Peter King (R-NY), a frequent guest on News Corp’s cable news properties (up to this point), just called for an FBI investigation into allegations that the company hacked into the voicemail accounts of 9-11 victims. Given King’s constant invocation of 9-11, only rivaled by Rudy Giuliani, this isn’t all that surprising.

King is not alone. Today, Senators Frank Lautenberg, Robert Menendez and Jay Rockefeller have sought investigations from the Justice Department or Congress.

This afternoon, President Obama will convene a conference call for members of Congress on the operation in Libya, a tacit acknowledgment that there is great concern about the strategy and the constitutional legitimacy of the mission. Press Secretary Jay Carney said at his briefing that the President “update them on the transition of command and control to NATO.”

Well, it looks like the expansive executive branch doesn’t have Glenn Fine to worry about anymore.

Massey CEO Don Blankenship is back in the news again, and so are the Senators from West Virginia. One still trying to make money and keep unions out of mines, the other fighting for better mine safety regulations. I’ll let you guess who’s who.

Is there any better demonstration that members of the Gang of Four cannot exercise oversight over such programs without staffer assistance than the way former Gang of Four member Rockefeller talks about the machines that collect and store data on you?

In May 2005, Rockefeller asked John Helgerson for McPherson’s report. Then in September 2005, Rockefeller asked Porter Goss for the report directly. And Porter Goss–the guy who was actively considering destroying the torture tapes in July 2005 and who ultimately applauded Rodriguez’ success in destroying them–completely blew off Rockefeller’s request.

The Obama administration has approved covert military operations in a wide number of Middle Eastern countries, The New York Times reports, including in Somalia, Yemen and Iran (not to mention the long-running, kinda sorta covert war in Pakistan). As former National Security Council staffers Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett note, Obama’s move marks a particularly dramatic “intensification of America’s covert war against Iran” — a war that, because it is being run out of the office of General David Petraeus and CENTCOM, is “not subject to the same congressional oversight and reporting requirements as the Central Intelligence Agency.”

The CIA documents released in the latest FOIA batch prove that all the claims that CIA (and Crazy Pete Hoekstra) have made about briefings Congress received on torture are, at best, reconstructions based on years old memors, if not outright fabrications.

It appears that early in July 2004, the White House dictated to DOJ what torture methods would be approved. And only after Congress got involved did the White House agree to niceties like OLC opinions.

Newsweek’s Mark Hosenball reports that Dianne Feinstein and other Senate Dems have accused the Department of Homeland Security’s spooks of using right wing propaganda to develop finished intelligence reports on Muslims.