Bill Frist does a Constitution proud

I've been increasingly demoralized with my own blogging. It consists -- I was reflecting today -- mainly of partisan hackery dashed off on the fly, and it wasn't always like that. In a way, this is healthy, since it allows me to purge my political fixations so that I don't have to bore my friends in the real world. But isn't that just to shift the abuse to you, dear reader? It wasn't always like this, I silently remonstrated. And on and on it went.

Then I read this post by Sean-Paul Kelley, and it led me to recall a chief justification for said hackery: It's their fault. We take what comfort we can get.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has just threatened to declaw, neuter and restructure the U.S. Senate Committee on Intelligence. The reason? Senator Rockefeller has the votes to, as Glenn Greenwald call its, "pass his motion for the Senate Intelligence Committee to hold hearings to investigate the operational aspects of the Administration's warrantless eavesdropping activites (i.e., how were these eavesdropping powers used & are there other warrantless eavesdropping programs?)."

Here is Frist's letter to Senator Reid. Give it a look-see [PDF]. After that, go give Glenn's post a read as well.

As Glenn says, what Frist has done is to "literally threaten to abolish those 30-year-old rules and make the Committee like every other Committee (i.e., dominated by Republicans to rubber-stamp the WH's decrees) if they hold hearings. That is an extraordinary threat to make all in order to block an investigation into the Administration's eavesdropping conduct."

This threat also flies in the face of the very rules the Senate Committee on Intelligence was founded upon. It's goal was to provide solid non-partisan oversight by protect and empowering the minority on the committee. (Which at that time were Republicans.) It was done that way for a case exactly like the one were are living through right now.

Frankly, Bill Frist has long been given to issuing threats upon which he has been incapable of delivering. Nonetheless, we need this reminder of the internal assault on the Congress' constitutional duty to demand accountability on the exercise of power. And do read Glenn Greenwald's typically definitive post.

Comments

[jonnybutter]

It's their fault. We take what comfort we can get.

Better to complain than to let your head explode, or develop some internal structural buckling.

[jonnybutter]

BTW, you aren't really very hacky at all, dude.

[M. Douglas Wray]

Stygie, buhbie... it's not you.

I've been watching this insane power-grab get crazier and crazier by the DAY - for YEARS.

I honest-to-God believe the wingnut right has decided they're NEVER going to let go of power - regardless of the cost to America.

I'm hoping that men of good conscience in the Republican Party (they do exist) will stand up en masse and stop this insanity before the neocons and their arm-twisted cronies completely wreck the machinery of democracy.

I'm sure they realize that continuing to follow Bush and friends will lead them down a dark, dark road. A road littered with endless deaths, the destruction of more cities and the slaughter of millions of innocents.

The humiliation of Nixon is still very much in the minds of men like Tom Delay and Dennis Hastert - I'm certain they've sworn not to follow him into ignominy.

I just wonder how much worse it has to get before enough men of good conscience stand up and demand an end to this national nightmare.

Every night I go to bed and pray to God for the madman in the White House to be stopped.

I know God is listening - and this Administration's days are numbered.

I'm sure they know it too - and the end times for this Administration will bring a lasting shame to the Republican Party. A political party so horribly corrupt and evil that it simply cannot survive in it's present form - it must expel the disease that 'eats away at its credibility' and it must do it soon.

[CKR]

I've been feeling like the same thing has been happening to me, too.

Fortunately, I've got some visitors coming from Estonia this week. Maybe that'll clear my head.

The trouble is, just when you think the stupidity and cupidity can't get any worse, someone shoots someone with a shotgun. Or something.

[Stygius]

The trouble is, just when you think the stupidity and cupidity can't get any worse, someone shoots someone with a shotgun.

Oh, man. Thanks for the comments. I kind of prefer focusing on dry policy stuff and exploring solutions to knotty problems, but lately watching politics is grading some Logic 101 class; mainly, dismantling bad arguments and highlighting fallacies. It seems necessary, but it gets darn old.

It's like the country is being run by a bunch of inept high school debaters. Priorities?

[CKR]

Abraham Lincoln once said that you can't always convince a man that a stick is crooked by arguing with him, but you usually can by laying a straight stick alongside it.

I try to keep this in mind when I'm writing. On the one hand, it's important to show up the errors in logic and otherwise before they can propagate. On the other, it's important to get out a straight and intelligent story.

Hard to know the balance, though.

[Eric Martin]

Styg,

I have been feeling exactly the same way lately as per CKR. My personal shrill-ometer is in the 8-9 range out of 10. I'm just nearing my wit's end, and am losing my cool, calm, level headed approach. It's clearly "their fault."

But would also back jonny in saying that I've never viewed your writing as "hacky" in any way.

[Thomas Nephew]

"Ooccasionally and rightly partisan" is not at all the same thing as "hack." Please keep up the great work.