{"id":6335,"date":"2006-01-13T16:50:37","date_gmt":"2006-01-13T21:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6335"},"modified":"2006-01-13T16:50:37","modified_gmt":"2006-01-13T21:50:37","slug":"gonzales-agrees-to-testify-on-warrantless-search-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/gonzales-agrees-to-testify-on-warrantless-search-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Gonzales agrees to testify on warrantless-search program"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said, in surprisingly candid language<\/a>, that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would have to testify on the legality of Bush’s warrantless-search program. As Specter said, in reference to Gonzales, “Well, I didn’t ask him if he had agreed…. I don’t think he has a whole lot of choice on testifying.”<\/p>\n

Conveniently enough, Gonzales isn’t going to have to face a subpoena<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Friday he will testify publicly at a Senate hearing on the Bush administration’s domestic spying program, in the face of questions from lawmakers and legal analysts about whether it is lawful.<\/p>\n

Gonzales said he reached an agreement with Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to answer questions about the legal basis for the National Security Agency’s warrantless eavesdropping on telephone conversations between suspected terrorists and people in the United States.<\/p>\n

“We believe the legal authorities are there,” Gonzales said at a news conference at the Justice Department. “The president acted consistent with his legal authority in a manner that he thought was necessary and appropriate to protect the country against this new kind of threat.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A few things. One, this suggests the attempts to shift the hearings to Pat Roberts<\/a> and the Senate Intelligence Committee have failed, which is bad news for the White House, which wanted the change in venue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Two, I guarantee the hearings will be more interesting than the Samuel Alito hearings.<\/p>\n

And three, is it possible that Gonzales and the rest of the Bush gang have dropped their opposition to hearings because they’ve come to believe the NSA controversy is politically beneficial<\/i>?
\n
\nIt’s seems absurd to think a White House caught intentionally circumventing the law would find this politically advantageous, but polls suggest the conservative frame for the story — it’s spying on bad guys, not about ignoring the rule of law — has caught on<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Slate’s John Dickerson suggested<\/a> that Bush sees this scandal as a 2002-like opportunity to “invite Democrats to another round of self-immolation.”<\/p>\n

As Kevin noted<\/a>, “after a few friendly rounds of traitor-mongering and mushroom-cloud-alarmism to soften up the crowd,” it’s likely that Rove & Co. believe warrantless-searches is eminently spinnable in a way that helps Republicans and hurts Dems.<\/p>\n

If the Dems are caught flat-footed on this one, it’ll be a travesty. We’ll be looking at the first White House controversy ever in which a president is proud<\/i> to have been caught breaking the law. Something to watch for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said, in surprisingly candid language, that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would have to testify on the legality of Bush’s warrantless-search program. As Specter said, in reference to Gonzales, “Well, I didn’t ask him if he had agreed…. I don’t think he has a whole lot of […]<\/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-6335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6335","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=6335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}