Senator Frist, Have You No Shame?

Glenn Greenwald has highlighted a truly remarkable letter sent Friday by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. In it, Frist threatens to "restructure" the Senate Intelligence Committee if it insists on conducting any sort of investigation into the President's warrantless surveillance activities. The letter is so maddeningly Orwellian and so brazenly hypocritical that my head just about exploded when I read it. Frist begins the letter with the following:

I am increasingly concerned that the Senate
Intelligence Committee is unable to carry out
its critically important oversight and threat
assessment responsibilities due to stifling
partisanship that is exhibited by repeated
calls by Democrats on the Committee to
conduct politically-motivated investigations.
This is deeply troubling given the Select
Committee was established years ago to
promote bipartisanship in some of the most
sensitive and vital areas of our nation's
security.

In the parallel universe in which Frist inhabits, bipartisan concern over presidential law breaking is "stifling partisanship" and the Intelligence Committee's mission to "carry out critically important oversight" does not include investigating why our intelligence agencies are no longer following the laws which are supposed to govern the gathering of intelligence.

The inquiries currently underway, and the
ones being proposed by the minority, would
demand an overwhelming amount of staff time,
attention and resources. Rather than
conducting oversight of the intelligence
community and its activities, or assessing
current and future threats to United States
national security, the committee is focusing
most of its efforts on investigations that offer
little (or no) value to the challenges our Nation
now faces.

Yeah, it would be shame to divert the committee's attention and resources away from the important tasks of NOT investigating how intelligence was manipulated in the lead up to the Iraq War and NOT investigating the systematic use of illegal interrogation techniques and torture by U.S. intelligence agencies. And clearly there is "little (or no) value" in investigating a secret warrantless surveillance program that scores of legal scholars, former officials, and members of both parties have publicly declared to be illegal. Investigating serious violations of our intelligence laws is clearly far outside the proper purview of the Intelligence Committee.

But, as Glenn points out, the most remarkable part of the letter is the final paragraph:

I would propose that we meet with Senators
Roberts and Rockefeller as soon as possible.
The Committee was established and
structured to reflect the Senate’s desire for
bipartisanship, and to the maximum extent
possible, nonpartisan oversight of our nation’s
intelligence activities. If attempts to use the
committee’s charter for political purposes
exist, we may have to simply acknowledge
that nonpartisan oversight, while a worthy
aspiration, is simply not possible. If we are
unable to reach agreement, I believe we
must consider other options to improve the
Committee’s oversight capabilities, to
include restructuring the Committee so that
it is organized and operated like most Senate
Committees.

This is, quite possibly, the most disgusting display of spineless partisanship that I have ever seen. Putting aside the fact that serious concern over this program has been expressed by both Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, and, frankly, anyone concerned about continued primacy of the rule of law or the preservation of our constitutional system of checks and balances, putting all that aside, there is one simple, undisputable fact: The only possible way that the Intelligence Committee can launch an investigation of this program is with the support of at least some of the Republicans on the committee. It would therefore, by definition, be bipartisan. Yet Frist has the unmitigated gall to suggest that the committee has been hijacked by partisans and that he might be forced to step in and restructure the committee. Only someone with total contempt for our democratic processes and absolutely no shame could even bring himself to level such a threat, and in writing no less.

Senator Frist, do you really want to be remembered by history as the guy who abused his power as leader of the Senate in a nakedly partisan attempt to prevent his own institution from doing its job and standing up for its own constitutional authority? Do you stand for anything other than protecting the political interests of prominent members of your party? Could you be any less principled or any more craven? Does your capacity for hypocrisy have any limit?

Senator Frist, have you no shame?