Wyden voted yes on confirmation because: 1) He was clear from the beginning that he was not about blocking Brennan from being confirmed, but about forcing the Administration to disgorge more information, particularly the memos justifying the drone strike policy, and using Brennan's confirmation as leverage to achieve that; and
2) Feinstein negotiated an agreement with the Administration on behalf of herself and Wyden that Admin would hand over the memos to the Intelligence Committee and expand staff access to the memos, and Feinstein and Wyden would let the nomination go forward. That was the deal. Leahy voted no on confirmation because he is the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Administration has still not shared the memos with the Senate Judiciary Committee even though they were produced by the Department of Justice over which the Judiciary Committee is supposed to do oversight. Leahy was sending a signal to the Administration: I'm pissed off, hand over the memos. A next step would be for him to issue a subpoena, as he threatened to do in the Judiciary Committee hearing with Holder. I wrote about this here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/what-rand-paul-ted-cruz-e_b_2828517.html On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 6:46 PM, Max Sawicky <[email protected]> wrote: > Just Wyden (OR), I think. And Leahy (VT) voted against confirmation. That > was about it. Though a bunch more expressed some sympathy after the fact. > > > On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 12:07 PM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> . . . BTW, did any of the Congressional "left" join Rand Paul to fight >> Brennan and drone attacks? > > > > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org [email protected] _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
