Word: hastert
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...collecting of citizens' phone records. Democratic committee members sent a letter to Chairman Joe Barton, asking if the bill was withdrawn so that the Intelligence Committee could add an exemption allowing phone records to be sought for intelligence-gathering purposes. In a separate letter to Barton and Speaker Dennis Hastert, Rep. Edward Markey wondered whether there was a plan to add an exemption "to clarify the legality of such a program because they are currently gathering such records today without clear authority." An Intelligence Committee spokesman told TIME that the bill was pulled because more time was needed to determine...
...powers clauses in the Constitution. The top Democrat in the House, Minority leader Nancy Pelosi, said soberly, "Justice Department investigations must be conducted in accordance with Constitutional protections and historical precedent so that our government's system of checks and balances are not undermined." Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert was not so restrained. He called the raid "deeply troubling," and said all legislative documents should be privileged against such searches to "prevent overreaching and abuse of power by the Executive Branch...
...surprising move today, Hastert and Pelosi issued a joint statement demanding that the Justice Department return the documents it seized in the raid. "No person is above the law, neither the one being investigated nor those conducting the investigation. The Justice Department was wrong to seize records from congressman Jefferson's office in violation of the Constitutional principle of Separation of Powers, the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution, and the practice of the last 219 years. These constitutional principles were not designed by the Founding Fathers to place anyone above the law. Rather, they were designed to protect...
...Jefferson may be as surprised as anyone to see Hastert and other Republicans fighting on his side. The Democrat, who represents much of New Orleans, is in serious legal trouble by all accounts, and the allegations released last weekend after the raid are lurid. The FBI charges he authorized bribes of Nigerian officials to drum up business for a Kentucky telecom company, iGate, and that on July 30, 2005, he took $100,000 in cash out of the trunk of a collaborator's car in Pentagon City, and then stored the cash in a refrigerator in his home in plastic...
Some lawmakers, like Goss's friends House Speaker Dennis Hastert and fellow Republican Peter Hoekstra, who heads the House Intelligence Committee, say they worry about putting a military man in charge of the CIA when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been expanding an empire that already absorbs about 80% of the U.S. intelligence budget. In that view, the CIA needs to remain an independent counterweight to the Pentagon, another set of eyes, ears and instincts, not become a subsidiary of it. But Hayden has hardly been acting like a covert Rumsfeld agent. In his testimony before the Senate Armed Services...