The Senate Judiciary Committee kicked off its hearings on the president’s warrantless-search program just minutes ago, with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appearing as the only witness (so far). I’m cautiously optimistic that the session will be productive, but time will tell. Here are a few things to consider as the day gets started.<\/p>\n
* At least on the surface, Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) comes into the hearings with a healthy degree of skepticism<\/a>.<\/p>\n Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ explanations so far for the Bush administration’s failure to obtain warrants for its domestic surveillance program are “strained” and “unrealistic,” the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman said Sunday.<\/p>\n Sen. Arlen Specter, whose committee has scheduled hearings Monday on the National Security Agency program, said he believes the administration violated a 1978 law specifically calling for a secretive court to consider and approve such monitoring.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n * As part of the White House’s political defense, Gonzales wrote an op-ed<\/a> for today’s Wall Street Journal defending the domestic-spying program. There weren’t any new arguments per se, but Gonzales did argue that it is “inconceivable” that Congress’ post-9\/11 resolution “does not also support the president’s efforts to intercept the communications of our enemies.” It’s an argument rejected<\/a> by all serious people, on both sides of the aisle, inside the political world and out. The argument may be common in op-eds, but I doubt Gonzales will be relying on this tack today — committee members will know better.<\/p>\n * Much of what we know about the warrantless searches comes from media reports, based on leaks from intelligence officials. Gonzales will insist this morning that news reports have often been “misinformed, confused or wrong<\/a>.” This opens the door to a small problem for the administration — the Bush gang is unwilling to share pertinent details about the program with lawmakers. In other words, Gonzales will tell senators, “You’ve been misled by inaccurate news accounts.” Senators will ask, “OK, so what’s the accurate information?” to which Gonzales will likely respond, “I can’t tell you.” * The WaPo had a big front-page item<\/a> on the NSA story yesterday, confirming earlier reports that Bush’s wiretapping isn’t very good at producing leads on actual bad guys. The Post also noted that the NSA relies on telecom filters, which aren’t terribly effective.<\/p>\n * Deputy Director of National Intelligence Michael Hayden, who has taken a leading role in defending warrantless searches, appeared on a couple of the Sunday-morning talkshows and was asked if innocent Americans had been targeted through Bush’s program. Hayden suggested the NSA would not, but didn’t answer the question directly<\/a>.<\/p>\n Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Senate Judiciary Committee kicked off its hearings on the president’s warrantless-search program just minutes ago, with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appearing as the only witness (so far). I’m cautiously optimistic that the session will be productive, but time will tell. Here are a few things to consider as the day gets started. * At […]<\/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-6539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6539","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=6539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n* A month ago, the New York Times reported that telecommunications companies have been cooperating with the administration on warrantless searches. Today, USA Today names names<\/a>: “The National Security Agency has secured the cooperation of large telecommunications companies, including AT&T, MCI and Sprint, in its efforts to eavesdrop without warrants on international calls by suspected terrorists, according to seven telecommunications executives.”<\/p>\n