NSA Hearings Summary - Day One

by Steve

If you want to get a sense of how the hearing went today, I suggest you read the summaries posted by ReddHedd over at FireDogLake, as well as Digby's post. You would come away with the impression that Arlen Specter isn't buying what Abu Gonzales is selling, and for that matter Senator DeWine isn't either. Sam Brownback doesn't appear to be a total Kool-Aid drinker either, and it's hard to know what Lindsey Graham really thinks about anything. But the key is that there isn't a solid wall of GOP support for what the president has been doing, and it would be hard for Specter to do a 180 and act like nothing is wrong after the way he interacted with Abu today.

Digby brings up a good point, in that it seems the Democrats may know something about Bush's domestic surveillance that they are keeping under wraps for now.

And if you wanted some more entertainment from the guys who don’t read and don’t listen to things that don’t fit their world view, here’s this: Despite what Condi said last week about being caught by surprise by Hamas’ victory, it turns out that the Bush Administration was warned that this could happen. (Stop me if you’ve heard this one before) They just chose to ignore it. Yes, note the name of our good Iran-Contra friend in this mess.

But at least the Bushies did manage to push another high level CIA official out the door, after he clashed with the hack that Bush promoted to the head of the Clandestine Service.