{"id":183448,"date":"2013-02-26T20:26:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-27T01:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/02\/26\/sorry-but-i-think-the-lede-was-buried-here\/"},"modified":"2013-02-26T20:26:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-27T01:26:00","slug":"sorry-but-i-think-the-lede-was-buried-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/02\/26\/sorry-but-i-think-the-lede-was-buried-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Sorry, But I Think the Lede Was Buried Here"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes, the Senate finally got around to voting on, and approval, Hagel, but they bury the part about a Democratic Senator supporting a filibuster of John Brennan as Director of the CIA<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The chances for Mr. Brennan remained good, though his confirmation was not expected to be entirely smooth, as both Republicans and Democrats have raised objections over the agency\u2019s use of drones to kill American citizens suspected of terrorism. Republicans also see the Brennan vote, like the fight over Mr. Hagel, as leverage to press other issues with the White House.<\/span>

<\/span>Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said on Tuesday that he favored a longer confirmation process to force the White House to disclose more about the drone program. \u201cThere\u2019s an old saw that after somebody is confirmed, they don\u2019t even owe you a holiday card,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is the time for vigilant oversight.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, has called for similar disclosures on drones and has threatened to use \u201cevery procedural option at my disposal\u201d to hold back Mr. Brennan\u2019s nomination<\/span>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s half way down the New York Times<\/i> article.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Tina Brown’s Daily Beast<\/i> prominently features this<\/a> on their web site:<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve followed the drawn-out saga surrounding John Brennan\u2019s nomination to be CIA director\u2014with all the questions it has raised about drones and targeting of American citizens\u2014you may have noticed something odd: one of the Senate\u2019s longtime liberals, Ron Wyden of Oregon, has appeared to be very much on the same page as Rand Paul of Kentucky, arguably the most ardent Tea Partier on Capitol Hill.<\/span>

<\/span>It turns out this isn\u2019t just a fleeting alliance. For some time now, Wyden and Paul\u2014along with two other senators, Republican Mike Lee of Utah and Democrat Mark Udall of Colorado\u2014have been working together to try to curb the broad authorities the Obama administration has asserted in the war on terror. The advent of this group, which calls itself the Checks and Balances Caucus, is certainly not the first time in political history that the libertarian right has allied with the civil-liberties-minded left. Yet at a moment when inter-party cooperation is almost nonexistent in Washington, any bipartisan alliance\u2014especially one that includes some of DC\u2019s most committed ideological opposites\u2014is both unusual and noteworthy.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I do hope that Wyden has the guts to back up a filibuster by Paul, because the administration needs to be forced to be more open about these policies and their legal justifications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, the Senate finally got around to voting on, and approval, Hagel, but they bury the part about a Democratic Senator supporting a filibuster of John Brennan as Director of the CIA: The chances for Mr. Brennan remained good, though his confirmation was not expected to be entirely smooth, as both Republicans and Democrats have …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[998,1102,978,1103,1173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress","category-intelligence","category-politics","category-secrecy","category-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183448"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183448\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}