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Leahy Rips Reported Compromise On FISA: Intel Committee Is ‘Caving’ To White House Pressure

By Faiz Shakir on Oct 18, 2007 at 4:12 pm

This morning’s New York Times and Washington Post reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee had reached an agreement with the White House on FISA reform legislation. That agreement reportedly “would give telephone carriers legal immunity for any role they played in the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program approved by President Bush after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.”

At this afternoon’s Judiciary Committee hearings, Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) openly criticized the Intelligence Committee, calling it a “cave” to White House pressure:

I think the fact that [the administration is] bringing so much pressure on the Intelligence Committtee — and if the press is to be believed, the Intelligence Committee is about to cave on this and bring pressure on this committee to immunize past illegal conduct — is because they know that it was illegal conduct.

Watch it:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/10/leahycave.320.240.flv]

Leahy indicated the Judiciary Committee will not be so amenable to “immunizing illegal conduct.” Indeed, as Glenn Greenwald notes, federal judge Vaughn Walker ruled against AT&T in Aug. 2006, specifically citing the fact that the company was not operating in “good faith” when it participated in the warrantless wiretapping program. Judge Walker wrote:

AT&T cannot seriously contend that a reasonable entity in its position could have believed that the alleged domestic dragnet was legal.

Greg Sargent reports that Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) will “put a hold” on the Senate Intel Committee’s FISA bill because it grants unconditional retroactive immunity to telecom companies. Also, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) have indicated their opposition to going along with immunity.

UPDATE: Matt Stoller has more.

Politics

Hewitt’s ideological double standard for journalists.

By Matt Corley on Oct 18, 2007 at 3:55 pm

During an interview with Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, right wing radio host Hugh Hewitt attacked the objectivity of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Tim Russert, saying the “clowns” have “damaged” NBC “ideologically” because they “worked for two Democratic politicians close to twenty years ago.” Later in the interview, however, Hewitt struck a very different tone when discussing Diane Sawyer’s past employment for Richard Nixon:

I thought you were going to answer Diane Sawyer, because look, I know she knows what she’s talking about, largely because I took over her office at Casa Pacifica when she left the Nixon staff, and I joined the Nixon staff. [...]

And you don’t spend years with Nixon at Casa Pacifica and not pick up how the world works, and how great minds think. My question is, I think she would dominate the news. I think she would be an extraordinary anchor in the form of Peter Jennings.

Yglesias

Mitt’s Marxism

By ThinkProgress on Oct 18, 2007 at 3:40 pm

Mitt Romney, apparently forgetting for a moment that he’s running as a psychotic rightwinger, slipped back into the Reasonable Moderate mode I recall from his winning 2002 gubernatorial campaign and told a Davenport audience “I like the idea of linking the level of support that we’re able to provide to young people going to college to the contributions they’re going to make to our society.”

Needless to say, Cato’s Neal McClusky fired back with the suggestion that Romney may be a “closet Marxist.” We all know, after all, that before Stalin had consolidated power fully he greased the skids for the Gulag system by proposing a student loan forgiveness program.

Security

DLC’s Ford And From Echo O’Hanlon And Bush, Argue For A Long-Term ‘Military Presence’ In Iraq

By Matt Corley on Oct 18, 2007 at 3:07 pm

harold-ford.jpgAt Ideas Primary today, former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-TN) and Democratic Leadership Council founder Al From chastise Democrats and war critics for pushing for “immediate withdrawal” from Iraq, arguing instead for a “bipartisan agreement” to keep a “military presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future to guard our strategic interests in the region”:

Republicans are holding out for an illusory victory. Democrat rightly want to force a new direction, but they’re not going to get it if the only option they offer is immediate withdrawal. It’s clear the votes for immediate withdrawal are not there, and the resulting impasse will empower President Bush to maintain his same failed policy through the rest of his administration. [...]

The key to a new course is to forge a bipartisan agreement in support of a small sustainable military presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future to guard our strategic interests in the region.

