Roots Project Update
This Friday we are going to take our first action in the Roots Project targeting local media outlets in Kansas about the Senate investigations into the illegal NSA wiretaps.
Glenn Greenwald has a great piece up today that talks about how the port scandal dovetails nicely with what we're trying to do:
[T]his port controversy represents yet another instance where the Administration expressed its transparent contempt for the notion that Congress has any real role to play in our system of Government other than giving symbolic endorsement to the dictates of the President. Drenched yet again with the humiliation that comes from being ignored and misled, members of Congress -- including Republicans -- will be in no mood to play the role of meek little rugs which lay quietly on the floor and have no role other than to conceal the Administration's dirt. Helping the White House evade accountability for the NSA scandal by continuing to stonewall investigations would appear to be the very last thing this Congress -- desperate to demonstrate its institutional dignity and independence -- would be inclined right now to do.Get your pencils sharpened, we're going to focus this first action on LTEs for Sunday publication. And go and read the rest of Glenn's piece, he is -- as always -- quite eloquent.
In light of all of that, we want to being our laboratory experiment by first targeting Kansas -- because it has a Senator (Roberts) who is probably the single most important person right now in determining whether a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation will proceed; because it has another Senator (Brownback) who is on the Judiciary Committee and has expressed strong objections to the White House's NSA law-breaking; and because we have had a substantial number of Kansans who are very familiar with the political terrain in that state step forward to work with us.
We believe we can develop a potent strategy for generating as much pressure and persuasion as possible towards Roberts (and Brownback) to encourage a meaningful investigation into to the NSA scandal -- not because the Administration should per se be assumed to be guilty of high crimes, but because the NSA program has generated a very intense controversy and Americans ought to know what our Government has been doing with regard to its secret eavesdropping on American citizens.
posted by Jane Hamsher @ 2/22/2006 01:13:00 PM
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