Does Brit Hume Think NSA Spying Only Happens to Bad Guys?
The Family Jewels are online now, and page 27 confirms something that should have been obvious. Under the Celotex II program, Brit Hume came under CIA surveillance during the time he worked for Jack Anderson, who was often under surveillance.
So who will be the first enterprising Fox guest to ask Hume whether he believes, along with all the wingnuts of the world, that only bad people come under illegal government surveillance?
Or did the government surveillance find something, um, compromising, which is why Hume is such a favorite interviewer every time the Republican elite has something awkward to disclose?
Good â€record management†allowed J. Edgar Hoover to be appointed Director for Life of the FBI, remember. But on a more serious note, a surveillance society can lead to the breakdown of the normal levels of trust, privacy and risk-taking necessary for a society to flourish. The extent to which the Stasi corrupted life with its informers and blackmail in East Germany should be required reading for these types – actually, now that I think about it, they are probably all too aware of such techniques!
He’s just going to claim he had nothing to hide, so why worry — at least publicly he’ll say something like that — and I’d guess the Repubs like him because he’s got a pole up his arse every bit as big as the rest of theirs.
Brit will only scream if Henry Waxman starts to investigate him cuz then if Henry is doing that then Henry is pissed.
If he didn’t have anything to hide then, I bet he sure does now. If he tries that dodge, ask him to produce his phone records. I’d like to know how often Rove calls to give instructions.
HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!
â€WASHINGTON (AP) — The Interior Department’s former No. 2 official was sentenced to 10 months in prison Tuesday for lying to senators in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, the highest administration official sentenced in the probe.
J. Steven Griles, who was the department’s deputy secretary, had pleaded guilty to obstructing a congressional investigation, and a federal judge said he continued to make excuses about his lies.
â€Even now you continue to minimize and try to excuse your conduct,†U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle told Griles before doubling the five-month person prison term he and prosecutors had agreed on.â€
On a broader note, I just have to wonder what the purpose is for releasing all this information NOW… Is it to show that there were lots of unpleasant things that went on in other administrations, too, to shift some scrutiny away from Bush/Cheney?
I am often reminded of the old saying (and I wish I could remember who to attribute it to). There are two things you never want to see: Sausage being made, and your government in action. And, while I would generally agree with that, this administration has been a total disaster — and they will stop at nothing to shift blame from themselves.
AZ Matt
Ah, just as I expected would happen. Huevelle is the judge who upped Ney’s sentence. She doesn’t have much patience with public corruption.
Back in the day, Brit Hume was an honest to goodness liberal. He wrote a book (Inside Story) of his years with Anderson, and it’s a good read. For example, he brags about his role in bringing down humorist Al Capp, the creator of the comic strip Lil Abner who went from FDR liberal to George Wallace/Orval Faubus conservative. (While Al Capp toured college campuses in the late 1960s/early 1970s giving pro-conservative speeches, he was also raping female undergraduates. Hume, as Anderson’s research assistant, exposed Capp’s wrong-doing and Capp — after pleading guilty to a lesser charge — eventually left the United States in disgrace.)
In other words, the Brit Hume of today probably thinks it was a good thing that the Brit Hume of the early 1970s was under surveillance.
Does anyone really think all this surveillance is to catch CRIMINALS? Give ma a break; they’re watching and recording everything everybody in congress and the press does. Wouldn’t that explain how every Regnant party member votes as a unit all the time before 2006? I have trouble believing that EVERY Repugnant is that corrupt without a little “persuasionâ€.
BTW; Cheney’s an amateur, my mother was one of J. E. Hoover’s personal phone operators after WWII. She said that, in order to prove he never actually threatened people with release of their “jacket†(his name for the files he kept on everyone), he kept one of his personal operators on the phone at ALL times. She was one of those 5 operators. (This was before the tape recorder was available, before direct dial). He was slick; he just dropped the word “jacket†into conversations that were not going his way.