Selectively Going After Leakers... Silencing Dissent?

A new intelligence bill passed in the House seems on the surface just a standard funding bill for intel activities, but there are a lot of nasty nuggets buried in it. First are provisions giving the government greater ability to punish those who leak. This might also seem standard under different circumstances, but it's almost certainly part of the Bush administration's crackdown on whistleblowers who reveal damaging information about the administration's activities (as best seen in the firing of CIA agent Mary McCarthy, based on allegations of connections to a Washington Post story on secret torture prisons). Considering how much leaking the White House gets away with, the hypocrisy is astounding. Leaks are apparently now defined as any release of information which exposes potentially criminal behavior on the part of our government.

A second aspect of this story was a defeat of Democratic efforts to add a provision for greater oversight and debate on the President's warrantless wiretapping program, which he hid even from Congress for over four years. In regards to concerns that the President's program has been abused (a fact verified in many accounts by FBI agents and others, as well as the recent stories on AT&T), House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., said those concerns are "absolutely outrageous." I wonder how Hoekstra is so certain of that, when his fellow Republicans in Congress have managed to stop any substantive investigations or hearings into the program, its reach, or its legality.

And farther down the rabbit hole we go...

AP: House Weighs Boost in Spy Chief's Budget

The House passed an intelligence bill Wednesday that would dramatically boost the money available to the new spy chief and require the Bush administration to consider blocking the pensions of government leakers...

...Democrats expressed outrage that Republicans would not allow any of their five proposed amendments to be considered by the full House, including measures to expand congressional oversight of the NSA program and the intelligence on Iran.

California Rep. Jane Harman, the intelligence committee's top Democrat, supported the bill during the panel's deliberations. Yet she ultimately voted against it, saying intelligence officers aren't served by a bill "that does not protect the Constitution they are fighting to defend."...

Amen, Jane.

John at AmericaBlog looks at at unusual new rules governing what former CIA officials can publish that seemingly seek to supress criticism of the Bush administration and the way the CIA is currently run. John sums up how all of these new protections in the name of the war on terror are sucking the soul out of our democracy-

America wasn't created in order to throw away everything it stands for in order to survive. That was not the intent of our founding fathers, that we protect and defend our God-given - remember, God-given they told us - rights only when it was convenient. If they're God-given rights, then how can man suspend them, even for a war on terror?

The Republican party no longer represents freedom or democracy or America. They have become the worst historical caricature of what liberals were always supposed to be (but actually weren't). Un-American, loose-spending, wimps who are ultimately terribly dangerous to our freedom in troubled times.

Careful John, that kind of talk will you labeled an America-hater by the 32%-ers.

Shane Harris also takes a look at these issues in the National Journal:
Silencing The Squeaky Wheels