With BushCo’s numbers falling over a cliff, Senator Bill Frist is attempting to savage the attempts by Senate Democrats to investigate the NSA wiretapping and the President’s role in it. He has sent a letter to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, threatening to restructure the Intelligence Oversight Committee, or possibly dissolve it. Here again we are witnessing another naked power grab.
Why isn’t this guy in jail yet?
Glenn Greenwald has more:
"With the March 7 vote looming on Sen. Rockefeller’s motion for the Committee to finally hold hearings to investigate the scope and nature of the Administration’s NSA warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens -- and with several Committee Republicans indicating their intent to vote for hearings -- Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened the Committee yesterday and warned it not to hold any hearings.Frist specifically threatened that if the Committee holds NSA hearings, he will fundamentally change the 30-year-old structure and operation of the Senate Intelligence Committee so as to make it like every other Committee, i.e., controlled and dominated by Republicans to advance and rubber-stamp the White House’s agenda rather than exercise meaningful and nonpartisan oversight."
Over on Balkinization, there’s more talk and analysis.
Update (Friday 3/10/2006): The NewYork Times has an editorial on just this subject: The Death of the Intelligence Panel
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