Cheney Impeachment Hearings?

Three Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee (Robert Wexler (D., Fla.), Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.) and Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.)) are calling for the hearings into the impeachment of Dick Cheney go ahead.

Last month, the House of Representatives voted to send a resolution of impeachment of Vice President Cheney to the Judiciary Committee. As members of the House Judiciary Committee, we strongly believe these important hearings should begin.

Although they do not cite the allegations that Cheney's office may be implicated in the CIA Interrogation Tape Destruction Scandal, they do mention the outing of former CIA agent Valerie Plame as one of the issues that requires investigation.

Abolish the Company

Hitch makes a rational case that the Company has been at the center of most major intelligence failures since it inception.

Despite a string of exposures going back all the way to the Church Commission, the CIA cannot rid itself of the impression that it has the right to subvert the democratic process both abroad and at home. Its criminality and arrogance could perhaps have been partially excused if it had ever got anything right, but, from predicting the indefinite survival of the Soviet Union to denying that Saddam Hussein was going to invade Kuwait, our spymasters have a Clouseau-like record, one that they have earned yet again with their exculpation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

He also makes a judicious and convincing case for the abolition of the CIA.

It was after the grotesque estimate of continued Soviet health and prosperity that the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued that the CIA should be abolished. It is high time for his proposal to be revived. The system is worse than useless—it's a positive menace. We need to shut the whole thing down and start again.

I don't know what we would replace it with, but a complete rethinking of our civilian intelligence gathering operations is certainly in order.

Sense and Sensibility

Larry Johnson has got a common sense approach to making sure the Prez has reasonably good intelligence. Don't you just hate it when it really is that simple.

So what does it take to fix this? Not much. We do not need more bureaucracy. We do not have to spend more money. We do not need to hire more analysts. The Director of National Intelligence simply needs to tell the intelligence community to get off of its lazy ass and ensure that every article that is circulated outside of an intelligence agency–especially the PDB–should be fully coordinated and cleared by the relevant analysts of CIA, DIA, INR, and FBI.

Stop making sense!