Glen Greenwald Meet Think Progress

I generally like Glenn Greenwald's stuff and I admire the way that he holds elected official's, even if they are Democrats, feet to the fire. But here lately it seems a little like Greenwald is just looking for a reason to bash Democrats. First there was the faux outrage over statements made by Senator Diane Feinstein in regards to her intention to introduce legislation to ban torture. And now he has a post up using Dick Cheney of all people as a source trying to paint Congressional Democratic leadership being complicit in the use if illegal wiretapping by the Bush administration. Now first of all anybody who has read my posts knows that I am not a big fan of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and I am somewhat meh about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but Greenwald goes on a long rant based almost solely on the word of Dick Cheney. But lets examine how Greenwald feels about Cheney's truthiness:

It is certainly true that Dick Cheney is not exactly the most scrupulously honest public servant around. In fact, he's almost certainly the opposite

Now after having said that wouldn't most people take everything Cheney said with a grain of salt? Not Greenwald. Much like the peanut gallery's handling of the Blagojevich scandal wrt President Elect Barack Obama Greenwald now has "questions that need to be answered".

One would think that these Democratic leaders would, on their own, want to respond to Cheney's claims about them and deny the truth of those claims. After all, Cheney's statement is nothing less than an accusation that they not only enthusiastically approved, but actively insisted upon the continuation and ongoing secrecy, of a blatantly illegal domestic spying program (one that several of them would, once it was made public, pretend to protest). As Armando says, "The Democratic members who participated in this meeting have two choices in my mind - refute Cheney's statements or admit their complicity in the illegal activity perpetrated by the Bush Administration."

I'm going to spend the day calling these members and trying to get some response to Cheney's claim. If I'm unable to obtain any responses, I'll post their numbers and encourage everyone to make similar calls. As I wrote on Saturday -- and documented before: "As a practical reality, the largest barrier to any route to prosecution -- including this one -- is that the Congressional Democratic leadership was complicit, to varying degrees, in the illegal programs." That's true not only of the NSA program, but also the Bush/Cheney torture program.

Now making this post even more interesting is that at the tail end Greenwald discusses a situation that happened on Matt Yglesias' blog over the weekend.

On a somewhat related note, this creepy little post inserted onto Matt Yglesias' Center for American Progress blog by Jennifer Palmieri, the CEO of CAP's "Action Fund", is a vivid exhibit illustrating how Washington works, for reasons which Matt Stoller, Markos Moulitsas, and Brendan Nyhan all describe. Matt very well may not consider it to constitute interference with his editorial autonomy, but it nonetheless illustrates the potential constraints that can come from writing for an organization like that.

The interesting part of that excerpt is that Yglesia's blog is basically on the same site as the Thinkprogress blog. Why that is important is because on the Thinkprogress blog they take the time to point out that both Nancy Pelosi and Senator Jay Rockerfeller have already published affirmations that they were not consulted on whether the Bush Administration could or should do the illegal wiretapping. Instead they were simply briefed on the project and both say they expressed grave concerns about it.

Cheney’s startling claims run directly counter to accounts by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). Rather than asking for congressional input, Pelosi and Rockefeller said in 2005 that Cheney simply informed them of what was going on — and ignored their objections:

PELOSI: The Bush Administration considered these briefings to be notification, not a request for approval. As is my practice whenever I am notified about such intelligence activities, I expressed my strong concerns during these briefings.

ROCKEFELLER: The record needs to be set clear that the Administration never afforded members briefed on the program an opportunity to either approve or disapprove the NSA program.

So it seems that the information that Greenwald seeks is not only already available but also published on a website which he has shown he is familiar with. To say this seems disengenuous would be an understatement. Look I WANT our Democratic leaders held to account just like their Republican counter parts but going after them for going after them's sake is just weak IMHO. I realize that many people feel that Pelosi and Reid and others in the Democratic party have failed them and I get that. But I truly feel like going after them over bullshit helps to discredit liberals and progressives when we go after them over substantive issues. Now its Greenwald's perogative to publish whatever he wants on his own blog but I hope in the future he chooses a more worthy source than Dick Cheney to use as a reason to go after the Dems.