Dewine (R Ohio) to introduce NSA whitewash bill. Hearings to be canceled?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/14/AR2006021401812.html

Senate intelligence committee member Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) said in an interview that he supports the NSA program and would oppose a congressional investigation. He said he is drafting legislation that would "specifically authorize this program" by excluding it from the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which established a secret court to consider government requests for wiretap warrants in anti-terrorist investigations.
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Dewine's bill will:

1.Maintain the curtain of secrecy over the NSA Domestic spying program as it has operated since Feb 2001;

2. Set up a fig leaf of congressional "authorization" for Bush's current program;

3. Eliminate any input from the Judicial Branch of government by exempting Bush from the 1978 FISA Act

4. (And most important) Kill the currently scheduled bipartisan Senate inquiry, allowing the Rove to craft the 2006 campaign around their so-called "Terrorist Surveillance Program".


Any guesses why the diminutive Dewine has changed his tune on domestic spying?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/02/06/rove-threatens-republican_n_15216.html

The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee's investigation of the administration's unauthorized wiretapping.

Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.
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Profiles in Courage, Republican Style.

:sarcasm:

Can we stop with the circular firing squad in the Brown/Hackett mess and set about the business of getting Dewine unelected?

Please

No matter how much Gov. Jodi Rell is anti-Bush, I will work to replace her with a Democrat. There is no Republican that I trust.

sucking up is the great GOP way....now if we can get Rove all liqueured up and take him out to a ranch (any one in Texas will do) and give him a rifle...hhmmmmmmm......pure speculation on my part but it would be so much fun!

The Congress will vote to allow a program they know nothing about.

if that doesn't indicate our democracy is dead, nothing does.

n/t

...Will vote with (or in Vilsack's case, rhetorically support) Dewine in his Rove-inspired effort to sweep domestic spying under the rug.

But Guess What, Boys...your Republican Opponents will still run a scare campaign against you in the Fall, smearing you as favoring the Terrorists by not letting Bush have unfettered warrantless domestic spying privileges. And because you've voted to scuttle any public scrutiny of the program, Rove will be free to lie through his teeth about mythical foiled terror plots.

That's how Rove works. He is the classic schoolyard Bully.

You give him your lunch money today to save yourself from a pummeling, but come September, he'll still be waiting for you behind the football field.

some of these fine "Democratic public servants" to toe their line, and I'm not the only one with this idea:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x338735
thread title (2-6-06 GD): Ex-Reagan official- Dubya uses spying to blackmail media & Dems
Comment/excerpt: About the author:?Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.

As I see it, it's circular - get spying program to gather blackmail evidence (and stifle dissent), then use it to blackmail to expand the secret spying programs and get more blackmail evidence and stifle dissent ever more completely and brutally.

And Russell Tice tells us it's not just the NSA wiretapping, there is electronic surveillance - data mining - going on too:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x421496
thread title (2-14-06 GD): TICE: There is ANOTHER Ongoing Top-Secret Surveillance Program!
Comment/excerpt: It’s DATA MINING, just like we thought. UPI link – “Russell D. Tice told the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations he has concerns about a ‘special access’ electronic surveillance program that he characterized as far more wide-ranging than the warrentless wiretapping recently exposed by the New York Times but he is forbidden from discussing the program with Congress.”

let's hear it Brown, let's go.... nail this bastard right now...

It's not just the senators and it's not just the GOPs. I'm betting one major reason for the spying machinery is to gather blackmail material to keep all their supporters and potential opponents in line. Others think this too:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2109517&mesg_id=2109940

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2109517
thread title (2-14-06 LBN): WP: Congressional Probe of NSA Spying Is in Doubt (WH sways GOP Lawmakers)
Comment/excerpt: Washington Post. Rove’s blackmailing of the GOPs is working. “Congress appeared ready to launch an investigation into the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance program last week, but an all-out White House lobbying campaign has dramatically slowed the effort and may kill it, key Republican and Democratic sources said yesterday.”

It's Rovian blackmail, and it's working.