NSA Hearing surprises

One of the most surprising admissions from Gonzales in the hearings yesterday was that they are not monitoring Al Qaeda calls within the U.S. Huh? Why not.

That’s exactly what Spector said:

"I suspect there are some in America who are saying, 'Well, why aren't you? If you've got reason to believe that you've got two members of Al Qaeda talking to each other in America, by God, why aren't you listening to their conversations?' " the attorney general said. "Again, this was a judgment made that this was the right balance between the security of our country and protecting the private interests of Americans."

Another interesting point gleaned in the hearings was the timeline and when, as Shapiro put it in Salon today, “about when the administration decided that it was not obligated to get warrants under the 1978 FISA law to wiretap American citizens talking to someone abroad. The attorney general admitted that this expansive legal theory was created between the time that Congress rubber-stamped a go-to-war-in-Afghanistan resolution just a few days after Sept. 11 and when it approved the Patriot Act a month later.”

The least surprising development, as reported by Insight was that “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.”

Now that kind of thuggish behavior we have come to expect from Rove. No surprise there.