Jingos are fond of quoting (misquoting, actually) Stephen Decatur’s famous toast: “My country, right or wrong.” G.K. Chesterton compared that sentiment to: “My mother, drunk or sober.”
Our country is currently wrong and our president is drunk with power the founding fathers never meant him to have. Commodore Decatur was right, however, it is our country and if the needle is ever going to move back from “wrong” to “right,” we’ll have to be the ones to move it.
America’s journey to rectitude could begin from any of a dozen points, but let’s look at the still-unfolding warrantless wiretap scandal. In December the New York Times (after sitting on the story for a year) revealed that in 2001 George Bush authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to use its surveillance devices to monitor telephone calls and e-mails either placed to or originating from the U.S., in direct violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
If you pay even passing attention to the news, you’ll know the federal government, under FISA, has all kinds of leeway. Judges are standing by to review and approve (and they almost always approve) requests for warrants, the feds can eavesdrop for 72 hours without a warrant from the FISA court and that Mr. Bush has repeatedly acknowledged that such surveillance needed a court order and claimed his administration respects the need for court orders.
In this morning’s news, we learned that in 2002 Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH) suggested easing the requirements (how much easier could they get?) for the administration to obtain warrants for monitoring phone calls and e-mails, but the Bush administration rejected the offer, saying it would be unconstitutional.
Why would the administration do that? Why would the White House reject a senator’s offer and then secretly spy on Americans without warrants? Why would Mr. Bush deliberately – and repeatedly – lie about it in public? The administration’s line has been that deceit was necessary to fool our enemies. Huh? Since the operations of the FISA court are hidden from the public, how would getting a warrant from that court alert terrorists that the NSA was monitoring them? Perhaps al Quaeda has a source of information inside the FISA court? No one’s made such an assertion. Maybe the Bush people have declined to request warrants for their wiretaps because they were afraid the FISA court would reject the warrants, because the NSA is not spying on potential terrorists, but on law-abiding Americans who disagree with the Bush White House. Maybe this spying isn’t about national security, maybe it’s about politics. In the past five years, the Bush administration has demonstrated that it is incompetent at national security, but it plays politics very well.
George W. Bush has been caught violating a specific statute (FISA) and a pillar of the Constitution (the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches). Since politics is the only thing the Bush White House does well, it has gone on a full-bore political offensive. Every day, Mr. Bush or one of his flunkies is out defending his KGB tactics. Last week, the misnamed Justice Department demanded Google turn over a week’s worth of Internet searches. This all-out assault is a tribute to how wrong and indefensible Mr. Bush’s practices are and how worried his senior staff must be.
Unfortunately, the Senate committee tasked with overseeing this mess is the Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA). Fresh from the content-lie Alito hearings, Mr. Specter promises oversight hearings will be held in February. Various puff-piece profiles of the senior senator from Pennsylvania often portray him as a moderate, because was once a Democrat, because he supports abortion rights and gay rights. Some go so far as to call him a “maverick,” willing to buck his party.
It’s true conservative Republicans have few kind words for Mr. Specter and one of them ran in a primary against him in 2004, but through his career, the “maverick” Mr. Specter has often returned to the establishment barn. As junior counsel on the Warren Committee, Mr. Specter cooked up the famous “magic bullet” theory in the investigation of John Kennedy’s assassination. He voted against both the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court and the impeachment of Bill Clinton, but in 1988, he carried out a public assassination of the character of Anita Hill during hearings on Clarence Thomas’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.
The senator turns 76 next month and has recently survived a bout with cancer. Political observers believe he will retire at the end of his current term, when he will be 80. Will the final contribution to his legacy be another travesty of justice, or will he find the courage to help restore the Constitution he swore to defend?
In The Barn?
Jingos are fond of quoting (misquoting, actually) Stephen Decatur’s famous toast: “My country, right or wrong.” G.K. Chesterton compared that sentiment to: “My mother, drunk or sober.”
Our country is currently wrong and our president is drunk with power the founding fathers never meant him to have. Commodore Decatur was right, however, it is our country and if the needle is ever going to move back from “wrong” to “right,” we’ll have to be the ones to move it.
America’s journey to rectitude could begin from any of a dozen points, but let’s look at the still-unfolding warrantless wiretap scandal. In December the New York Times (after sitting on the story for a year) revealed that in 2001 George Bush authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to use its surveillance devices to monitor telephone calls and e-mails either placed to or originating from the U.S., in direct violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
If you pay even passing attention to the news, you’ll know the federal government, under FISA, has all kinds of leeway. Judges are standing by to review and approve (and they almost always approve) requests for warrants, the feds can eavesdrop for 72 hours without a warrant from the FISA court and that Mr. Bush has repeatedly acknowledged that such surveillance needed a court order and claimed his administration respects the need for court orders.
In this morning’s news, we learned that in 2002 Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH) suggested easing the requirements (how much easier could they get?) for the administration to obtain warrants for monitoring phone calls and e-mails, but the Bush administration rejected the offer, saying it would be unconstitutional.
Why would the administration do that? Why would the White House reject a senator’s offer and then secretly spy on Americans without warrants? Why would Mr. Bush deliberately – and repeatedly – lie about it in public? The administration’s line has been that deceit was necessary to fool our enemies. Huh? Since the operations of the FISA court are hidden from the public, how would getting a warrant from that court alert terrorists that the NSA was monitoring them? Perhaps al Quaeda has a source of information inside the FISA court? No one’s made such an assertion. Maybe the Bush people have declined to request warrants for their wiretaps because they were afraid the FISA court would reject the warrants, because the NSA is not spying on potential terrorists, but on law-abiding Americans who disagree with the Bush White House. Maybe this spying isn’t about national security, maybe it’s about politics. In the past five years, the Bush administration has demonstrated that it is incompetent at national security, but it plays politics very well.
George W. Bush has been caught violating a specific statute (FISA) and a pillar of the Constitution (the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches). Since politics is the only thing the Bush White House does well, it has gone on a full-bore political offensive. Every day, Mr. Bush or one of his flunkies is out defending his KGB tactics. Last week, the misnamed Justice Department demanded Google turn over a week’s worth of Internet searches. This all-out assault is a tribute to how wrong and indefensible Mr. Bush’s practices are and how worried his senior staff must be.
Unfortunately, the Senate committee tasked with overseeing this mess is the Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA). Fresh from the content-lie Alito hearings, Mr. Specter promises oversight hearings will be held in February. Various puff-piece profiles of the senior senator from Pennsylvania often portray him as a moderate, because was once a Democrat, because he supports abortion rights and gay rights. Some go so far as to call him a “maverick,” willing to buck his party.
It’s true conservative Republicans have few kind words for Mr. Specter and one of them ran in a primary against him in 2004, but through his career, the “maverick” Mr. Specter has often returned to the establishment barn. As junior counsel on the Warren Committee, Mr. Specter cooked up the famous “magic bullet” theory in the investigation of John Kennedy’s assassination. He voted against both the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court and the impeachment of Bill Clinton, but in 1988, he carried out a public assassination of the character of Anita Hill during hearings on Clarence Thomas’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.
The senator turns 76 next month and has recently survived a bout with cancer. Political observers believe he will retire at the end of his current term, when he will be 80. Will the final contribution to his legacy be another travesty of justice, or will he find the courage to help restore the Constitution he swore to defend?
© Mark Floegel, 2006