Though Ford and From are cloaking their argument in the language of “reducing and re-deploying our troops,” their policy prescriptions echo the positions of liberal hawks like Brookings’ Michael O’Hanlon and would set the stage for a long-term presence in Iraq for the U.S. military.

Additionally, their proposal flies in the face of public opinion. In a recent poll done for Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), “70 percent of registered voters” said “President Bush’s $200 billion Iraq war supplemental spending request should be rejected or conditioned on redeployment.” A strong majority of Iraqis want U.S. troops to withdraw as well.

In fact, Ford and From’s advice for congressional war critics sounds eerily familiar, almost like the advice President Bush says he is trying to give his potential successors: stay longer.

Politics

Rep. King’s new name for SCHIP.

By Amanda Terkel on Oct 18, 2007 at 2:45 pm

Today on the House floor, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) introduced a new name for the acronym SCHIP — “Socialized Clinton-style Hillarycare for Illegals and their Parents”:

schipking3.jpg

For the record, SCHIP stands for the “State Children’s Health Insurance Program” and does not cover undocumented immigrants. Not surprisingly, King voted today to sustain Bush’s SCHIP veto.

(HT: Sadly, No!)

UPDATE: Earlier this week, Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) told USA Today that he refers to SCHIP as “Socialized, Cuba-style Health care for Illegals and their Parents.”

Yglesias

Transfer

By ThinkProgress on Oct 18, 2007 at 2:35 pm

Matthew Duss notes that Giuliani foreign policy advisor Daniel Pipes is on the “presidium” of an outfit called the Jerusalem Summit that opposes the creation of a Palestinian state under any circumstances and instead proposes the transfer of Palestinians to elsewhere in the Arab world.

It seems to me that just as Giuliani ought to be asked whether or not he endorses Norman Podhoretz’s view that we need to bomb Iran ASAP he also ought to be asked whether he joins Daniel Pipes in endorsing this view. And if he doesn’t, then why does he have so many advisors he disagrees with on key issues?

Politics

We Lose By Less

By ThinkProgress on Oct 18, 2007 at 2:28 pm

I think the fact that John McCain, who’s way behind in the GOP primary, had his campaign send out an email touting the fact that he doesn’t lose as badly as other Republicans do to Hillary Clinton in polling matchups counts as a sign that these are desperate times for Republicans:

In a matchup against Hillary Clinton, John McCain is the only Republican candidate neck and neck with Senator Clinton and within the poll’s margin of error of +/-3 percentage points. Rudy Giuliani trails Hillary Clinton by four points; both Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson would lose to her by twelve points. General election matchups, according to the October 9-10 Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll.

It still seems to me that conservatives should probably back McCain. He’s pretty conservative, still has a pretty good rep, and has a cult-like following in the press. A McCain surge in the polls would probably also be good for sales of Matt Welch’s book on why McCain is whack so that’d be good as well.

Yglesias

Compare and Contrast

By ThinkProgress on Oct 18, 2007 at 2:20 pm

People often note that there appears to be a more vigorous debate over Israel’s approach to the Israeli-Arab conflict in the mainstream Israeli press than there is in the mainstream American press. This is, however, the kind of judgment that it’s hard for a casual American observer to make with much confidence. Writing in International Security, however, Jerome Slater takes a more systematic comparison of coverage of the conflict in The New York Times and in Haaretz and concludes that, indeed, Israelis debate this matter more freely.

Politics

Breaking: House conservatives sustain Bush’s SCHIP veto.

By Amanda Terkel on Oct 18, 2007 at 1:35 pm

The House today failed to override President Bush’s SCHIP veto. The final roll call was 273 to 156, falling 13 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed. This vote picked up eight supporters from the original House vote in September.

cspanschip.jpg

UPDATE: The Gavel has video from the debate HERE. After the vote, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) promised, “In the coming days, Democrats will not back down and we will insist on providing health care coverage to these 10 million children.”

UPDATE II: “We won this round on SCHIP,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said after the vote.

UPDATE III: Full roll call vote HERE. Forty-four Republicans joined the Democrats in voting for the override, and two Democrats — Reps. Gene Taylor (MS) and Jim Marshall (GA) — voted “nay.”

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