Today’s New York Times addresses intelligence oversight issues raised during yesterday’s hearings for Gen. Michael Hayden. According to the Times, Senators’ complaints they they are being kept in the dark about the NSA’s warrantless surveillance and telephone data-mining programs have a “Congressional inferiority complex.” Those who questioned the lack of oversight yesterday were throwing the “Congressional equivalent of a temper tantrum.”
That’s an interesting description of the Constitutional balance of powers. In fact, as the resolution establishing the Senate Intelligence Committee – passed thirty years ago today – made clear:
… it is the purpose of this resolution to establish a new select committee of the Senate … [and] it is further the purpose of this resolution to provide vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States to assure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States. . ."
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