“Despite the Administration’s stonewalling, the Judiciary Committee, which knows even less about the program than the Intelligence Committee, today approved legislation that would not only legalize a program that the Committee does not understand but would also completely gut the FISA law…Expanding executive power at the request of a president who has shown such deep disrespect for the rule of law is exactly the wrong thing to do.” Checks and balances? Bah, humbug. At Dubya’s mandate — and despite Democratic attempts to limit the damage — Spineless Specter and the GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee approve legislation legalizing the NSA’s warrantless wiretap program. As the ACLU summed it up: “Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee acted as a rubber stamp for the administration’s abuse of power.” For shame.
Category: Surveillance
Prison Break.
After fierce debate among the neocons, Dubya comes clean about the CIA’s secret prisons (outed by the Post last November) and moves the detainees held therein to Gitmo. But don’t think this moment of clarity means King George is playing it straight just yet: He’s also asking Congress to sidestep recent court decisions and grant him power to continue wiretapping without warrants and to torture alleged evildoers with impunity. And even moderate Republicans and military lawyers have issues with his recent attempts to deny suspected terrorists due process.
Update: Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick has more: “The speech teemed with all the rhetorical wizardry you might expect of a do-over. Bush justified torture and extraordinary rendition while denying that they exist. He stuck a fork in the eye of the Supreme Court while agreeing to be bound by the majority’s decision. He conceded that Congress should play a role in creating military tribunals while demanding that it greenlight his plan.“
Anna and the King.
“[P]ublic interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of the Constitution.” In a strongly worded decision that minces no words about the Dubya administration’s “obviously” unwarranted powergrab, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor finds the NSA warrantless wiretaps blatantly unconstitutional. “It was never the intent of the framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights…There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all ‘inherent powers’ must derive from that Constitution.” Elsewhere in the opinion, Taylor found that the wiretap program “violates the separation of powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth amendments to the United States Constitution, the FISA and Title III.” Update: As per the norm, the GOP try to shoot the messenger.
Res ipsa loquitur.
“This report raises serious concerns crucial to the survival of our democracy…If left unchecked, the president’s practice does grave harm to the separation of powers doctrine, and the system of checks and balances that have sustained our democracy for more than two centuries.” Then, again, I could be sold on the merits of bar associations…if they continue to call out Dubya for trampling on our Constitution.
Here’s to Hamdan.
“If another nation’s leader adopted such positions, the United States would be quick to condemn him or her for violating fundamental tenets of the rule of law, human rights, and the separation of powers. But President Bush has largely gotten away with it, at least at home, for at least three reasons. His party holds a decisive majority in Congress, making effective political checks by that branch highly unlikely. The Democratic Party has shied away from directly challenging the president for fear that it will be viewed as soft on terrorism. And the American public has for the most part offered only muted objections. These realities make the Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, issued on the last day of its 2005-2006 term, in equal parts stunning and crucial.” In related news, as seen at both Salon and Mother Jones (as well as the New York Review of Books), author and law professor David Cole underlines the importance of the Hamdan decision in preserving the rule of law and throttling Dubya’s unchecked power grabs of late.
The Specter of Tyranny | King George covers his flank.
“[I]f Specter’s bill prevails, it will amount to a White House masterstroke, precisely what James Madison had in mind when he described the dangers of unchecked rule by one branch of government: ‘the very definition of tyranny.’” Having read the legislation in full, author and wiretap expert Patrick Radden Keefe discovers, perhaps not surprisingly, that Specter’s recent NSA “compromise” is a complete capitulation to executive power. And, in very related news, file this under “repeated injuries and usurpations“: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified under oath this week that it was Dubya’s personal decision to close down the Justice Department’s probe into the NSA’s warrantless wiretaps (the one, you may recall, that couldn’t get the security clearances to do its job.)
…and Dubya’s FISA double down.
Meanwhile, in another recent reversal — one likely precipitated by both the Hamdan case and pending lawsuits by the ACLU and others — the Dubya White House agrees to a deal put forth by Arlen “paper tiger” Specter that would put the NSA warrantless wiretaps to a constitutional review by the FISA court. But the trick, as many Dems have pointed out, is under this deal the FISA court would only do a general review of the wiretap program, rather than conduct the individual case-by-case reviews that the law has always demanded: “Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) criticized the agreement, saying he will oppose ‘any bill that would grant blanket approval for warrantless surveillance of Americans, particularly when this administration has never explained why it believes that current law allowing surveillance of terrorist suspects is inadequate.’“
Bank Shots.
“The real question here, as with so many other programs run by this Administration, is whether they are obeying the laws we have on the books to protect Americans from unnecessary invasions of their privacy.” Dubya & co. opt for the Shoot the Messenger offense once again and try to eviscerate the NYT for exposing their monitoring of banking records since 9/11. Well, sure, it’s entirely possible that this surveillance has been conducted legally and with proper respect to the civil liberties of ordinary citizens, but somehow I don’t think this administration has earned the benefit of the doubt.
Zarqawi Zapped.
I was traveling yesterday during the big news: With the aid of cellphone surveillance and an Al Qaeda informer who suggested tracking “spiritual adviser” Sheikh Abd al-Rahman, the US military dropped two 500-lb bombs on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leading Iraq insurgent (and Al Qaeda poster boy for the administration.) Undoubtedly good news for our efforts in Iraq (and, lord knows, Dubya needed some good news in the worst way, particularly in the wake of Haditha.) Still, this big kill obviously doesn’t answer the big questions about Iraq’s stability, or our continued involvement in the region: “‘The immediate aftermath of this will probably be an upsurge of violence’ as Sunni insurgents hurry to show that Zarqawi’s killing has not broken the resistance, said Michael Clarke, an expert on terrorism at the International Policy Institute of King’s College London. ‘In the medium term, in the next month or two, it will probably help to downgrade sectarianism,’ Clarke said by telephone. ‘But the dynamic of sectarian violence is probably past the point of no return.’” And, of course, while this strike will hopefully be a stunning blow to Al Qaeda in Iraq, what of the original Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and around the world? We’re nearing five years since 9/11, and Osama’s still out there…
Spineless Specter, Redux.
“‘You have given up the store,’ complained Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., in denouncing the move. ‘You’re just walking away.‘” Playing true to form, Arlen Specter folds yet again and reverses his earlier promise to make phone companies testify about their role in the NSA’s recent data-mining. “The senator from Pennsylvania acknowledged his reversal was forced upon him by his Republican colleagues in a private session prior to the afternoon hearing.”