Coming soon-ish: a US military ‘Space Force.’

My wife feels that this should be called the ‘Space Patrol:’ I do not so much agree as I concede that calling it the ‘Solar Patrol’ would be at best premature. But this is gonna happen. Maybe in this Presidential administration, maybe not: if it doesn’t happen by the end of the next one I’m going to be shocked. There’s just a trend-line there:

Rep. Mike Rogers said the U.S. Air Force needs a separate “Space Corps” to handle military operations in orbit, as a first step in creating a completely separate military branch.

“We have to acknowledge that the national security space structure is broken,” the Alabama Republican said in a Tuesday morning speech at the 33rd Space Symposium. “It’s very hard for a government bureaucracy to fix itself, and that’s exactly why congressional oversight exists. It’s the job of the Armed Services Committee to recognize when the bureaucracy is broken and to see that it’s fixed.”

Continue reading Coming soon-ish: a US military ‘Space Force.’

Calling the 72 hour rule on the Mike Rogers / Ed Snowden / NSA / FSB thing.

Basically, House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers (R) – with Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D) sitting right there, and not protesting – intimated that Ed Snowden may have been assisted by foreign intelligence agencies when he stole classified information. This will probably be a big topic of conversation this morning:

The Michigan Republican added that there are still “certain questions that we have to get answered” about who helped Snowden remove data from the NSA and later make it public in newspapers in the United States and Britain.

“He was stealing information that had to do with how we operate overseas to collect information to keep Americans safe…. And some of the things he did were beyond his technical capabilities” — a fact which Rogers said “raises more questions. How he arranged travel before he left. How he was ready to go, he had a go bag, if you will.”

Rogers added that he believes “there’s a reason he ended up in the hands, the loving arms, of an FSB (Russian security service) agent in Moscow. I don’t think that’s a coincidence….I don’t think it was a gee-whiz luck event that he ended up in Moscow under the handling of the FSB.”

Continue reading Calling the 72 hour rule on the Mike Rogers / Ed Snowden / NSA / FSB thing.

Obama Promise Expiration Date Watch: Miranda Rights for terrorists. [UPDATED]

You know the Geraghty quote by now.

[UPDATE]: Shorter Obama administration: “We’re just doing what Bush did!” Which is: a), a direct contradiction of the video below; and b), a direct contradiction of the LA Times article below. Impressive: you would have thought that they’d pick one or the other.

Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI) has a serious problem with our new GWOT strategy in Afghanistan. Specifically, the way we plan to read captured, foreign illegal combatants their Miranda rights:

…the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here’s the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today – foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them…and they’re reading them their rights – Mirandizing these foreign fighters,” says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.

Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. “I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative.”

Continue reading Obama Promise Expiration Date Watch: Miranda Rights for terrorists. [UPDATED]