Via Atrios...this is Leahy responding to questions from Wolf...
If you have hundreds of millions of phone calls you're trying to track a day, what do you get out of it? Remember, this is the same administration that had the information that could have stopped 9/11 from happening. They didn't translate it until September 12.
And here's some more...
Every time this administration screws up, whether it's with homeland security, after Katrina, a massive failure even though they spent billions of dollars to make sure that thing wouldn't happen, when they screw up along the border, when they get caught doing illegal surveillance of Americans, they say, well, but 9/11, 9/11.
Well, I'd remind them 9/11 happened on their watch. I think Americans are getting fed up with simply using an excuse for your mistakes and classify everything else so that you can't talk about it.
I want us to be safe. I don't think that this administration is doing it the right way. They screwed up with homeland security. They screwed up with Katrina. I mean, after all, they were told, go catch a 6'6" Arab running around Afghanistan, probably on dialysis, according to the press reports, Osama bin Laden.
Pat Leahy's been one of the good guys for a long time (as a commenter under Atrios' post pointed out, anybody who Cheney tells to f*** himself on the Senate floor has to be doing something right), and more than anybody he seems to be the go-to Democrat for talking about W's failures...which is a good thing. They could have chosen Joementum.
I know we're still having to deal with the Joe Klein's and Begala's of the world who think that, polls or no polls, past election results or no past election results, the smartest move for Democrats is to hide their heads and bow to whatever the President says if it involves the word "terror" or "security" (and they still manage to get on TV a lot), but I'm naively encouraged by the increasingly mainstream voice of the angry Bush critics on the left and what that could mean in November. I'm sure I'll be unpleasantly surprised in another 5.5 months, but right now color me optimistic.
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