Tuesday, February 21, 2006
The U.A.E. and the Congress
There is a wealth of conservative spin to report on today, but, sadly enough, it is from all the usual suspects. Don’t people get tired of new lies from the same faces? I don’t know. I do.
Mary Matalin defends Darth Cheney from Maureen Dowd and David Gregory. I heard her on Laura Ingraham this morning unleashing the usual torrent of verifiable, factual lies into the airwaves. She said there was no leak of classified information in the Libby case because Fitzgerald didn’t charge anyone with the leak. Fitzgerald said in his press conference when he revealed the charges that he couldn’t find out who had leaked the information because of Libby’s obfuscations. He used the analogy of a baseball player (Libby) kicking dirt in the umpire’s face (Fitzgerald). How is it possible that an undercover agent had her name published if there wasn’t a leak of information somewhere, Matalin? Matalin said Woodward’s revelation about being told about Plame’s identity a month earlier invalidates the case, which has no relevance to the inconsistencies in Libby’s story.
Matalin argued that the NSA case shouldn’t be called domestic spying, it should be called “signals intelligence.” This may be semantics, but I won’t let neocon crooks rephrase the debate to make it sound as innocuous as possible. The NSA program involves monitoring communications on American soil using American relay stations taking place between an American and a foreign person: that sounds pretty domestic to me, Matalin.
And now we have the U.A.E. running the ports, which gets both libs and conservatives nervous. We’ve sold our debt to China and have been addicted to foreign oil for years, and now some people are perking up their ears at the influence foreign nations have with our government? How about that phone call the administration fielded from Saudi Arabia after the State of the Union address?
Yet another republican senator goes off the reservation this week, and it is no surprise it is Orrin Hatch. He maintains that “Nobody denies that [Saddam Hussein] was supporting al-Qaida. Well, I shouldn’t say nobody. Nobody with brains.”
I tire of bald faced lies, I really do. Need I resurrect the 9/11 Commission’s finding on the subject? No. I won’t even provide a link. Nobody with brains thinks there was a “collaborative relationship” between the two, as the report says, as we know.
Orrin was really on a roll. On congress: “They’re moaning and groaning in Congress because he didn’t abide by what’s called the FISA Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That act is very important, but it was enacted in 1978 and it is not applicable in today’s world.”
Thank you, Senator Hatch, for clearly explaining to us that this administration doesn’t feel the need to follow laws it feels are outdated.
Do the people of Utah actually vote this ass into office every six years? Is anybody out there? Helllloooooooo…..Earth to Utah! Come in, Utah!
A special counsel would be nice to investigate the NSA program, as this republican-controlled congress will not conduct a good investigation. Media Matters has a good write-up on the subject here.
As an aside we get a little window here into the way Bill “She Does Respond” Frist runs the Senate: he cancelled the appointments of Condi Rice, a general, and others to testify about Hurricane Katrina in order to hold a series of votes on a tax bill, many of which never even took place.
Thanks, Bill.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 3:20 PM 
