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  1. #1
    Sooner All-Big XII-2-1+1-1+1
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    Here's another liberal complaint about Obama (should be "American complaint")

    White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough met with Senate Democrats Thursday to provide a briefing on President Obama's immigration plans. But once the immigration talk was over, the meeting reportedly devolved into chaos as an angry lawmaker confronted McDonough over the White House's foot-dragging and obstruction over releasing the committee's report on CIA torture.

    . "It was a vigorous, vigorous and open debate -- one of the best and most thorough discussions I've been a part of while here," said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.).

    . Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who served as intelligence committee chair before Feinstein, was furious after the meeting, and accused the administration of deliberately stalling the report.

    . “It’s being slow-walked to death. They’re doing everything they can not to release it," Rockefeller told HuffPost.

    . "It makes a lot of people who did really bad things look really bad, which is the only way not to repeat those mistakes in the future," he continued. "The public has to know about it. They don’t want the public to know about it."

    . As negotiations continue, Rockefeller said Democrats were thinking creatively about how to resolve the dispute. "We have ideas," he said, adding that reading the report's executive summary into the record on the Senate floor would probably meet with only limited success. "The question would be how much you could read before they grabbed you and hauled you off."

    A question following that is who exactly is going to grab a lawmaker and haul him or her off? A senator on the floor of the chamber is protected by the Constitution. For a sitting senator, the consequences could be severe—loss of committee assignments, of security clearance to have access to classified materials, or even expulsion from Congress. But for an outgoing senator, like Mark Udall, there would be no ramifications.

    Sen. Dianne Feinstein has taken on this fight, incensed over the CIA's actions in fighting release of this report which has included spying on and infiltrating the committee. She's backed up by the former chair of the committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller who says that the administration is "doing enormous damage to the country" by not allowing this report to finally be released and by so strenuously resisting Congress's oversight. She's also got strong support from the rest of the Democrats on the committee, as well as a few Republicans including Sen. John McCain. Rockefeller warns that the contempt for Congress shown by the Bush administration has been inherited by this administration—many of the players in the intelligence community are the same—and that "therefore there is no incentive for them to change their behavior." There will not be incentive for any administration—this one or the next or the one after—to change unless the Senate seizes the reins and forces it.

    The CIA's use of torture has been a festering sore for this nation for a decade, a rot that goes to the very core of the agency. Which is, of course, what they're trying to hide by refusing to release this report. They want to redact out any information at all about personnel, who the report protects by using aliases. The CIA says that the pseudonyms aren't adequate protection for "officers—many of whom are currently serving with CIA" who "would be subject to threats and possible violence if their identities were revealed." Well, just maybe the officers who committed war crimes by torturing people should not still be serving in the CIA. It's finally time to expose this rot to some sunshine, and for the Senate to resume its constitutional obligation for real oversight.

    There is ample political coverage for the committee to decide to step up, fulfill their oversight duty, and release the damn report over the White House's objections. Mark Udall is the man to do it, and he should do it with the full backing of Feinstein, Rockefeller, et al.
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    That comment about senators being protected by the Constitution is incredibly naive. When has the CIA ever felt constrained by the Constitution?

    Here's DKos. You find the conservative take on this.
    Ukraine: Not Our Fight.

    More epicycles!

  2. #2
    SoonerFans.com Elite Member FaninAma's Avatar
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    Re: Here's another liberal complaint about Obama (should be "American complaint")

    I agree. If they outed the CIA the Dems could almost make up for instructing the IRS targeting of conservative groups.
    Beware the man who would rule you for your own good. He will never cease. He will regulate every aspect of your life, destroy your liberty and enslave you, and sleep well convinced that he has made the world a better place.

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