Administration officials obtained from the Secret Service a list of all the times Abramoff entered the White House complex, and they scrambled to determine the reason for each visit. Bush aides are also trying to identify all the photos that may exist of the two men together,” Time magazine reports.
Brownback: 9/11 Resolution Did Not Give Bush Authority for Warrantless Wiretapping
This morning, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) added his name to the growing list of conservatives who have expressed disapproval of Bush’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program, further undermining the right-wing spin that the only critics of the program are liberals. On ABC’s This Week:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Are you confident that the administration has acted lawfully in this case?
BROWNBACK: I think we need to hold hearings on it and we’re going to. Both in the intelligence committee, there will be closed hearings and then the judiciary committee will have open hearings.
I think we need to look at this case and this issue. I am troubled by what the basis for the grounds that the administration says that they did these on, the legal basis, and I think we need to look at that far more broadly and understand it a great deal.
I think this is something that bears looking into and us to be able to establish a policy within constitutional frameworks of what a president can or cannot do.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You don’t think the 9/11 resolution gave the president the authority for this program?
BROWNBACK: It didn’t, in my vote. I voted for that resolution. That was a week after 9/11. There was nothing you were going to do to stop us from going to war in Afghanistan, but there was no discussion in anything that I was around that that gave the president a broad surveillance authority with that resolution.
Brownback’s view echoes that of Sen. Tom Daschle’s and that of the non-partisan Congressional Research Service. More and more people are seeing Bush’s policy for what it truly is: an unnecessary and unconstitutional power-grab.
UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has the video.
A brand new scandal.
“In a case that echoes the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal, two Northern California Republican congressmen used their official positions to try to stop a federal investigation of a wealthy Texas businessman who provided them with political contributions. Reps. John T. Doolittle and Richard W. Pombo joined forces with former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas to oppose an investigation by federal banking regulators into the affairs of Houston millionaire Charles Hurwitz,” the LA Times reports. (Via War and Piece)
