RADIO TIDBITS

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), the chairman of the House intelligence committee, was on Slot's show this AM. He repeated the legal farce that the AUMF of Sept. 2001 allowed Bush to bypass FISA and, more ominously, claimed that the recent stories in the NY Times about warrantless NSA domestic spying were as damaging and as illegal as the John Walker family spy ring that was uncovered in 1985.

Here's a brief refresher on the Walker ring:

WALKER, JOHN ANTHONY and his son, MICHAEL LANCE WALKER, were indicted 28 May 1985 by a Federal grand jury in Baltimore on six counts of espionage. The elder Walker, a retired Navy warrant officer who had held a Top Secret Crypto clearance, was charged with having sold classified material to Soviet agents for the past 18 years. During his military career, Walker made some investments in which he lost money. To make up for his losses, in late 1968 at the age of 30, Walker went to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC, and offered his services for purposes of espionage. He compromised key cards used for enciphering messages and also provided information on the encryption devices themselves. At least a million classified messages of the military services and US intelligence agencies were compromised.


Bennett added the Dana Priest articles in the WaPo about the secret prisons but he's been on that hobby horse for weeks. (Byron York also made a brief appearance to repeat his misinterpretation of Jamie Gorelick's testimony about Presidential power, go here for details.) Slots later expressed outrage that our national security had been compromised by these reports and tied this to the meme that the Democrats are weak on national defense.

This seems to be the GOP plan to defend Pres. Fredo:

1) Bush has the authority to break the law
2) Reporting on breaking the law is treason
3) The Democrats are weak on defense