Breaking: The sky is not falling

Mike McConnell tells Congress, "Never mind."

On Friday evening, Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence J. Michael McConnell had said in an unusually blunt letter to Congress that the nation "is now more vulnerable to terrorist attack and other foreign threats" because lawmakers had not yet acted on the administration's proposal for the wiretapping law.

But within hours of sending that letter, administration officials told lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees that they had prevailed upon all of the telecommunications companies to continue cooperating with the government's requests for information while negotiations with Congress continue.

...."Unfortunately, the delay resulting from this discussion impaired our ability to cover foreign intelligence targets, which resulted in missed intelligence information," Mukasey and McConnell added.

Government officials declined to comment on how much intelligence data may have been lost or how serious it might have been.

One Democratic congressional official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter, expressed skepticism that any significant gap had existed, noting that existing rules permit continued monitoring of known terrorists and their associates.

...."This is serious backpedaling by the DNI," the Democratic official said of McConnell. "He's been saying for the last week that the sky is falling, and the sky is not falling."

Or....



Congratulations to the remaining vertebrates in Congress who pushed back and refused to be cowed by Bush's wild-eyed hysterics. It was a first, I know. Hopefully, Democrats in the Senate took notice.