The Sunday Morning Talk Shows - The Review
With Secretary Chertoff (and featuring Pat Leahy and Dick Lugar)
By Mark Kilmer
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Secretary Chertoff was everywhere.
On ABC's This Week, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff warned of Europeans who train in Southeast Asia and return to Europe, either to attempt an attack their or to attempt one in the United States. On FNS, host Chris Wallace asked if the President would propose now an "enforcement first" measure for border security. Chertoff replied that the White House had proposed what it was going to propose; what happens next is up to Congress. On MTP, Russert asked Chertoff why the United States hasn't been hit with easy-to-make car bombs. Chertoff mentioned Oklahoma City and the Clinton WTC attack in '93. On LE, Chertoff said that we can't solve the immigration problem simply by building a really big fence, a la Duncan Hunter.
On MTP, Pat Leahy confronted the White House with "choosing confrontation over cooperation." He laughed off Fred Fielding's offer of cooperation by pointing out that Fielding had worked for Dick Nixon. And Leahy said that it will be difficult for a U.S. attorney not to prosecute the President for contempt of Congress once the resolution is voted out of Congress. He doesn't want to do it, he said, but the White House has to agree to submit to repeated public harassment from the Senate Judiciary Committee. He's doing this, he said, because the American people care a lot.
On TW, Joe Lieberman suggested that the United States emulate Britain in putting cameras everywhere to monitor people in order to detect terrorist activity. Steph wanted him to say that he'd support a Republican in '08, but Lieberman instead said that the Democrats were making a mistake by letting the party's extremist fringe choose its nominee.
On FNS, Air America boss Mark Green said that he does not support the Fairness Doctrine; rather, he wants the Federal Government to use its licensing power to end the dominance of conservative talk radio. Green holds that conservative talk radio is not winning in the market; rather, he says, the big corps who run the major broadcast networks are forcing the public to listen to conservative radio. Green expects Air America to become profitable earlier than did FOX. Radio talker Mike Gallagher was on hand to laugh at Green.
On FTN, Dick Lugar stated that he wants the President to get together with a bipartisan group from Congress to discuss diplomacy and a Murtha-Pelosi style "redeployment" of U.S. troops. Lugar said that General David Petraeus's September report should be ignored as irrelevant because the Iraqi government will not get its act together. Lugar maintained that he was not saying that the surge would not work; rather, he was saying that it would not achieve its goals. Lugar said something about Turkey invading Kurdistan.
The show-by-show review is beneath the fold…
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