The Senate just lost its most principled member, Russ Feingold. Consider it a beacon of our money- and fearmonger- drenched politics. Feingold was the perfect politician for America as our founders envisioned it. But a terrible politician when seats go to the highest (foreign) bidder or those screaming the loudest about heebie jeebies. But as [...]

As expected, SSCI just approved James Clapper’s nomination to be DNI. Surprisingly, though, there were no dissenters. Not Russ Feingold, with his worries about transparency on DOD covert ops. Not Tom Coburn, who was concerned about the timing of Clapper’s nomination (and who never met an obstructive tactic he didn’t like). Not even Kit Bond, [...]

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 [...]

As I noted in my last post, the Obama Administration is following Bush Administration precedent in shielding OLC memos from Congressional oversight. The Kyl and Coburn requests for OLC memos on any rights Gitmo detainees would get if brought into the US were not the only questions about OLC memos posed to Eric Holder after [...]

Mark Hosenball reports that Dianne Feinstein and other Senate Dems have accused the Department of Homeland Security’s spooks of using right wing propaganda to develop finished intelligence reports on Muslims. By looking at this paragraph from last year’s intelligence authorization… The Committee has raised a number of concerns with reports issued by the Department of [...]

As I reported yesterday, the Dawn Johnsen-less OLC wrote an opinion on January 8 retroactively authorizing the FBI’s inappropriate use of the exigent letters to snoop on Americans’ telecomm records. Now, Senators Feingold, Durbin, and Wyden, have demanded that opinion from Eric Holder. Of note, they tie their demand into DOJ IG Glenn Fine’s comment [...]

The decision by the Supreme Court in Citizen’s United v. FEC is in.

Feingold asked a very good question. Why aren’t we sending troops to Pakistan (where al Qaeda is headquartered) or Somalia (which is causing real problems in the US) like we’re sending troops to Afghanistan?

If you missed the thoroughly depressing PATRIOT hearing today, this was one of two highlights.

The rest of the hearing featured Democrat after Democrat arguing that we need to develop lists of all the potential suspects out there buying acetone and hydrogen peroxide.

How did it happen that, after the entire Senate Judiciary Committee approved limits on Section 215 during the 2005 PATRIOT authorization, the section was blown open during the conference report, effectively allowing the use of Section 215 in data mining?