{"id":7909,"date":"2006-07-12T10:13:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-12T14:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/7909.html"},"modified":"2006-07-12T10:13:00","modified_gmt":"2006-07-12T14:13:00","slug":"peter-hoekstra-and-the-dr-strangelove-ification-of-the-gop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/peter-hoekstra-and-the-dr-strangelove-ification-of-the-gop\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Hoekstra and the ‘Dr. Strangelove-ification’ of the GOP"},"content":{"rendered":"

House Intelligence Committee Chairman [tag]Peter Hoekstra[\/tag] (R-Mich.) sure has been busy lately. The conservative lawmaker generated headlines two weeks ago with some bizarre ideas<\/a> about WMD in Iraq, and raised more than a few eyebrows over the weekend by hinting at<\/a> still undisclosed NSA surveillance programs that, he believes, the Bush administration may have illegally hidden from Congress.<\/p>\n

But yesterday, the increasingly-unpredictable [tag]Hoekstra[\/tag] was in rare form<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Michigan Republican Rep. Peter Hoekstra…suggested some unauthorized [tag]leaks[\/tag] could have been deliberate attempts to help [tag]al Qaeda[\/tag].<\/p>\n

“More frequently than what we would like, we find out that the intelligence community has been [tag]penetrated[\/tag], not necessarily by al Qaeda, but by other nations or organizations,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I don’t have any evidence. But from my perspective, when you have information that is leaked that is clearly helpful to our enemy, you cannot discount that possibility,” he added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is getting awfully close to Joe [tag]McCarthy[\/tag] territory. The government, Hoekstra believes, may have been infiltrated by terrorists or terrorist sympathizers who have leaked sensitive national security information.<\/p>\n

Does Hoekstra have any proof? No. How about evidence of these leaks undermining national security? Strike two. Is Hoekstra equally bothered by national security leaks from Republicans<\/a> that are intended to advance a conservative agenda? Strike three.<\/p>\n

[tag]Republicans[\/tag] really know how to pick their [tag]Intelligence Committee[\/tag] chairs, don’t they? In the Senate, the GOP has Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), an almost caricature-like partisan hack<\/a>, whom Josh Marshall accurately described as “a shame to his office<\/a>.” And in the House, we have Hoekstra.<\/p>\n

As Kevin Drum put it<\/a>, “The Dr. Strangelove-ification of the congressional Republican caucus continues apace.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House Intelligence Committee Chairman [tag]Peter Hoekstra[\/tag] (R-Mich.) sure has been busy lately. The conservative lawmaker generated headlines two weeks ago with some bizarre ideas about WMD in Iraq, and raised more than a few eyebrows over the weekend by hinting at still undisclosed NSA surveillance programs that, he believes, the Bush administration may have illegally […]<\/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-7909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7909","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=7909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}