Congressman Silvestre Reyes (TX-16) is the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
As someone with access to the latest and greatest intel on what Al Qaeda and other sordid fiends are up to, you would think he has at least the same access as Senator Jim Webb to troubling information about threats to our security, as documented by Webb's statement chronicled in this diary.
Yet Reyes voted not to capitulate to Jughead's demands for kingly and godly omniscience, aided and abetted by his remora of an attorney general.
Reyes' web site has yet to issue any statement explaining his vote. But this op-ed from May 30th's Washington Post details excellent reasons why Democrats should have neither bent nor broken in the face of the administration's hurricane-force blowhards. Chief among them were the bureaucratic bungling of "requiring multiple approvals involving hordes of lawyers", something that smells strongly of compromising national security right there, instead of one phone call from the NSA or FBI, as the law has always allowed. Particularly gratifying as well is Reyes' admonition at the end that "If the terrorists move at the speed of the Internet, so should we." With that in mind, I implore Congressman Reyes to come forth post haste and enlighten his deluded colleagues as to why this cannot happen again six months down the road.