3.06.2006

True to form - if the GOP can't win they'll cheat

Bill Frist has decided if the GOP can't win on the merits, then they'll cheat. Frist threatened Harry Reid, in a letter delivered late on Friday, that he would change the composition of the Intelligence Committee unless they rubber stamped the Bush Administration's repeated illegal activity.

I suppose Frist was hoping reporters would miss his smarmy threat of cheating if he dumped it in the late Friday news cycle...too bad for him.
Frist specifically threatened that if the Committee holds NSA hearings, he will fundamentally change the 30-year-old structure and operation of the Senate Intelligence Committee so as to make it like every other Committee, i.e., controlled and dominated by Republicans to advance and rubber-stamp the White House’s agenda rather than exercise meaningful and nonpartisan oversight.

Yet again, Republicans are threatening to radically change long-standing rules for how our government operates all because they cannot manipulate the result they want. From redistricting games to changing the filibuster rules, when Republicans are incapable (even with their majorities) of manipulating the political result they want, they use their majority status to change how our government works in order to ensure the desired political outcome.

While Frist’s threat here is, in one sense, of a piece with those tactics, it is actually quite extraordinary and motivated by a particularly corrupt objective. The whole purpose of the Senate Intelligence Committee – the only reason why it exists – is to exercise oversight over controversial intelligence activities. Whatever else one might want to say about the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program, it is controversial on every front. There is no conceivable rationale for the Intelligence Committee not to hold hearings.
This truly is an unprecedented move: the Senate Majority Leader is threatening to make the Intelligence Committee a political rubber stamp because the White House and the Republican leadership are so terrified that the Dubya's actions won't withstand scrutiny and will be found illegal by the Committee.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Friend,

Can I bring you to your senses?

If you read back in the archives of my blog you will get the education, please don't hate me, that you need.

I see you are smart, so there is hope! Facts and logic. Vincero!

John in Atlanta said...

I went, I saw, I was not impressed. Just another Bush apologist blog.

The kicker was at the bottom where you proudly display the bumper sticker-style banner that reads "I'd rather hunt with Cheney than ride with Kennedy".

Thanks, Ox, for saying I am smart. I'm sorry I can't return the compliment. Anyone who still supports this administration after all that has transpired must be a few fries short of a Happy Meal.