Witless List

From Aol NEWS:

The House Intelligence Committee has reportedly agreed on a witness list for its investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election that includes somewhere between 36 and 48 people, CNN reported Wednesday night.

Included on the list are current and former associates of President Donald Trump believed to have been in contact with Russian officials during the campaign or transition period, including Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner; Trump confidante Roger Stone; former national security adviser, Michael Flynn; and early Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, according to CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

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The Big Top Flip-Flop!

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.

In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance.

…snip…

Although a spokesman for Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, denied that the senator’s views on surveillance and executive power had shifted, legal specialists said the letter contrasted with statements Mr. McCain previously made about the limits of presidential power.

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Tele-con

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President George W. Bush won a test vote in the U.S. Senate on Thursday on his demand that any telephone company that participated in his warrantless domestic spying program receive immunity from lawsuits.

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Jeepers, Creepers!

From The Raw Story:

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a “walk in the park,” according to an interview published in the New Yorker’s print edition today.

Debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “will be a walk in the park compared to this,” McConnell said. “this is going to be a goat rope on the Hill. My prediction is that we’re going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens.”

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Sssshhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post:

An apparent lie by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales could be easily cleared up, White House spokesman Tony Snow says — but doing so would require discussing matters that must remain classified in order to protect national security.

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Another Episode of Attorney General Hospital….

Cue the dramatic organ music!
From the Barre Montpelier Times Argus:

The eavesdropping program was scheduled to expire on March 11, 2004, unless Ashcroft agreed to its extension. But at that time the attorney general was seriously ill with pancreatitis, so Comey was serving as acting attorney general. Believing the program to be illegal, Comey advised the White House he would refuse to sign off on it, and so Card and Gonzales were dispatched (it’s not clear who sent them, but highly unlikely they acted on their own) to Ashcroft’s bedside.

Wowza! This is gonna be a fun episode!!!

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Mueller? Mueller?

Former Chimpy’s White House Chief of Staff Andrew the prick Card and then-White House counsel Alberto the weasel Gonzales tried to force then-Attorney General John I never thought I would actually miss him Ashcroft, who was ailing and in Intensive Care, to agree to continue an illegal wiretapping policy. Deputy (and acting) AG James Comey was standing by, as were FBI agents placed in the hospital room under orders from FBI Director Robert Mueller. Later on, Comey, Ashcroft, and Mueller threatened to resign.
I don’t think I want to be around when…..

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Can You Hear Me Now?

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, May 1 — Senior Bush administration officials told Congress on Tuesday that they could not pledge that the administration would continue to seek warrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program, as it agreed to do in January.

Rather, they argued that the president had the constitutional authority to decide for himself whether to conduct surveillance without warrants.

And, the Washington Post assures us that Chimpy can always make things worse:

The Bush administration is urging Congress to pass a law that would halt dozens of lawsuits charging phone companies with invading ordinary citizens’ privacy through a post-Sept. 11 warrantless surveillance program.

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(A note from nonnie: Don’t know if the site is temporarily screwy, but the poster is alternately bigger and smaller when i preview it. Here is the large version just in case)