Last night on NBC News, Lisa Myers reported:
"One intelligence source tells NBC News that two dozen members of Congress have known about this program for years, and have been completely uninterested until today."
This is just another instance of the Democrats trying to score cheap political points at the expense of our national security interests. And they don't care if it takes a few leaks of classified information to do it. They often seem to care more about winning the next election, and beating the president, than winning the war on terror.
Via NRO's Media Blog, The Washington Post reports the American people aren't buying into the Democrats' hysteria and deceit about the program:
A majority of Americans initially support a controversial National Security Agency program to collect information on telephone calls made in the United States in an effort to identify and investigate potential terrorist threats, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The new survey found that 63 percent of Americans said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism, including 44 percent who strongly endorsed the effort. Another 35 percent said the program was unacceptable, which included 24 percent who strongly objected to it.
A slightly larger majority--66 percent--said they would not be bothered if NSA collected records of personal calls they had made, the poll found.
Others:
Michelle Malkin
Memorandum
The Volokh Conspiracy
Hot Air
Wait, how does two dozen members of Congress suddenly become
"Democrats?" Do we know how of the Congressfolks who knew were Dems
and how many were Republicans? Kind of an important, factoid,
don't you think?
Comment by Jerry Bowles — May 12, 2006 @ 11:37 am May 12, 2006
Fair point, Jerry. But the context of the quote from Myers suggests some of the Democrats who are now demagoguing the issue knew about it before. She said those who knew about the program were uninterested "until today." And those interested today are mostly Democrats.
Regardless of the precise number of Democrats Myers was referring to, the fact remains that once again the Democrats are putting partisan point scoring ahead of national security interests in the middle of a war. It's perfectly fine that they want to win elections; it would be nice if they could put a little of their passion and effort into winning the war as well.
Comment by The Editors — May 12, 2006 @ 12:19 pm May 12, 2006