{"id":6165,"date":"2005-12-23T11:19:19","date_gmt":"2005-12-23T16:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6165"},"modified":"2005-12-23T11:19:19","modified_gmt":"2005-12-23T16:19:19","slug":"one-senate-republican-insults-our-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/one-senate-republican-insults-our-intelligence\/","title":{"rendered":"One Senate Republican insults our Intelligence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the first time in 27 years, a senator (a Republican who prefers to remain anonymous) has blocked the Senate Intelligence authorization bill. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2005\/12\/22\/AR2005122201662.html\">You&#8217;ll never guess why<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Senate Republicans late Wednesday blocked the authorization bill that guides the country&#8217;s intelligence programs. It was the first time in 27 years that the bill had failed to pass before the end of the calendar year. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Democrats were informed last week that Republicans would clear the bill if three amendments, two by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and one by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), would be stripped from the consent agreement. But Democrats balked because Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), the chairman of the Senate intelligence panel, had agreed to the amendments. Roberts&#8217;s staff did not return calls for comment yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>Kerry&#8217;s amendment would require the director of national intelligence to give the intelligence panels information on secret CIA prisons in several Eastern European democracies and in Asia. Kennedy&#8217;s amendments would require the White House to turn over copies of daily intelligence briefs that President Bush and former President Bill Clinton reviewed on Iraq.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In other words, a Republican senator is blocking funding for intelligence programs, during a war, because the spending bill includes language that demands some accountability from the Bush administration. If the bill dropped the oversight provisions, the anonymous hold would disappear.<\/p>\n<p>Your Republican Party at work.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n<i>Post Script<\/i>: This is probably a little off-topic, but the story reminded me of a major part of last year&#8217;s presidential race. Just a year ago, the Bush campaign and the RNC <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2096874\/\">blatantly lied<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2096127\/\">repeatedly<\/a>) about John Kerry&#8217;s votes on Senate Intelligence authorization bills as part of a ridiculous, demagogic, and ultimately successful smear job. To hear the GOP tell it, if you don&#8217;t support the intelligence budget, you don&#8217;t support national security. I obviously don&#8217;t expect the White House and the RNC to hold their own to similar standards &#8212; consistency is not their strong point &#8212; but I wanted to mention it anyway. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the first time in 27 years, a senator (a Republican who prefers to remain anonymous) has blocked the Senate Intelligence authorization bill. You&#8217;ll never guess why. Senate Republicans late Wednesday blocked the authorization bill that guides the country&#8217;s intelligence programs. It was the first time in 27 years that the bill had failed to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}