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Sen. Roberts memory problems

Obviously Sen. Roberts forgot to take his memory pills again.

From the AP:
WASHINGTON - The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, breaking ranks with the president on domestic eavesdropping, says he wants a special court to oversee the program.

But less than a day later, a top aide to Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., sought to clarify his position.

Roberts told The New York Times that he is concerned that the secret court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act could not issue warrants as quickly as the monitoring program requires. But he is optimistic that the problem could be worked out.

"You don't want to have a situation where you have capability that doesn't work well with the FISA court, in terms of speed and agility and hot pursuit," Roberts said Friday.

While he didn't know how such a process would work, Roberts also said the much-discussed National Security Agency program "should come before the FISA court."

Roberts was not available on Saturday. The Senate Intelligence Committee's majority staff director, Bill Duhnke, said the Times story did not reflect "the tenor and status" of the negotiations between Congress and the White House, as well as within Congress.

Duhnke said Roberts is looking at changes within the federal law but not necessarily involving the approval of the court. (Emphasis added)

So was this a case of Sen. Roberts saying something he didn't really mean? How very Bush like of him. And notice how they blamed the messenger (the NY Times) for failing to reflect "the tenor and status" of the fact that Roberts apparently didn't really mean what he said.

Update: The Washington Post had a nice article on just how hard the White House has been working to suppress any kind of investigation into their warrantless surveillance program. Glenn at UT opines that this just shows you how afraid the White House is of this scandal.

Yes, of course. That must be the answer. Because the only bias in the world is on the part of Republicans. Heaven forefend that the New York Times should skew a story. That could never happen. It's those nasty ol' Repugnantuns.

Good observation.


J

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