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The Brief Beef

As anyone who has been following the warrantless spying scandal since it was first revealed by the NY Times last December, you will know that among the excuses that the Bush administration used to claim they could conduct the surveillance was the tacit approval of the program from Congress. Of course their idea of "approval" was to brief a few congressional committee members on a few details without giving them any say in whether or not the program would continue.

Well it would seem we can scratch another one off of that ever shortening list of excuses.

Yesterday the Times reported on what they called a "sharply worded letter" to the President written by Rep. Peter Hoekstra. The Congressman was complaining that he felt that the administration wasn't keeping the Congress fully informed of its intelligence programs as required by law. Hoekstra has now confirmed that there were indeed programs that the Bush administration had not informed the Congress about.

This begs a few questions: Just what sorts of secret programs does BushCo have going on that would cause such a staunch ally to send this "straighten up and fly right" message? Was this merely a power play on Hoekstra's part? Is something about to break?

As the Congress can attest to, answers are hardly forthcoming from this administration.