Two or three (depending on how you looked at it) Republican proposals were circulating a couple of weeks ago, before the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee voted that party loyalty was more important than their oaths of office. (Could we Democrats acquire just a LITTLE of that vice?) Of those proposals, the worst was that of Mike DeWine of Ohio, who not only wants to raise the speed limit after the President got caught speeding, but also, to make doubly sure, wants to make it illegal to point a radar gun at the President in the future.
Many in the media thought Arlen Specter's more moderate offering was the frontrunner, but right before the fateful March 7 Intelligence Committee meeting, I reported a scary sign: that swing votes (and eventual bill co-sponsors) Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe were huddled in a Senate hallway with committee chairman Pat Roberts and DeWine. (That story wasn't reported anywhere other than here. So much for the myth that bloggers don't report "real" news.)
After that meeting, Hagel and Snowe announced that they were sticking with the party line. DeWine's proposal clearly was part of the sellout deal.
Now the awful DeWine bill has officially been presented, and the inestimable Glenn Greenwald -- who retains a remarkably resilient capacity to perform legal research and analysis when other legal minds (including mine) have simply started to smoke and sputter under the overload of this administration's brazenly illegal conduct -- has posted an insightful and detailed analysis. I'll have more analysis of my own of the DeWine bill, but start with Glenn's; his is the "must read."
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