More Illegal Surveillance, Too Little Too Late?

The GOP Congress might have finally woken up to the fact that they are irrelevant, this time vis-a-vis the White House.


WASHINGTON, July 8 -- In a sharply worded letter to President Bush in May, an important Congressional ally charged that the administration might have violated the law by failing to inform Congress of some secret intelligence programs and risked losing Republican support on national security matters.
The letter from Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, did not specify the intelligence activities that he believed had been hidden from Congress.
But Mr. Hoekstra, who was briefed on and supported the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and the Treasury Department's tracking of international banking transactions, clearly was referring to programs that have not been publicly revealed....
"I have learned of some alleged intelligence community activities about which our committee has not been briefed," Mr. Hoesktra wrote. "If these allegations are true, they may represent a breach of responsibility by the administration, a violation of the law, and, just as importantly, a direct affront to me and the members of this committee who have so ardently supported efforts to collect information on our enemies."
He added: "The U.S. Congress simply should not have to play Twenty Questions to get the information that it deserves under our Constitution."


I applaud Hoekstra's effort to assert his committee's oversight role over executive overreach in intelligence, but where has he been for the last five years? I have little faith that a GOP-controlled Congress is in any position to wrest it's Constitutional authority back from King George.