Afternoon Update - McConnell Spills The Beans
by Steve
Domestic Spying
Why does Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell hate America, AT&T, and Verizon so much? How does a guy who says any public debate about FISA in the Congress helps terrorists, who welched on a deal he made with the Democratic leadership, then get to spew secrets to the media without facing prosecution?
Note that this former senior director of the National Security Council under Clinton attempts to justify warrant less wiretapping as if the Constitution was an irrelevance. He then goes on to cite examples where allegedly the court found such surveillance permissible, but all of his examples are government—run or funded environments, not personal communications, emails, financial records and the like.
Iraq
The only rebuttal anyone will need to the Bush report next month justifying another 12 months of the surge is the Op-Ed by sergeants in the field that the NYT published over the weekend.
After only ten hours in Iraq talking with pre-selected mouthpieces, two GOP senators see signs of “clear success” in Iraq.
Read the Op-Ed from retired Major General Paul Batiste, a conservative by the way, which neither the Wall Street Journal nor the Washington Times wanted to publish, presumably because he wants our troops redeployed. (Hat tip SoS)
Much has been made in the center-left blogs over the last day or so about five-term Washington Democratic representative Brian Baird’s supposed conversion from supporting a timeline to now allegedly supporting an open-ended commitment in Iraq. But what the trolls and even our own fellow bloggers miss is that Baird still supports staying only through next spring, and then he wants a gradual withdrawal of our forces coordinated with more international help and a change in mission. In other words, Baird is offering a common-sense alternative that I have advocated for a while now, which the Democrats should push for next month, now that the GOP has gushed all over Baird’s words.
Ari Fleischer’s Freedom’s Watch is using $15 million to go after mostly Republicans, and yet he can’t even remember the name of the guy they are using in their campaign. I’m sure this will go down well on Capitol Hill.
John Kerry notes in the aftermath of Bush’s latest pathetic linkage of Iraq to Vietnam that half of the soldiers named on the wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial died after the politicians knew the policy was a failure.
2008
I’ll disagree with Jeff about Michele Obama’s intended target when she remarked about people spouting family values when they can't look after their own families. I don’t think she was taking a swipe at Hillary, but rather she was gunning for Rudy Giuliani.
Gallup debunks Rove’s bluster about Hillary’s unfavorability ratings and her electability. Gallup also finds that Hillary has maintained her lead over Obama nationally.
Rasmussen fines that Mitt Romney has more core opposition than Hillary does, and thankfully he now leads in Iowa according to Zogby, proving that your average GOP voter in Iowa can be led around by the nose.
After watching Hillary try and have it both ways in front of the VFW, Chris Dodd learns from her mistake.
Stonewalling For Idiots
Hours after the White House tried to evade Freedom of Information Act requests by falsely claiming that the Office of Administration was exempt from the FOIA, its own website said the contrary.