Glenn Greenwald had an important post on Saturday that shouldn’t get lost in the weekend shuffle. We’ve all grown rather accustomed to congressional Republicans twisting and breaking rules to suit their own purposes, but Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s latest stunt was surprising, even by his already-low standards.
The Senate Intelligence Committee was created in 1976 and, from the beginning, it has been unique in its structure and operation. Due to the urgency of ensuring that our country has nonpartisan and non-politicized oversight over the Government’s intelligence activities, the Intelligence Committee is structured so that — unlike every other Senate Committee — the majority is unable to dominate the Committee’s operation and agenda, and the minority has much greater powers than it does on any other Senate Committee.
With the March 7 vote looming on Sen. Rockefeller’s motion for the Committee to finally hold hearings to investigate the scope and nature of the Administration’s NSA warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens — and with several Committee Republicans indicating their intent to vote for hearings — Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened the Committee yesterday and warned it not to hold any hearings.
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.
This may sound like a lot of inside pool — changes to committee structures do not usually make for good bumper-sticker material — but it’s startling nevertheless. Rather than let the Senate Intelligence Committee explore the workings of a controversial, legally dubious, surveillance program, Bill Frist would rather throw the rules out the window, gut what little power Dems have, and help the White House cover the whole matter up.
As Glenn noted, committee hearings shouldn’t even be controversial. The Senate Intelligence Committee exists to “exercise oversight over controversial intelligence activities.” But rather than let the Committee do its job, Frist, with no reasonable justification, is considering a massive reshuffling of the deck. It’s almost as if Frist has given up on leadership altogether, and is taking marching orders directly from Karl Rove.
This, naturally, generated quite a bit of discussion over the weekend, and several solid posts on Frist’s possible stunt.
Kevin said, “Shorter Bill Frist: I think the Senate Intelligence Committee should be bipartisan unless being bipartisan happens to harm my party’s interests.”
Kleiman said, “Bill Frist just keeps right on making up the rules as he goes along…. The Republicans running Washington these days lie, cheat, and steal.”
So, when it suits Bill Frist’s purpose politically to pretend to be a bi-partisan, non-political committee supporter to score points on the floor of the Senate, that’s hunkydory.
But when you get down to a question of the majority of the Intelligence Committee members wanting to do their jobs and investigate what is an illegal use of the NSA for domestic surveillance by the Bush Administration…well, that just can’t be allowed, and Frist’s previous assertion “that the Committee’s nonpartisan tradition must be carefully safeguarded” be damned.
I agree, wholeheartedly, with each.