{"id":7616,"date":"2006-06-07T10:40:25","date_gmt":"2006-06-07T14:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7616"},"modified":"2006-06-07T10:40:25","modified_gmt":"2006-06-07T14:40:25","slug":"specter-hangs-up-on-nsa-oversight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/specter-hangs-up-on-nsa-oversight\/","title":{"rendered":"Specter hangs up on NSA oversight"},"content":{"rendered":"

In May, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman [tag]Arlen Specter[\/tag] (R-Pa.) talked tough<\/a> in response to revelations about Bush’s legally dubious [tag]surveillance[\/tag] efforts. At one point, Specter even complained publicly<\/a>, “[T]here really has to be in our system of law and government, checks and balance, separation of powers, congressional oversight and…there has been no meaningful congressional oversight on these [surveillance] programs.”<\/p>\n

Of course, Specter has a track record of not exactly walking the walk when it comes to follow through on administrative oversight. A few weeks ago, Specter cut a weak deal<\/a> with conservatives on the committee on legislation on NSA surveillance, and yesterday, the other shoe dropped<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After weeks of anticipation, Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter deferred a decision about whether to force executives from three telecom companies to testify about their involvement in the National Security Agency’s terrorist-surveillance program. His decision came as a total surprise to Democrats on the committee, leading Illinois Democrat Richard Durbin to suggest Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, had succumbed to a “June swoon.”<\/p>\n

According to those in attendance, Specter said he’d been “advised informally” that the phone companies they planned to subpoena — BellSouth, Verizon and AT&T, would be precluded from providing any information about the secret program by the government. Thus, a vote was therefore postponed on the matter, Senate staffers said.<\/p>\n

Instead, Specter said Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah had extracted a promise from Vice President [tag]Cheney[\/tag] himself to work with the Senate on proposed legislation related to the [tag]NSA[\/tag] and its oversight.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How utterly predictable. Instead of meaningful oversight, Hatch has invited Dick Cheney to “help” the Senate Judiciary Committee determine how it can exercise its oversight responsibilities.<\/p>\n

I’m sure the Vice President will be forthcoming and ensure the NSA’s activities are open to scrutiny, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In May, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman [tag]Arlen Specter[\/tag] (R-Pa.) talked tough in response to revelations about Bush’s legally dubious [tag]surveillance[\/tag] efforts. At one point, Specter even complained publicly, “[T]here really has to be in our system of law and government, checks and balance, separation of powers, congressional oversight and…there has been no meaningful congressional oversight […]<\/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-7616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7616","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=7616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}