Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Glenn Greenwald on Yesterday’s Intelligence Committee Vote

I’ve gotten e-mails from some of you asking if I’ve seen how many votes Glenn Greenwald is ringing up for Best New Blog in the Koufax Awards. Yes, I know… (Truth be told, I don’t believe in voting for myself in these things so my vote went to Taylor Marsh.)

But if you want to know why Glenn is getting so many votes, take a look at his piece today, Post-mortem on the Intelligence Committee vote. Glenn deserves every bit of praise he’s getting and this wrap-up of yesterday’s gutless Senate vote is a perfect example of why. An excerpt:
Initially, it is almost unfathomable how little personal dignity these compliant GOP Senators have. Sens. Snowe and Hagel issued a statement in December pompously expressing their "profound concern" over the eavesdropping program and proclaiming that it is "critical" that the Senate hold hearings in order to learn what the Administration did when spying outside of FISA and without warrants on Americans.

After standing up and publicly making those statement and issuing those demands, they completely reverse themselves a few weeks later when the White House decrees that they do so. They thus vote against the very investigation which they both insisted, in public, was so critically important. If nothing else, just on a personal level, shouldn't they be way too embarrassed to be so blatantly manipulated and controlled, to the point where they demand hearings only to then vote against those same hearings a short time later all because that's what the White House demands?
Tell it, brother!

Please go read the rest here.