Thursday, November 30, 2006

Specter: They're not gonna tell you shit

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--The Bush Crime Family will likely refuse to allow the incoming Democratic majority in Congress--also known as "Congress" or "the government"--to learn the filthy details of its illegal domestic spying program and immoral torture policy, a Republican senator said on Thursday.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who has limply criticized the Bush Family's secrecy about national security issues whenever it would get his name on TV without actually changing anything, said he would welcome the detailed congressional oversight of the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping that the Constitution requires, but that at his age it would be dangerous for him to hold his breath.

"It would be nice," said Specter, whose committee was blocked by the Family this year from conducting a full review of the illegal and unconstitutional program, despite an outcry among some lawmakers that presidents who refuse to answer to Congress are actually called "dictators."

"We have to really get into the details as to what the program is, as to exactly how many Democrats they are tapping, what they're finding out about their political enemies," he told an American Bar Association conference on national security, who paid for his lunch.

But he said he had "grave reservations" about the ability of Congress to get the information from the Family, whose utter contempt for democracy and the Constitution is legendary.

The eavesdropping program--which was exposed by Islamofascist liberal defeatocrats who hate America and work for The New York Times nearly a year ago--allows the NSA to eavesdrop on the phone calls and e-mails of anyone they want, without pesky, useless warrants providing a paper trail which could have serious repercussions for the Family later.

Specter and other critics say the program has violated U.S. laws, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which requires warrants for all intelligence surveillance, and they're right.

The Bush Crime Family contends the program is legal, narrowly focused on suspected terrorists and authorized by President George W. Bush's imaginary constitutional powers as commander-in-chief, but they're lying.

When his Republican party was in control of Congress, Specter did some half-hearted grandstanding in the form of a feeble legislative bid to have the illegal program reviewed by a secret federal court, but he stopped when the president told him to, surprising no one.

Now, after victory in the November 7 election, Democrats will take control next year and are vowing to press the Bush Family for greater cooperation on domestic spying as well as the CIA's frequent and often random kidnapping and torture sprees.

"Only then can we conduct thorough oversight of these programs and determine how insanely criminal they are," Senator John Rockefeller, incoming Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a recent statement.

But Specter said such oversight may not succeed.

"I look forward to what will happen next year on that subject. I have grave reservations as to how successful we will be here, since they usually just say, you know, go fuck yourself," he said.

The Pennsylvania Republican said the White House was also unlikely to divulge details about its treatment of detainees to the Democratic-controlled Senate intelligence and armed services panels, despite concerns among lawmakers that U.S. interrogations still violate torture protections.

"We still haven't resolved the issue of torture," Specter said. "The new leadership on armed services will be pushing a lot harder for answers than we did. What they will get remains to be seen. I would expect the president will resist giving information, since anything he says can be used against him at the Hague."

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