Big Brother Lowers the Bar He Hopped
Arlen Specter still doesn’t get it. Congressional oversight and the judgments of jurists versed in law are simply not necessary when our Omnipotent President knows everything. Thus the access to private bank records is legal, because Bush’s legal education is so vastly superior:
Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he had sent letters on Friday to both Treasury Secretary John W. Snow and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales on the issue. While he declined to release the letters, he said he was concerned about the legal authority for the operation.
Mr. Specter has been at odds with the administration over another previously secret counterterrorism operation, the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program. The senator said he was particularly troubled that the administration had expanded its Congressional briefings on the financial tracking program in recent weeks after having learned that The New York Times was making inquiries.
“Why does it take a newspaper investigation to get them to comply with the law?” the senator asked. “That’s a big, important point.”
In explaining the program, Mr. Levey, the Treasury under secretary who oversees the program, said in an interview earlier in the week that “people do not have a privacy interest in their international wire transactions.” But Mr. Specter was skeptical.
“I’m not surprised that a Treasury official would take that position, but I’m not so sure he’s right,” the senator said. “I don’t think it’s an open-and-shut question.”
Specter, a former prosecutor, has a lw degree and passed the bar. Bush, a former Air National Guard dropout, has passed out at a few bars.
