I have been a Democrat all my life -- even before I was old enough to vote, I was bathed in the well of the party of JFK, whom my immigrant mother idolized. She believed in Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty -- despite Vietnam. She believed in Jimmy Carter, even as the Iran hostage crisis broke the spirit of the American people. We sneered at Ronald Reagan.
But I have, in my adult life, come close to quitting the party at times, most recently, following the disastrous candidacy of John Kerry, the wrong man for the nomination, and clearly, the wrong man for the kind of dirty, no-holds-barred fight that must be waged with the likes of George W. Bush's Republicans. I got there again, after the Democrats voted earlier this summer to give George W. Bush an extension on his war, ensurng the deaths of more American troops as the Democrats bowed down to a president who should by now be neutered and irrelevant, but who still has the power to cow this party that is too full of political cowards and fools.
I have gotten there again. In fact, never have I been so ready to walk away from the sham that is the opposition party to this extraordinarily Stalinesque president.
The Democrats have shamed themselves, by once again capitulating to a demand from the waning boy king of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, who had demanded that, even amid the myriad scandals that include the firing of U.S. attorneys by a thoroughly politicized and disgraced attorney general, the abuse of security letters by the FBI, which falls under Alberto Gonzales' authority, the codification of torture, again by Gonzales, in his former capacity as White House Counsel, not to mention the abuses by the NSA of its eavesdrop authority by ignoring, or outright flouting of the FISA law.
The latest capitulation: giving in to the presudent's demand for expansion of his constitutionally fictitious authority to spy on the electronic communications of American citizens and residents. The Dems could easily have ignored Bush's lame duck request, given the climate of distrust sown by Alberto's midnight ride to John Ashcroft's hospital bedside to try and intimidate the then-sidelined A.G. into approving the combination data mining / eavesdropping scheme cooked up either before or after 9/11, depending on how much of the official story you believe. But they didn't. Instead, they relented, giving this president -- worse -- his incompetent, corrupt attorney general and Director of National Intelligence Mitch McConnell , sole authority to wiretap, read the emails of and inspect all other electronic communications by, American citizens and residents, at their sole discretion, without review by a court, and therefore without probable cause. All Gonzales has to do is say, "hey, this American is talking to a foreigner!" and it is done. The Center for American Progress reports it this way:
For the past several months, the White House has been aggressively pressuring Congress to expand the administration's spying powers and update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). On Friday, President Bush bemoaned that Congress had not "drafted a bill I can sign." "We've worked hard and in good faith with the Democrats to find a solution, but we are not going to put our national security at risk," said Bush. The House surrendered and voted 227 to 183 on Saturday to endorse the administration-backed legislation, which expands the powers of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Bush hailed the bill, which he signed into law yesterday, because it would give the Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell "the most immediate tools he needs to defeat the intentions of our enemies." But in reality, the White House had rejected a narrower compromise bill endorsed by both McConnell and the congressional leadership. As the New York Times noted, this episode was another attempt by the President to "stampede Congress into a completely unnecessary expansion of his power to spy on Americans."
CONGRESS 'PLAYING WITH HALF A DECK': Since March, the Bush administration has been building a case for its FISA legislation. But it wasn't clear until last week why it was pushing so urgently. On Tuesday, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) revealed on Fox News that earlier this year, a judge issued a secret ruling concluding "that the government had overstepped its authority in attempting to broadly surveil communications between two locations overseas that are passed through routing stations in the United States." Boehner noted that this court order made "a key element of the Bush administration's wiretapping efforts illegal," a fact the White House has attempted to conceal from the public and many in Congress. "It clearly shows that Congress has been playing with half a deck," said Jim Dempsey, policy director for the Center for Democracy and Technology. "The administration is asking lawmakers to vote on a very important piece of legislation based upon selective declassification of intelligence."
WHITE HOUSE OVERRULED INTEL DIRECTOR: The House congressional leadership quickly worked with McConnell to hammer out legislation fixing the holes created by the secret ruling, which included "three points" that McConnell "said the Bush administration needed." Yet instead of accepting the legislation, the White House took advantage of the opening "to write its warrantless wiretapping program into law -- or, more precisely, to write it out from under any real legal restrictions." "We had an agreement with DNI McConnell," said Stacey Bernards, spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), "and then the White House quashed the agreement." Nevertheless, lawmakers "more concerned with protecting its political backside than with safeguarding the privacy of American citizens" caved in to the administration's demands for increased spying powers. "The only purpose of [the White House-backed] bill is to protect this administration from its own political problems and cynicism, and its own illegal actions it has taken outside the law without any authorization," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who opposed the legislation, on the House floor on Saturday.
GONZALES HANDED EXPANDED SPYING POWERS: Provisions of the compromise bill attempted to address the "anachronism" of the 1978 FISA legislation, while imposing oversight on the White House. For example, it would have required audits by the Department of Justice's Inspector General to check the Attorney General. It would also make the Attorney General "create guidelines to ensure that the government applies for a regular FISA warrant application when the government seeks to spy on a U.S. person." Yet under the legislation Bush signed into law, Gonzales has "sole authority" to "intercept any communications believed to be from outside the United States (including from Americans overseas) that involve 'foreign intelligence' -- not just terrorism. ... Instead of having the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court ensure that surveillance is being done properly, with monitoring of Americans minimized, that job would be up to the attorney general and the director of national intelligence. The court's role is reduced to that of rubber stamp." Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) called Gonzales's expanded power "simply unacceptable," in light of the fact that he has misled Congress on disputes over the administration's spying program. On Saturday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who opposed the bill, sent a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) requesting legislation "as soon as possible after Congress reconvenes" to address the administration's overreaching on spying. Keep in mind that Democrats hold the majority in both houses of Congress, and yet, they failed to utilize that majority to protect the American people from the almost obsessive zeal of this administration for secret spying powers. We are walking headlong into a Soviet system, all on the basis of nebulous, nameless fear of a completely theoretical attack.
