Why the Silence About the Hill's New Spine?

Dana Milbank's column in the Post mentions it, but the news sections of both WaPo and the Times today fail to report on a significant Congressional Republican about-face: James Sensenbrenner's support for a Democratic proposal to compel the administration to release documents related to the NSA's domestic spying program. Sensenbrenner, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, in April characterized the Attorney General as "stonewalling" in response to his committe's inquiries into the program, and now he wants to finally do something about it. Newsworthy? Apparently not.

Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe reports today on Arlen Specter's plans to hold hearings on Bush's 750 unconstitutional signing statements, a potentially important development in the ongoing tragedy that is Congress-Administration relations, but the Times and the Post evidently disagree, as they have no stories on it. The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee thinks "that the president is trying to expand his executive authority at the expense of Congress's constitutional prerogatives," calls the President's cherry-picking of laws "pretty flagrant," has scheduled public hearings to try to stop it, and that's not news? Maybe the Times and the Post are still steamed at getting professionally beat-down by all the good karma the Boston Globe made when they first reported on Bush's signing statements.

The American legal community, via its Bar Association, has assembled a blue ribbon task force to determine whether the president "has exceeded his constitutional authority and circumvented the system of checks and balances with the signing statements" (if these signing statements are as uncontroversial and as commonplace as the White House has claimed, why has the ABA never felt the need to study them before?), and still no comment from the Times or the Post. When independent, nonpartisan, voice-of-the-establishment professional organizations like the ABA feel the need to weigh in on whether the president is attacking the foundations of constitutional order in this country, something's wrong, and it's newsworthy.

and you are right they are newsworthy items but I'm assuming you know why they aren't covering them right? Anything that is good for Bush is a big bold headline.Anything that is bad (and anything that questions the authority of our king would be bad)is buried or ignored. It's standard in the so called liberal media now.

I had seen in passing something about Specter's hearings on the signing statements but I've lost hope that anything will be done by him or the Senate. The ABA is something I wasn't aware of and that's encouraging. Any high schooler can tell that the signing statements are unconstitutional. The executive doesn't make laws or interpret them and that's exactly what they are doing.

Thank goodness for the internet or this would be a complete police state already.

Let's just say we're skeptical after having seen the GOP wither under pressure and march off into the sunset at the close of business firmly in lockstep with the White House line.

Specter, in particular, is all bark no bite.