Shays Press Roundup

by: mattw

Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 13:18:06 PM EDT

• The new "Dear Mr. Secretary" letter does a few things: it drops the "Iraqis call themselves Iraqis" pretense and admits the factionalized nature of the conflict in Iraq; it also alleges that the Kurdistan Worker's Party is a terrorist organization that should be outlawed (it seems this is not especially controversial), and calls on bordering countries not named Iran to help the U.S. in the P.R. effort being mounted to prevent troop redeployment. (Those countries would be Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, and Kuwait.)
• Pressed on a withdrawal date that he'd support, the Congressman offered December 2008, though he signaled that he has a quadruple-Friedman strategy -- twenty-four months away is a "responsible timeline."
• Shays criticized "others" for calling publicly for President Maliki to step down (I have not seen these calls, and he didn't name names), saying that it's an insult to people who are very sensitive to being slighted. These critiques should be made privately, he believes.

  And then he said that he thought Maliki should step down. (In a room full of reporters, no less.)

• Shays took on Native American groups, saying that the U.S. shouldn't be granting tribal nation status without the approval of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. (Yeah, that Bureau of Indian Affairs.) He took credit for stopping tribes from being recognized as sovereign nations from 1995 to the present -- I gather that a few just got through, including one in North Carolina that particularly offended Shays.
• On FISA, Shays said that one of the limitations addressed by the new law apart from the "point-to-point communications outside the U.S. that get routed through the U.S." was clarifying the authority of the government in intercepting satellite signals and tower-based radio signals (i.e. cell service). He got away from talking about wireless interception in a hurry -- it seemed to me that he mentioned it by mistake.
• Two classic lines – not knowing what FISA stood for (a staffer bailed him out), and this:

  Shays: [With the FISA court,] Justice Department officials need to present [their case] in writing, and also need to swear that everything in it is... is... is...

  Helpful Reporter: True?

  Shays: Is what they say it is.

• He intends to campaign starting in August 2008.

More later tonight.