Power-grabbing from the elites?

Newsbusters notes the appearance by James Risen, the NY Times reporter who broke the NSA surveillance story and wrote a book about it, on NBC's Today show. The statements he makes are ludicrous, simplistic and downright asinine. Some examples:

Risen alleged that "the checks and balances that normally keep American foreign policy and national security policy toward the center kind of broke down. You had more of a radicalization, in which the career professionals were not really given a chance to forge a consensus within the administration. The principals: Rumsfeld, Cheney Tenet and Rice were meeting constantly, setting policy and never allowing the experts, the people who understand the region to have a say."

Risen also agreed with Katie Couric's characterization of this as "power-grabbing".

Thus, you have the liberal mindset at work. Let the office-bound career bureaucrats who do not necessarily ever go to the places of their "expertise," have no public accountability, and are not entrusted by the Constitution to effectuate the policies of the United States overrule the judgments of the individuals who are elected by the American public precisely for the purpose of setting those policies and ensuring that they are executed. Implicit in Risen's statement is that Cheney (a former White House Chief of Staff and SecDef who has served under four presidents), Rice (the National Security Adviser in Pres. Bush's first term) and Rumsfeld (a former Ambassador to NATO, and the youngest SecDef in US history under Ford) lacked the expertise of the office-bound bureaucracy. Moreover, the understanding that the bureaucracy has for the region is the same type of understanding that helped the US become humiliated by Pres. Clinton's failures in the region during his second term.

The notion that the unelected, unknown and faceless bureaucrats should have the power over the course of this country's policies and that the Executive's exercise of its CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY in this area is a "power grabbing" move shows the ignorance of journalists and the irresponsibility of the liberal mindset. The last thing the US needs is to ape the EU.

Disgraceful all around, Mr. Risen and Katie.