Intelligence bills:

I don't understand why the CIA's getting such a bad rap with all the September 11 stuff. They had been pushing for years for us to eliminate bin Laden, and they warned the military about what would happen in Iraq. Don't get me wrong, there's more they could have done, but really what happened was the fault of Clinton and Bush (and Johnson's(?) executive order forbidding assassinations) and Rumsfeld, not the CIA.

I don't know enough about the bill itself to say whether I think it's a good idea or not. My gut feeling is no, though. I'm not sure why the new intelligence director is necessary (since under the current system, the heads of intelligence agencies report to the DCI, making him as powerful as the new intelligence director will be). Hunter's argument was pretty useless than, since the DCI has always technically had control over spy satellites. FWIW, though, I'm not sure that the ACLU should worry too much about the bill as granting intelligence agencies more power. I'm not sure that the centralisation is really that big a deal and spying on Americans will still be limited to the FBI. Now, there may be some specific provisions that are scary, I haven't read the text of the bill. But I think that overall the bill is more useless than evil.