| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: WoT |
| Senators clash with Justice Department lawyer over CIA intelligence memos |
| 2013-12-19 |
[THEGUARDIAN] An argument about a secret congressional committee's ability to review the US intelligence agencies went kaboom!into rare public view on Tuesday as angry senators demanded legal memos from a nominee to run the CIA's legal office. Caroline Krass, a top justice department lawyer, sparked the ire of several Senate intelligence committee members by claiming that crucial legal opinions about intelligence matters were beyond the scope of the committee. Asked directly and repeatedly if the Senate panel was entitled to the memos, which several senators claimed were crucial for performing their oversight functions, Krass replied: "I do not think so, as a general matter." Dianne Feinstein ...Dem Senator-for-Life from Caliphornica. She has been a politician since about the time she was weaned. Feinstein was the author of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, and tried it a second time in 2012. Feinstein has chaired the Select Committee on Intelligence since 2009. At age 80, Feinstein is the oldest currently serving United States Senator.... , the Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, Democrat who chairs the committee, suggested that Krass placed her nomination as CIA general counsel in jeopardy. "You are going to encounter some heat in that regard," Feinstein said. The Senate intelligence committee, whose public hearings are increasingly rare, is usually a bastion of support for the CIA and its sister intelligence agencies. The exception is the committee's prolonged fight with the CIA over a 6,300-page report on the agency's torture of terrorism detainees in its custody since 9/11. The committee has prepared its report for years; the former chairman, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, said the classified version contains 50,000 footnotes. For a year, the panel has sought to release a public version that multiple members of the panel say documents both the brutality of CIA torture and what they have called "lies" told by the CIA to the oversight committees in Congress and the rest of the executive branch concerning its torture practices. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #6 The legislative branch has become a insider country club in the Senate and a money and influence peddling organization in the House by which its members and cronies enrich themselves and their peers. Congress has ceased to be a governing body - the Senate and House haven't even performed their primary function of passing a true budget, nor have they performed their designed purpose, which is to Represent the states and the people, respectively. Small wonder we have devolved into an imperial presidency over the past couple of administrations,with the executive branch running roughshod, far exceeding what should be considered its constitutional limits (due to an "activist" progressive judiciary). |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2013-12-19 22:56 |
| #5 Krass is still DoJ and angling to be a Klingon. That said, it's obvious what the prevailing mindset is. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2013-12-19 18:09 |
| #4 Krass and her Klingon colleagues are the masters. Champ is simply the puppet. Here, get him involved. Johnson loved the maps and B-52 strikes. Give him the Drone lists. He'll come to enjoy it. You'll see. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2013-12-19 12:38 |
| #3 But, but, but we must give him |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2013-12-19 12:20 |
| #2 Understandable mistake by Krass: Congress has outsourced so much of its regulatory and rule-writing power to the Executive branch that she thought she had the rule-writing power to tell the Congress to sod off. It's an easy mistake to make once you've aggrandized enough power. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2013-12-19 12:14 |
| #1 Caroline Krass, a top justice department lawyer, sparked the ire of several Senate intelligence committee members by claiming that crucial legal opinions about intelligence matters were beyond the scope of the committee. .....and by extension, also beyond the rule of law. Behold 'the beast' senators. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2013-12-19 10:52 |