Austin's Dome

There is no better way than Robert Frost's poem to state what Arlen Specter will be doing this week.


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Specter has fallen all over backwards to give the Bush Administration an out for the NSA domestic spying program flap. First, he showed up on This Week and said the "I-word" (Impeachment) but then back pedaled on Meet the Press to give a legal mumble-jumbo defense of Bush's 2004 Buffalo campaign speech where the Prez said he used warrants for wiretaps. In the middle of this, he wrote a list of questions for Attorney General Gonzalez to ponder before his appearance with the Senate Judicial Committee which included giving an rationale for why the DeWine amendment was argued down by the DOJ. Question #10 really left the barn door open for Gonzalez when it asked him if him would now be willing to go to the FISA court.


Specter really greased the Administration's palm when the hearing began. He decided that Gonzalez didn't need to be under oath, ruled that the Bush campaign video didn't need to be shown and introduced a 9/11 victim's family member to the room. It seemed that the Senator was strongly looking down the worn path, but when Gonzalez's performance didn't clear any of the undergrowth away, and in fact pulled down a few pine boughs to further obscure the view, Specter refused to move from the crosswords. So, what does he do? He spreads open the nearest branch a bit and yells out louder hoping someone out there will hear:


I hope you will give weighty thought to taking this issue to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, lock, stock and barrel. Let them see the whole thing and let them pass judgment.


Senator Specter in the yellow woods waiting for a reply. Will it be a human voice or will it be the echo of his own voice?


If we go by the Vice-President on "The News Hour", Specter might well be hearing his own echo. Cheney admitted that the NSA spying program was meant to be a kept secret and when Jim Lehrer pressed him, he said that it would have been at least until the end of the war. Of course, the Administration has been telling us that this is a long and protracted war against terrorism, so you know he meant a perpetual secret. Lehrer asked him why he thought the four Republican Senators on the Committee who were questioning the spying were doing that and he said "because they haven't been briefed about the program" and went on the say that if they had been briefed they'd have no problem with it.


OK, why not go and brief them now about it? If this program is all legit and run "judiciously" why are the boughs as thick as a fence? This is why the Administration started briefing all the members of the Intelligence Committee about the NSA spying. But interestingly, it wasn't enough for Specter who is going to write legislation that would make the White House submit the program to see if it was legal. So, the peering down the path will continue, will the Administration allow the secret FISA court to see if the program is as clean and law abiding as they say it is? Or will they continue to hide behind the rationale that it is even too secret for a secret court to judge upon it?


I watched the Cheney interview on the NHK network in Japan which runs a translated transcript in English on the screen during the interview and when the Vice-Prez, talking about the spying, said it was run in a "judiciously prudent manner" it was translated as "judiciously prudent marihuana." One has to wonder where Senator Specter's nose has been leading him on this.