{"id":6180,"date":"2005-12-26T10:46:33","date_gmt":"2005-12-26T15:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6180"},"modified":"2005-12-26T10:46:33","modified_gmt":"2005-12-26T15:46:33","slug":"itll-make-for-some-interesting-hearings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/itll-make-for-some-interesting-hearings\/","title":{"rendered":"It’ll make for some interesting hearings"},"content":{"rendered":"

That there will be Senate hearings to investigate Bush’s warrantless-search program is no longer an issue. Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has made hearings a high priority, and, in addition to Senate Dems, several Senate Republicans have echoed<\/a> the significance of a formal inquiry.<\/p>\n

But following up on the latest revelations<\/a> about the administration’s program, the next area for consideration is just how interesting the hearings will be<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Congressional officials said Saturday that they wanted to investigate the disclosure that the National Security Agency had gained access to some of the country’s main telephone arteries to glean data on possible terrorists.<\/p>\n

“As far as Congressional investigations are concerned,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, “these new revelations can only multiply and intensify the growing list of questions and concerns about the warrantless surveillance of Americans.”<\/p>\n

Members of the Judiciary Committee have already indicated that they intend to conduct oversight hearings into the president’s legal authority to order domestic eavesdropping on terrorist suspects without a warrant.<\/p>\n

But Congressional officials said Saturday that they would probably seek to expand the review to include the disclosure that the security agency, using its access to giant phone “switches,” had also traced and analyzed phone and Internet traffic in much larger volumes than what the Bush administration had acknowledged.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One Republican congressional aide added, “We want to look at the entire program, an in-depth review, and this new data-mining issue is certainly a part of the whole picture.” Sounds like it could be a pretty thorough review.<\/p>\n

It’ll be interesting to see how Senate Republicans, who have not yet had to deal with contentious hearings involving a White House controversy, approach these hearings, especially if the investigation generates significant media attention, which seems pretty likely. Do they carry Bush’s water, as some have already begun to do<\/a>, or do they exercise due diligence in front of the cameras?<\/p>\n

Atrios recently suggested<\/a> the warrantless-spying story will be “the test” for the right. It seems particularly true for Republicans on the Hill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That there will be Senate hearings to investigate Bush’s warrantless-search program is no longer an issue. Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has made hearings a high priority, and, in addition to Senate Dems, several Senate Republicans have echoed the significance of a formal inquiry. But following up on the latest revelations about the administration’s […]<\/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-6180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6180","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=6180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}