As Josh Rogin and Marc Ambinder note, James Clapper is scheduled to get a vote tomorrow in the Senate Intelligence Committee on his nomination to be Director of National Intelligence. Ambinder reports that Kit Bond is most dissatisfied with Clapper at this point, the rest of the committee really ought to join in Bond’s dissatisfaction [...]

I trust you will all read Dana Priest and William Arkin’s story on the unwieldiness of our Intelligence Industrial Complex. It is good, insofar as it focuses needed attention on a huge problem. But boy is it itself unwieldy. Today’s overview appears to want to be two stories: one on the problem with out-of-control contracting, [...]

From Elena Kagan’s first comments about Cheney’s illegal wiretapping program yesterday (at 2:10), it sounds almost like she’d vote for rule of law in the al-Haramain case (though the case is probably in the gray area of cases on which she should recuse herself). DiFi: And we have just had a case. It came–by a [...]

I’m going to assume that this was just a misstatement on Elena Kagan’s part, but it’s one that I hope she corrects before her confirmation hearings are done. In response to a question from DiFi, Kagan suggested that SCOTUS’ decision in the Hamdi case–which relied on the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force passed after [...]

Watch the latest news video at video.foxnews.com As I’ve noted before (here and here), confirmation hearings for James Clapper have gotten bogged down in a dispute between the Administration and both houses of Congress over whether Congress should have the tools to exercise real oversight of intelligence functions. Right now, Nancy Pelosi is holding out [...]

Let me start by laying out a few details about Erik Prince that have been reported of late. Prince recently gave a speech I interpreted as a proposal for private contractors to serve as big oil’s enforcer–including in Nigeria and Iran Blackwater illegally tried (but allegedly failed) to negotiate a deal to train guards for [...]

Now for your latest installment of DOD’s expanding intelligence authorities, DNI’s increasing irrelevance, and the White House’s efforts to make sure those trends continue. As you’ll recall, back in March, the Senate Intelligence Committee sent a scathing report on the many failures to stop the Undie Bomber. The report was most critical of the head [...]

I’m going to have more to say about James Clapper’s nomination to be Director of National Intelligence. But for now I want to point out similarities between how the Administration’s treated that nomination and its involvement in primaries. Two things make James Clapper’s nomination anything but a done deal. Most important to us little people [...]

I’m thoroughly unsurprised by the news of Dennis Blair’s ouster. After all, it’s an impossible job that appears to serve one purpose: to provide a deck chair you can rearrange every two years as a scapegoat for our continuing inability to detect terrorists even with all the surveillance toys we’ve got. (Actually, if you’re Michael [...]

The Senate Intelligence Committee has just released the Executive Summary of its report on the intelligence failures leading up to the Underwear Bomber’s attempted bombing on a plane landing in Detroit. I’ll have a bit more to say in a bit. But I wanted to focus on point 14, which feels an awful lot like [...]