10 GOP Senators & the NSA

From ThinkProgress:


Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): “The FISA Act was–created a court set up by the chief justice of the United States to allow a rapid response to requests for surveillance activity in the war on terror. I don’t know of any legal basis to go around that.”

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA): “”There is no doubt that this is inappropriate.”

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ): “WALLACE: But you do not believe that currently he has the legal authority to engage in these warrant-less wiretaps. MCCAIN: You know, I don’t think so…”

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS): “I am troubled by what the basis for the grounds that the administration says that they did these on, the legal basis…”

From MediaMatters:

Sens. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), both members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, signed a December 19 letter calling for immediate hearings on Bush's surveillance program.

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), on the January 1 edition of CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, also called for congressional hearings on Bush's surveillance program.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), according to a December 17 Portland (Maine) Press Herald article, "called the allegations of surveillance abuses 'extremely troubling.'

Sen. John E. Sununu (R-NH) told the Manchester, New Hampshire, Union Leader, "We need to have the appropriate committees of Congress undertake hearings."

Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) and Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter (R-ID) "say they are bothered by the potential privacy abuses with warrantless wiretaps of U.S. citizens' international communications," according to a December 24 Associated Press report.