As Jonathan Turley, Constitutional law professor and frequent guest on "Countdown" has said, the fact that we're fighting to preserve the FISA law, is itself a secret court accountable to no one, shows how far down the rabbit hole we've gone. The fact that Democrats would continue to back down, and capitulate to a president who has been so thoroughly and publicly discredited, is astounding.
The statute will be reviewed in six months, in the middle of a presidential campaign. Let's hope none of the Senators running for president has the temerity, or the stupidity, to support it then.
As for me, I have come to realize that I am what you might call a civil liberties absolutist. I care more about habeas corpus than I do about the Democratic Party. I'm about a milimeter away from tearing up my voter registration card.
The Washington Post, which has done its share of capitulating to this president on matters of war and security, gets it right on its editorial page today:
THE DEMOCRATIC-led Congress, more concerned with protecting its political backside than with safeguarding the privacy of American citizens, left town early yesterday after caving in to administration demands that it allow warrantless surveillance of the phone calls and e-mails of American citizens, with scant judicial supervision and no reporting to Congress about how many communications are being intercepted. To call this legislation ill-considered is to give it too much credit: It was scarcely considered at all. Instead, it was strong-armed through both chambers by an administration that seized the opportunity to write its warrantless wiretapping program into law -- or, more precisely, to write it out from under any real legal restrictions.
Administration officials, backed up by their Republican enablers in Congress, argued that they were being dangerously hamstrung in their ability to collect foreign-to-foreign communications by suspected terrorists that happen to transit through the United States. The problem is that while no serious person objects to intercepting foreign-to-foreign communications, what the administration sought -- and what it managed to obtain -- allows much more than foreign-to-foreign contacts. The government will now be free to intercept any communications believed to be from outside the United States (including from Americans overseas) that involve "foreign intelligence" -- not just terrorism. It will be able to monitor phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens or residents without warrants -- unless the subject is the "primary target" of the surveillance. Instead of having the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court ensure that surveillance is being done properly, with monitoring of Americans minimized, that job would be up to the attorney general and the director of national intelligence. The court's role is reduced to that of rubber stamp.
This is as reckless as it was unnecessary. Democrats had presented a compromise plan that would have permitted surveillance to proceed, but with court review and an audit by the Justice Department's inspector general, to be provided to Congress, about how many Americans had been surveilled. Democrats could have stuck to their guns and insisted on their version. Instead, nervous about being blamed for any terrorist attack and eager to get out of town, they accepted the unacceptable. Most Democrats opposed the measure, but enough (16 in the Senate, 41 in the House) went with Republicans to allow it to pass, and the leadership enabled that result.
Without that audit, how will the Democrats even know if this new law has been abused six months from now? I'm tempted to ask, do they even care?
These clods fell for the oldest trick in Karl Rove's book threats of another terror attack, which would of course be blamed on them. How so, DemiDummies? It is Bush who has styled himself the protector of the nation (and its children.) If that protection falters, sux years after 9/11 and scads of phony terror alerts scaring up everythng from liquid perfume to cheese... even a moron would have placed the blame at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Jesus, guys, can't you do anything right???
BTW, any reporters who work on international stories, particularly regarding Bush's unpopular war, or his various, overreaching national security schemes, had better be on notice. Don't think for a moment that you are not a key target of this administration's plans to control and destroy information and dissent. Presidential candidates -- if you plan on talking to foreign leaders in anticipation of one day running this country's foreign policy, you just voted for your own bugging. Great job.
And then there are people like myself, who have family overseas, including both my husband's family and my father's side of the aisle, who all live in the Congo. I'm just going to assume from here on in that Dubya is mining everything, and everyone, and that he's not just looking for al-Qaida, he's looking for any speech that interferes with his "war on terror," including dissent. If you doubt it, remember that executive order which allows the Treasury Department to seize the property of anyone who interferes, by war or deed, with Bush's war in Iraq? Goodbye First , Fourth and Fifth amendments.
This is sickening, and it didn't have to happen. Have a nice vacation, Democrats. Today, I'm ashamed to be one of you.
As for the roll calls for the Orwellian-themed "Protect America Act", here's the House and here's the Senate. Read it and weep. I'm happy to report that from Florida, Congressmen Meek and Hastings voted nay. On the Senate side, I'm saddened that Chuch Hagel voted for this monstrosity, as did every other GOPer. 16 Dems capitulated, too, but thankfully, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama fell for the okey doke. Among the civil liberties sell-outs: Bill Nelson of Florida, Jim Webb of Virginia, Diane Feinstein (CA) and Ken Salazar of Colorado.
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Labels: Bush administration, Democrats, FISA, NSA, political cowardice, spineless politicians, warrantless wiretaps, wiretapping |
