Posted by
Bert Chapman on Thursday, June 28, 2007 9:50:54 AM
This morning, while driving to work, there was an interview on NPR's
Morning Edition with Vermont "Senator" Patrick Leahy. Leady
chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and was in the news because this
committee has voted to issue subpoenas to various Bush Administration
officials about the national security agency's wireless surveillance
program. Congressional committees have the legal power to issue
such subpoenas, but a desire for justice is not what's motivating
Patrick Leahy in this matter.
Leahy has a long standing record of opposition to U.S. antiterrorism
efforts and a propensity to leak classified information. During
the 1980s, Leahy served on the Senate Select Intelligence
Committee. Those serving on this committtee have an especially
solemn obligation to keep tight control over the sensitive information
they have access to. Most Senators, and their House counterparts,
serving on congressional intelligence committees keep this information
protected. Not, Patrick "loose lips" Leahy.
During the 1980s, Leahy disclosed classified information that one of
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's phone conversations had been
intercepted. Information gleaned from this intercepted
conversation was used in the operation to capture the terrorists
who hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985 and Leahy's leaking
may have resulted in the death of at least 1 Egyptian operative
involved in this operation. Leaky Leahy struck again when he
allowed an NBC reporter to look at the draft of a Senate
Intelligence Committtee report on the Iran-Contra scandal and
Leahy was eventually forced to resign from this committee due to his
illicit behavior.
Two decades later, Leahy is chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee
where he still has access to classified information because that
committee has jurisdiction over the FBI, Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court, and other national security matters where
preserving classified information is critical. You would think
that Leahy's senatorial colleagues would have learned that it is
dangerous to trust him with classified information.
Leahy and his leftist lugnuts in the Senate are upset over the
Bush Administration's wireless surveillance program conducted by the
National Security Agency against suspected terrorists and their
sympathizers. Leahy and his useful idiot colleagues claim they
want to know about the legal rationale used to justify this
program. What they really want to do is cripple our ability to
gain actionable intelligence information about the activities of
terrorists desirous of attacking the U.S. and our interests.
Leahy really wants to score cheap political points against the
President and our antiterrorist policies. It's beyond Leahy's
intellectual and moral capacity to suggest policies that would actually
help us fight Islamist terror. He's more concerned with providing
aid and comfort to America's enemies behind a veneer of legal and
constitutial rhetorical rectitude.
Unfortunately, Leahy comes from a state that has gone so kooky leftist,
that Vermont town meetings have featured resolutions calling for
Vermont to secede from the U.S. Obviously, the land of Ben and
Jerry has not learned that secession has not been a legally viable
option since the Civil War. Perhaps, the Bush Administration
should look at imposing an exceptionally punitive form of
reconstruction upon Vermont so that state and its increasingly
dissolute electorate can learn to vote properly.
I hope Bush Administration officials compelled to testify before Leahy
and his committee have the guts to tell the Vermont vermin
to take his objections to the wireless surveillance program and shove
them up his bodily orifices!