Much More on the New Church Committee
Through the wonders of Twitter, Nick Schwellenbach sends along this piece he wrote way way back in 2007 about the need for a new Church committee. Consider it valuable background for my piece today. Basically, Nick argued, don’t look to the courts to save you:
“„After years of congressional acquiescence to the executive in many matters, we’re starting to see some awakening and hard questioning. However, there is a paucity of publicly-revealed oversight of intelligence agencies and whether or not their activities have violated or chilled the rights of Americans. Many have turned to the courts as a last resort. But even when they have the stomach to do so the courts on their own are not equipped to undertake large-scale investigations of public policy significance—that’s the province of Congress and one reason why it exists in the first place.
