This Just In – Arlen “Conclusively Misspeaks” Again

(And I also posted here.)

The following appeared in yesterday’s interview with “Snarlin’ Arlen” Specter from yesterday’s New York Times magazine…

Q: With your departure from the Republican Party, there are no more Jewish Republicans in the Senate. Do you care about that?

A: I sure do. There’s still time for the Minnesota courts to do justice and declare Norm Coleman the winner.

Not to worry, though – the Times added the postscript of Specter saying that he flubbed the question based on the fact that he has new party allegiances now.

Sure he does.

And we also read the following…

Q: Since the (essay Specter wrote in the current issue of The New York Review of Books) is a criticism of the Bush administration and its grab for power, why did you wait until Bush left office to publish it? It would have been forceful if you had published it when he was still president.

A: Everything in that article I said years ago. I challenged the Terrorist Surveillance Program in Judiciary Committee hearings, which I chaired. I introduced legislation to stop signing statements and I pressed hard to subpoena the telephone-company executives on their participation in the program.

You “challenged the Terrorist Surveillance Program”? You mean, as in “challenged it to become worse than it already was”? What else could explain S. 2453 which you sponsored in July 2006, which, among other things, stipulated the following…

First, it required (if the Attorney General requests it, which he will) that all pending cases challenging the legality of the NSA program (which includes the EFF and ACLU cases) be transferred to the secret FISA court. Thus, the insufficiently deferential federal judges would have these cases taken away from them. Second, it would make judicial review of the administration's behavior virtually impossible, as it specifically prohibited (Sec. 702(b)(2)) the FISA court from "requir(ing) the disclosure of national security information . . . without the approval of the Director of National Intelligence of the Attorney General." That all but prevents any discovery in these lawsuits. Third, it quite oddly authorized (Sec. 702(b)(6)) the FISA court to "dismiss a challenge to the legality of an electronic surveillance program for any reason" (emphasis added). Arguably, that provision (would have) broadened the authority of the court to dismiss any such lawsuit for the most discretionary of reasons, even beyond the already wide parameters of the "state secrets" doctrine.

Yes, I haven’t forgotten how the Democrats caved on FISA, though supporters of the flawed final bill, such as Patrick Murphy, insist that it has provisions to ensure that the data mining was not supposed to continue against citizens of this country (though it ensured retroactive telco immunity). My point is that it’s way beyond a joke for Specter to imply that he was anything but an accomplice here, particularly with his craptacular bill.

However, I must admit that Specter is correct when he stated that he introduced legislation to ban signing statements by a president. However, as we learn here, he introduced it a few weeks ago after Dubya was already long gone (smooth move).

Oh, and when it comes to “pressing the telephone-company executives” (and the whole question of phone surveillance anyway), I think we should view the following clip from Jack Cafferty once more (why the hell would Specter stand up to the phone companies when he wouldn’t even stand up to the White House regime from which he took his marching orders?).



I just have three words to say in response to the ongoing farce of Arlen Specter’s wish to continue taking up space in the Democratic Party…

Run, Joe, Run!