Bye, Lanny
Lanny Davis, the only Democrat on the president’s privacy board, resigned yesterday. The Wall Street Journal reports;
The lone Democrat on a White House privacy board has abruptly resigned, citing disagreements with the Bush administration over the board’s role in protecting civil liberties.
Lanny Davis, a Washington lawyer and former Clinton White House counsel, said this week he no longer believed the five-member board was sufficiently independent to provide robust oversight of controversial government surveillance programs.
Leaders of the Sept. 11 commission pointedly criticized the board last week for not doing its job and questioned many of the findings in the board’s 49-page annual report to Congress.
His chief complaint, according to the Washington Post was revisons the White House made to the commission’s report;
The Bush administration made more than 200 revisions to the first report of a civilian board that oversees government protection of personal privacy, including the deletion of a passage on anti-terrorism programs that intelligence officials deemed “potentially problematic” intrusions on civil liberties, according to a draft of the report obtained by The Washington Post.
One of the panel’s five members, Democrat Lanny J. Davis, resigned in protest Monday over deletions ordered by White House lawyers and aides. The changes came after the congressionally created Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board had unanimously approved the final draft of its first report to lawmakers, renewing an internal debate over the board’s independence and investigative power.
Some of the changes sought by the administration ultimately were reversed, and some members of the panel said they were not opposed to the others.
I wonder where Mr. Davis came down on the heavily-edited 9/11 Commission’s report. I wonder how upset he was over Jamie Gorelick‘s membership on that Commission. I wonder if Mr. Davis railed against the Able Danger group not being allowed to testify to the 9/11 Commission.
This is just another attempt to discredit the Administration. The American public has been misled by Democrats since the PATRIOT Act was enacted on every measure that has worked successfully to protect us from another terrorist attack and now Lanny Davis has thrown himself on another grenade for Leftism.
