Yes sir, Mr. Brennan, sir, whatever you say, sir.
Jessica Schulberg at
The New Republic writes
The CIA's Favorite Senator Will Soon Be In Charge of CIA Oversight:
Tuesday’s Republican takeover of the Senate effectively ruined any chance of Congressional oversight of the CIA. Senator Mark Udall, who earned a score of 100 percent from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), lost his seat in Colorado. And Senator Richard Burr, with an ACLU score of 0 percent, is set to become Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), the group tasked with holding the CIA and the NSA accountable.
He will replace Senator Dianne Feinstein, who has consistently defended the CIA’s targeted killing campaign and the NSA’s mass collection of communication records. Although many felt Feinstein was too cozy with the intelligence agencies, she gave a scathing speech on the Senate floor in March, accusing the CIA of lying about the severity of their detention and interrogation programs and illegally searching the computers of Senate staffers working on the SSCI’s final review of the program. Burr replied to Feinstein’s speech by telling reporters, “I personally don't believe that anything that goes on in the intelligence committee should ever be discussed publicly.” And when he takes charge, he’ll presumably do everything in his power to make sure that it won’t.[…]
Burr also attacked Senator Udall for sending a letter to President Obama urging him to declassify the Senate Committee’s findings on the CIA’s torture program to the fullest extent possible. Republicans on the Senate intelligence oversight committee immediately criticized him for disclosing classified information—some called for him to be reviewed by the Senate Ethics Committee. Soon-to-be-Chairman Burr said, “I think Mark did make some public releases that were committee-sensitive information, but that’s for the committee internally to handle…That’s being reviewed right now.”
Now Udall is on his way out and Burr is well positioned to promote a culture of deference to the CIA as the head of the Senate intelligence committee. Far from seeking to rein in the CIA, he has loudly trumpeted one of the agency’s biggest lies: that the torture program worked.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2013—Top Boehner lieutenant admits House Republicans exist purely for Mitch McConnell's pleasure:
Rep. Pete Sessions, who as Chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee is one of House Speaker John Boehner's top lieutenants, admits that the only thing that House Republicans are trying to do this year is play political games to win the U.S. Senate:
"Everything we do in this body should be about messaging to win back the Senate,” Sessions said. “That’s it. If you don’t want Benghazis to happen or you want an investigation for Benghazi, if you want an investigation on the IRS as opposed to the excuses that [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid [D-Nev.] is all about, if you do not like what’s happening at the [National Security Agency], then you gain the Senate.”
Yeah, sure, if Mitch McConnell were majority leader of the United States Senate, then Benghazi never would have happened, Darrell Issa never would have invented the IRS scandal, and the NSA wouldn't have spied on anybody, ever, anytime, in any place. And what's more: Probably bananas wouldn't be under siege from spiders
Tweet of the Day
A reasonable person would think not being a Republican would be enough. And reasonable people just got crushed.
http://t.co/...
— @LOLGOP
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show, election post-mortems continue, and the big question appears to be whether voters are confused, cognitively dissonant, or just Gimmetarians. Do the election results give us any hint how Republicans will proceed on health care? Let's speculate! And have
Armando join us!
Rosalyn MacGregor shares Stanford research that says Americans are more sharply divided along political lines than racial lines. David Frum's "The Gun-Control Movement Is Learning How to Win." Meanwhile, some gun rights supporters apparently descend into insanity.
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