Chad’s Morning Brief: Wendy Davis Will Run For Something, RNC Goes After CNN/NBC, & More

Chad’s Morning Brief: Wendy Davis Will Run For Something, RNC Goes After CNN/NBC, & More

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Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of August 6, 2013. Give me your feedback below and tune in to The Chad Hasty Show for these and many more topics from 8:30 to 11am. Remember, you can listen online at KFYO.com or on your iPhone/Android with the radioPup App.

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1. Wendy Davis To Run (link)

State Senator Wendy Davis will be seeking office in 2014. She is still undecided however which office she will run for. On Monday Davis said she will either run for re-election or for Texas Governor.

Speaking at a National Press Club luncheon, Davis said those were the only two options, and that she's not considering joining the lieutenant governor's race. She did not indicate when she'll make up her mind.

"People do feel we need a change from the very fractured, very partisan leadership we’re seeing in Texas right now," she said.

Davis shot to national prominence in June after staging an hours-long filibuster in the state Senate in an attempt to kill some of the most restrictive abortion regulations in the country. That filibuster succeeded, but the legislation later passed in a special legislative session.

Since the filibuster, Davis has appeared at fundraisers in Washington and spoken on national television. She has been the subject of speculation over a potential statewide run in 2014. In the final two weeks of June, Davis’ campaign raised almost $1 million in donations.

One would think that Davis is smart enough to know that there is no way she can win the Governor's race. Though re-election would be tough as well. Personally, I would love to see Wendy Davis run for Governor. People only know her as the late-term abortion backer. For comedy reasons alone, I would love to see her in the race.

2. RNC Goes After CNN/NBC (link)

Should the Republicans boycott NBC/CNN 2016 debates if the two networks air Hillary Clinton programming? That's what the RNC is threatening.

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus has threatened to pull NBC and CNN's access to the 2016 Republican primary debates unless those companies pull their current Hillary Clinton-related film projects.

In open letters to the leadership of NBC Universal and CNN International, Priebus expressed his "deep disappointment" over those networks' decisions to produce films "promoting former Secretary Hillary Clinton ahead of her likely candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016."

Should the networks fail to pull those films by the RNC's Summer meeting on August 14, Priebus writes, he will "seek a binding vote of the RNC stating that the committee will neither partner with you in 2016 primary debates nor sanction primary debates which you sponsor."

"As an American company you have every right to air programming of your choice. But as American citizens, certainly you recognize why many are astounded by your actions, which appear to be a major network's thinly-veiled attempt at putting a thumb on the scales of the 2016 election," Priebus wrote in his letters to NBC chairman Robert Greenblatt and CNN president Jeff Zucker.

Greenblatt announced last month that NBC was working on a miniseries about Hillary Clinton that will star Diane Lane; two days later, POLITICO reported that CNN was at work on a feature-length documentary about the former Secretary of State, to be directed by Inside Job's Charles H. Ferguson.

Interesting fight being put up by the RNC though I'm not sure it will work. It would not surprise me if this was actually the beginning of a media campaign being worked up by the RNC to show just how left the media is.

3. Cover Up (link)

A new report claims that the U.S. directed agents to cover up a program used to investigate Americans.

A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence - information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.

"I have never heard of anything like this at all," said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.

"It is one thing to create special rules for national security," Gertner said. "Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations."

THE SPECIAL OPERATIONS DIVISION

The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in 1994 to combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several dozen employees to several hundred.

Today, much of the SOD's work is classified, and officials asked that its precise location in Virginia not be revealed. The documents reviewed by Reuters are marked "Law Enforcement Sensitive," a government categorization that is meant to keep them confidential.

"Remember that the utilization of SOD cannot be revealed or discussed in any investigative function," a document presented to agents reads. The document specifically directs agents to omit the SOD's involvement from investigative reports, affidavits, discussions with prosecutors and courtroom testimony. Agents are instructed to then use "normal investigative techniques to recreate the information provided by SOD."

A spokesman with the Department of Justice, which oversees the DEA, declined to comment.

But two senior DEA officials defended the program, and said trying to "recreate" an investigative trail is not only legal but a technique that is used almost daily.

A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. "You'd be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.' And so we'd alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it," the agent said.

You can read more by clicking on the link above.

Other Top Stories:

These and many more topics coming up on today’s edition of The Chad Hasty Show. Tune in mornings 8:30-11am on News/Talk 790 KFYO, streaming online at kfyo.com, and now on your iPhone and Android device with the radioPup App. All guest interviews can be heard online in our podcast section after the show at kfyo.com.

Filed Under: Battleground Texas, Republican Party, wendy davis
Categories: Chad's Afternoon Brief

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