Arlen “Scottish Haggis” Specter introduced a letter exchange with Dick Cheney into the Congressional record yesterday. In case you needed any proof, the letters show that Dick is an asshole, even to nice little compliant Senators like Scottish Haggis.
U.S. SENATE,
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY,
Washington, DC, June 7, 2006.
Hon. Richard B. Cheney,
The Vice President,
Washington, DC.
Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus have an interesting article describing the debate between CIA and FBI over whether waterboarding worked with Abu Zubaydah. If the timeline they describe is accurate, then it means that Abu Zubaydah gave up his most important intelligence before they started torturing him. As to the information he gave up under torture, the CIA and FBI dispute whether it was useful or not. The implication of the article is that the CIA may have destroyed the torture tapes to hide the fact that the water-boarding was ineffective.
The article explains that Abu
Senator’s Dodd demonstration that he was serious about a filibuster was undoubtedly one of the things that led to Reid pulling the bill yesterday. But I suspect it also has a lot to do with plans the moderate Dems had to introduce amendments that, while perfectly reasonable, would have been poison pills for the Republicans.
Amid the excitement today, you may have missed the news that the White House visitor logs are public documents. I’m sure this will be in the Courts for another year and a half–at which point Dick will invite Scalia to go quail hunting again, and we’ll never get the records. But for now, look at the oozing skepticism of Judge Royce Lamberth.
As you’ve likely heard, Senator Reid has pulled the FISA bill. We win–for today, at least.
Hey, remember how I asked whether, if Noel Hillman were subpoenaed in the woods but no one saw it, whether he really got subpoenaed?
Well, he did … he did get subpoenaed.
Whitehouse is up, hitting on the same issues he hit in his speech a week ago Friday. He accuses Mukasey and McConnell are being disingenuous when they ignore the issues outstanding on the FISA debate.
These two gentlemen do know what is going on and chose to talk past the issue, ignore it’s very existence.
Senator Dodd says that Mike McConnell thinks “certain corporations are too rich to be sued.” And that’s just the start of Dodd’s case to vote down telecom immunity.
Is David Frum really calling for competence in Republican nominees and appointees? Or is he instead calling for ideological purity in the guise of competence?
The government appears to have changed its explanation of how it started an investigation into Geoffrey Fieger for about the fourth time–this time claiming that the investigation started simultaneously here in Detroit and also in the Noel Hillman-led Public Integrity section. It’s curious how this story keeps changing, and how every hearing the government digs itself a deeper hole.
