On Friday, Representative Mike Rogers said that he would not be seeking re-election to Congress in the fall. The Michigan Republican is also the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and has been harshly critical of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, as well as Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter who disseminated Snowden’s leaked documents. Rogers’ resignation would mark the end of a 14-year tenure in the House of Representatives.
Despite reports on Thursday evening (since retracted) saying that the congressman would resign from his position on the House Intelligence Committee, Rogers’ spokeswoman said that he had no plans to step down. Instead, Rogers announced on Friday morning that he would not seek reelection and would instead join Cumulus, a talk radio company.
"I have always believed in our founder's idea of a citizen legislature,” Rogers said in a statement, according to The Detroit News. "I had a career before politics and always planned to have one after. The genius of our institutions is they are not dependent on the individual temporary occupants privileged to serve. That is why I have decided not to seek re-election to Congress in 2014.”
Rogers notably called Glenn Greenwald a thief in February, and in a recent House Intelligence Committee hearing, Rogers pressed FBI Director James Comey to classify Greenwald’s writing and publishing as criminal. But Comey shied away from such a stark description.
In recent days, Rogers introduced an NSA reform bill with fellow House Intelligence Committee member Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MI). Both men have been staunch supporters of NSA surveillance programs, and although their reform bill would restrict bulk phone data collection by the NSA, it could allow for greater searches of such data.
Rogers was also a chief sponsor of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which he introduced in 2011 and then reintroduced in 2013. CISPA was widely opposed by Internet activists, although it was considered slightly more moderate than similar legislation at the time. As Ars wrote in 2013, CISPA encouraged "private companies to share security-related information with each other and the government” and then limited the liability of companies that shared such information as an incentive.
Rogers notoriously defended CISPA in 2013, saying that the bill’s typical opponent was a "14-year-old tweeter in the basement.”
15 Reader Comments
Call me cynical, but I don't see how moving to talk radio is like having a career "after" politics. It's just a better paying political position.
edit: On second thought, take a minute to swing by the senate and pick up Feinstein on the way out.
Last edited by gullible skeptic on Fri Mar 28, 2014 8:39 am
How novel!
How novel!
... yeah would have never guessed that one. Any bets on how long until he gets a segment on Foxnews?
How novel!
Rogers was pretty much exactly the sort of repulsive pustule of a human being for which the term 'reich wing' was coined.
I'm not even sure how well he scored on the usual god, guns, and gays stuff; but he never saw a terrible authoritarian scheme that he didn't love.
(incidentally, is it mean-spirited to hope that he gets SWATed repeatedly until some trigger-happy cop finally gives him a taste of what he spent years in favor of?)
Is that 14 year old any less of a citizen than you?
House Committee on Homeland Security -> Counterterrorism and Intelligence
House Committee on Homeland Security -> Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies
House Committee on Homeland Security -> Cybersecurity, Science, and Research and Development
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence -> Oversight and Investigations
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence -> Technical Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment and Tactical Intelligence
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence -> Terrorism, Human Intelligence, Analysis, and Counterintelligence
House Committee on Armed Services -> Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities
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