Under Jurisdiction
March 9th, 2007No surprises here.
The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday. And for three years the FBI underreported to Congress how often it forced businesses to turn over the customer data, the audit found. FBI Director Robert Mueller said he was to blame for not putting more safeguards into place. “I am to be held accountable,” Mueller said. He told reporters he would correct the problems and did not plan to resign.
I don’t imagine that it’s that bad in the FBI. The agencies that I believe have been given free rein to maul the American Constitution are little-known and in the Pentagon. Not that I don’t believe the FBI has abused its powers in the last few years. I’m just pointing out what should be obvious, but besides that, I think Mueller should re-sign for being an all-around poor Director. His agency is a bureaucratic mess. Has been for years, to be sure, but after 9/11 it became imperative that he fix it and didn’t.
But while we’re under the Attorney General’s jurisdiction, let’s look here, where Arlen Specter says that we may have a new AG sooner rather than later. I doubt that’ll happen as I don’t imagine that King George wants to fire a) a dear friend, or b) the first Mexican Attorney General, and it isn’t as if the American public considered him the liability that they considered, say, Donald Rumsfeld to be.
Besides, Bush shares Gonzalez’ flippant nature.