Pre-hearing spin/ post-hearing intent

[suffragette]

Is the "fix" in?

Before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings into the NSA domestic spying started, there were quite a few articles showcasing concerns that Senator Spector and other Republicans had about this situation. Of course, we knew about the Democrats' concerns since these had been voiced all along. But the Republicans control these committees, so hearing that they had these concerns seemed to offer some momentary hope that they might actually conduct something resembling a genuine hearing into this issue, if not out of concern about civil rights and privacy, then at least to keep the balance of power from shifting further out of their hands into the Executive branch.

At a point in the hearings, the idea of "fixing" the problem by changing FISA to give the president the right to do what he has been doing without having that right currently started being brought up. What an odd response - since he's doing wrong, let's change the law so it won't be wrong anymore. But, it's an odd response only if there was an real intent to investigate. If the real intent was to make a show of having a fair examination of the NSA wiretapping, then hand the executive branch more power, it's not odd at all.

Now comes news that the Senate Intelligence Committee won't investigate the NSA spying program and that Senator Roberts is "arranging a deal with the White House to modify the 1978 law governing electronic surveillance" http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/17/eavesdropping/

So, people who haven't been following this as closely as we have might end up with the impression from the spin that there was actual concern about the issue and that by changing FISA the situation is "fixed."

Then there are the Katrina hearings. The pre-hearing spin is that these are being held because of the concern about the egregious mishandling of this disaster (and I've no doubt that for many senators this is true), but there are rumblings within that that remind me of the NSA situation. The main one is that Senator Warner, who earlier (right after Katrina) started asking for changes in Posse Comitatus (see http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2005/09/rumsfeld_to_kat.html ), is using the hearing to again bring up the idea of the military taking the lead role as the "fix" for the problems the Katrina response revealed. There are more things wrong with this approach then I can list here. Not only does this steer the direction away from addressing the real problems of what happened in New Orleans, but it raises the prospect of another restraint on executive power, that of (mis)using the military domestically. Is it the intent of some Senators to use this opportunistically to change this law, too?

Is this the "fix" they'll propose?