January 23, 2007

Pat Leahy: Canary in a Data Mine

By Marc Sheppard
The new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is demanding he be kept apprised of covert technologies our intelligence agencies use to thwart terrorism. The legislation he's cosponsoring would compel the White House to provide regular reports on all current and future intelligence data-mining operations.  Such a plan to trust Congress not to expose mechanisms which inherently demand obscurity would certainly be ill-advised regardless of its source.  But this scheme was hatched by the Senator once voted least likely to keep a top secret -- Patrick Leahy.  As you may recall, Leahy was stripped of his Senate Intelligence Committee vice-chair during the mid 80's for making good on threats to sabotage classified strategies he didn't personally care for.  During Ronald Reagan's own war on terror, the Vermont Democrat was aptly nicknamed "Leaky Leahy" for proving time and again that he would do absolutely anything to discredit the Republican President --...(Read Full Article)