protect" Americans.
Last night Keith Olbermann addressed Gingrich's disgusting and frightening comments in New Hampshire:
...and notes just how convenient it is that an alleged Al Qaeda threat to bank and investment firm web sites is released by our Republican overlords right after Gingrich advocates cracking down on Web sites.
Meanwhile, here's something I'll bet you didn't know: Effective today, U.S. companies are required to keep track of all of the e-mails and instant messages you send or receive:
The rules, approved by the Supreme Court in April, require companies and other entities involved in federal litigation to produce "electronically stored information" as part of the discovery process, when evidence is shared by both sides before a trial.
The change makes it more important for companies to know what electronic information they have and where. Under the new rules, an information technology employee who routinely copies over a backup computer tape could be committing the equivalent of "virtual shredding," said Alvin F. Lindsay, a partner at Hogan & Hartson LLP and expert on technology and litigation.
James Wright, director of electronic discovery at Halliburton Co., said that large companies are likely to face higher costs from organizing their data to comply with the rules. In addition to e-mail, companies will need to know about things more difficult to track, like digital photos of work sites on employee cell phones and information on removable memory cards, he said.
Both federal and state courts have increasingly been requiring the production of relevant electronic documents during discovery, but the new rules codify the practice, legal experts said.
When the Bush Administration took office, its officials were told about the Al Qaeda threat -- and they did nothing. In August, a vacationing George W. Bush received a PDB about an imminent Al Qaeda attack -- and did nothing. On September 11, 2001, George W. Bush sat in a classroom for seven minutes after being told that the country was under attack -- and did nothing. Under his command, the United States military was directed to do nothing at Tora Bora -- and allowed Osama Bin Laden to escape. The only thing George W. Bush has done about terrorism is squander our future on a war against a country that had nothing to do with the attacks on this country, and to whip the populace into a frenzy of fear so that they would allow him to tap their phones, keep all of their e-mails, assign them to terrorism risk categories based on criteria we know nothing about, and now wants to strip them naked via X-ray machines at airports.
How much of this are we going to put up with before we DEMAND that these dangerous men are impeached and removed from office?
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