“‘The administration is playing games about warrants,’ Martin said. ‘If they are not claiming new powers, then why did they need to issue a signing statement?‘” New year, more of the same. Channeling Albert Sidney Burleson, Dubya creates consternation among civil liberties advocates with another recent signing statement reinvoking the right to read anyone’s mail. Let me know if y’all figure out what the best student loan consolidation plan is.
Tag: Surveillance
A Bad Year.
“Whenever the courts push back against the administration’s unsupportable constitutional ideas…the Bush response is to repeat the same chorus louder: Every detainee is the worst of the worst; every action taken is legal, necessary, and secret. No mistakes, no apologies. No nuance, no regrets. This legal and intellectual intractability can create the illusion that we are standing on the same constitutional ground we stood upon in 2001, even as that ground is sliding away under our feet.” Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick surveys the top ten most outrageous civil liberties violations of 2006.
You People are Crazy!
“It’s something that’s been bothering me for quite some time, the direction in which the party has been going more and more toward big government and disregard toward privacy and civil liberties.” Staunch conservative, defender of civil liberties, and Borat cameo Bob Barr leaves the Republican Party (for the Libertarians.) Now if only Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe would follow his example…
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
“British intelligence. The term seemed redundant. It conjured up vast experience, levels upon levels of history, and, more than that, a cynical realism. When Americans were eschewing spying — ‘Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail,’ Secretary of State Henry Stimson said in 1929 — the Brits, uber-gents to a man, were steaming open envelopes galore, keeping a vast empire together with only a handful of spies, assassins, and dissolute diplomats who were not worth a damn after lunch.” In Slate, Richard Cohen asks, less facetiously than you might think, if James Bond might be responsible for the Iraq War.
Trip through your Wires.
“We should see the administration’s bill for what it is: a shattering assault on our constitutional system of checks and balances. It seeks to inaugurate an age of presidential supremacy over fundamental rights, without effective control by Congress or the courts. The Senate should reject it decisively when it comes to the floor in the coming weeks.” Yale professor Bruce Ackerman decries Dubya’s recent wiretapping bill, which recently passed out of committee on a party-line vote. (Thanks, Arlen.)
Arlen’s Tap Dance.
“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.
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.