Gore to Speak Monday

In an event sure to drive Bush spokesmen like Limbaugh and Hannity into a frenzy, Al Gore will deliver an address Monday night. He has long been an eloquent critic of the current administration's abuses and failures; no one should expect anything less of his coming speech. He will be introduced by Bob Barr, one of the few remaining on the political right who has not cast aside his conservative principles to embrace the Republican administration. Strange bedfellows indeed.

Bush Authorized Pre-9/11 NSA Program

The ubiquitous 9/11 excuse won't wash in this case—from Jason Leopold via Truthout: What had long been understood to be protocol in the event that the NSA spied on average Americans was that the agency would black out the identities of those individuals or immediately destroy the information. But according to people who worked at the NSA as encryption specialists during this time, that's not what happened. On orders from Defense Department officials and President Bush, the agency kept a running list of the names of Americans in its system and made it readily available to a number of senior officials in the Bush administration, these sources said, which in essence meant the NSA was conducting a covert domestic surveillance operation in violation of the law. In other words, the President was breaking the law well before the resolution he's currently using as a flimsy excuse was even considered.

Conservative Mag: Abramoff a Republican Scandal

From Rich Lowry at NRO. The attempts to link Democrats to the Abramoff affair are destined to fail—there's nothing there. $Q: Abramoff is a Republican who worked closely with two of the country's most prominent conservative activists, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed. Top aides to the most important Republican in Congress, Tom DeLay (R., Tex.) were party to his sleazy schemes. The only people referred to directly in Abramoff's recent plea agreement are a Republican congressmen and two former Republican congressional aides. The GOP members can make a case that the scandal reflects more the way Washington works than the unique perfidy of their party, but even this is self-defeating, since Republicans run Washington.

Kennedy vs Specter

The two got a little heated at the Alito hearings today. Crooks and Liars has the vid. Sounds like frayed tempers over a misunderstanding—a letter Kennedy sent that Specter never received.

Heavy NSA Surveillance of Anti-War Group

From Raw Story. $Q: Allwine also discussed how the Pledge has been infiltrated. She described a March 20, 2003 demonstration in downtown Baltimore where "a provocateur (whom we had identified at our planning meeting the previous night) joined us. We'd never seen him before. . . during the die-in at the federal courthouse, he was taunting the police in a violent manner. We had to quiet him down, he then disappeared and we never saw him again - and, of course, he wasn't arrested with the other 49 of us." It appears the lines between political surveillance and national security have been blurred by the NSA—the revelations make the President's illegal spy program even more troubling.

Bremer Needed More Troops

According to his new book, Paul Bremer asked for three times as many troops during his tenure. Apparently Donald Rumsfeld didn't even bother to respond to the request.