Ducking Congressional Oversight – Again
Republican Pete Hoekstra, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, has criticized Bush for hiding more surveillance programs from Congressional oversight. The NY Times has published his criticism of Bush on this matter.
On Fox News Sunday, Hoekstra said that a whistleblower came to him with several more spying operations that were in danger of being abused without oversight.
Wait… several more??
Hoekstra: …this is actually a case where the whistleblower process was working appropriately. Some people within the intelligence community brought to my attention some programs that they believed we had not been briefed on. They were right. We have now been briefed on those programs, but I wanted to reinforce to the President and to the executive branch in the intelligence community how important and by law–the requirement that they keep the legislative branch informed of what they are doing.
See video at Crooks and Liars
So…. first, an internal whistleblower comes to him because he knows that the legislative branch hasn’t even been informed about several other spying operations.
Then, once it’s clear that this is the case, they are (probably very partially) informed under a question-and-answer format?
Even this Republican ally says
“The U.S. Congress simply should not have to play Twenty Questions to get the information that it deserves under our Constitution.”
So what are you going to do about it, Congress?
What are you going to do about it?
2 thoughts on “Ducking Congressional Oversight – Again”
Everytime I see the reports of the latest controversy out of this White House, I keep wondering when these people are at least going to start an investigation into the administration. . . you would think even members of the President’s own party after some point. Question is, when the heck are we going to hit that point already — you’d think these people would have realized already that the WH has done some questionable things in the past 6 years!!!!!
Our congress O.K.’d the invasion of Afghanistan & Iraq and the subsequent human and financial sacrifice it has cost. They have also closed the books on the events of 9-11-2001, releasing a Congressional report, that disregards Newton’s Theory of Relativity, and attempts to claim that jet fuel can reach temperatures beyond it’s previous historically recorded peak.
In our System of Checks and Balances our lame duck prince of a President cannot steal our soldiers lives and our taxes ALONE. All three Branches promoted the agenda through the use of the media and the manipulation of our written laws.
Bush and his team will take some blame, but this is his Swan Song. His alloted time has run dry and slowly he will be sold out as a hero done wrong on some media outlets and another shady version of Richard Nixon on the rest.
We have become a European War Colony, sacrificing lives and money towards long term objectives that help only an elite group of Families and Corporations.
We will pretend things are different and subscribe to the versions played out on CNN and Blockbuster action movies starring Nicolas Cage.