John W. Dean writes that in acting without congressional approval, Bush has underlined that his presidency is unchecked and utterly beyond the law. Now that he has turned the truly awesome powers of the NSA on Americans, what asserted powers will Bush use next? And when, if ever, will we - and Congress - discover that he is using them?
Read the FindLaw article Here from John Dean, former counsel to President Richard Nixon.
Good question.
Back in the 1980s, when I was living in Johannesburg and reporting on apartheid South Africa, a white neighbor proffered a tasteless confession. She was “quite relieved,” she told me, that new media restrictions prohibited our reporting on government repression. No matter that Pretoria was detaining tens of thousands of people without real evidence of wrongdoing. No matter that many of them, including children, were being tortured—sometimes to death. No matter that government hit squads were killing political opponents. No matter that police were shooting into crowds of black civilians protesting against their disenfranchisement. “It’s so nice,” confided my neighbor, “not to open the papers and read all that bad news.”
I thought about that neighbor this week, as reports dribbled out about President George W. Bush’s sanctioning of warrantless eavesdropping on American conversations. For anyone who has lived under an authoritarian regime, phone tapping—or at least the threat of it—is always a given. But U.S. citizens have always been lucky enough to believe themselves protected from such government intrusion. So why have they reacted so insipidly to yet another post-9/11 erosion of U.S. civil liberties?
Bush’s defense of his phone-spying program has disturbing echoes of arguments once used by South Africa’s apartheid Arlene Getz of Newsweek tells why Americans should examine the parallels.
Why in God’s name is this man the only representative with the courage to stand up to encroaching fascism in America?
In a case of legislative deja vu, Sen. Russell Feingold launched another lonely filibuster against the USA Patriot Act, but sponsors predicted enough support to overcome the objection and extend parts of the law set to expire March 10.
Feingold said protracted talks with the White House over the law’s protections for civil liberties produced only a “fig leaf” to cover weaknesses that leave people vulnerable to government intrusion.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he had the 60 votes required to overcome Feingold’s filibuster, as soon as this week. He agreed, though, that any revisions to a House-Senate accord blocked last year were “cosmetic.
“But sometimes cosmetics will make a beauty out of a beast and provide enough cover for senators to change their vote,” Specter told reporters Wednesday.
Beast is right. Though Mr. Spector is going to need more than some Max Factor to cover up the grotesque disfigurement he and his cronies are inflicting upon the American Constitution.
Spector. I guess he’s just another sycophant licking the boot of power along with the rest of them.
Even veteran conservative writer and columnist George Will is starting to ask some pretty clear questions. The president’s authorization of domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency contravened a statute’s clear language. Assuming that urgent facts convinced him that he should proceed anyway and on his own, what argument convinced him that he lawfully could?
Read George Will’s column in The Washington Post
Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led FBI to Dead Ends
By Lowell Bergman, Eric Lichtblau, Scott Shane, and Don Van Natta Jr.
The New York Times
In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.
But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.
F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans’ international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans’ privacy.
Read The Full Article Here
But remember, it’s not illegal when the President does it.
In times of extreme fear, American leaders have sometimes scrapped civil liberties in the name of civil protection. It’s only later that the country can see that the choice was a false one and that citizens’ rights were sacrificed to carry out extreme measures that were at best useless and at worst counterproductive. There are enough examples of this in American history - the Alien and Sedition Acts and the World War II internment camps both come to mind - that the lesson should be woven into the nation’s fabric. But it’s hard to think of a more graphic example than President Bush’s secret program of spying on Americans.
Illegal eavesdropping swept up vast quantities of Americans’ private communications without any reasonable belief that they could be related to terrorism. The National Security Agency flooded the Federal Bureau of Investigation with thousands of names, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers and other tips that virtually all led to dead ends or to innocent Americans.
Read The NY Times editorial Here
The government and the cooperating companies say the search queries cannot be traced to their source, and therefore no personal information about users is being given up. But the government’s move is one of several recent episodes that have caused some people to think twice about the information they type into a search engine, or the opinions they express in an e-mail message.
Robert Scheer explains the ‘bottom line’ rather well here.
The Bush administration is certainly all about getting the government out of the boardroom and into the bedroom (and every other nick and cranny of ones private life).
So where are all those conservatives that used to constantly decry ‘big government’ intruding in every aspect of their lives? Would be nice if they started speaking up, wherever they are these days.
Bottom line is these guys in the Bush administration are obsessed voyeurs, poking their noses into everyone’s business, whether the excuse is squelching pornography or preventing terrorism. They simply do not believe civil liberties and privacy are important. It is an executive branch power trip, and completely anti-democratic.
An intense debate erupted during former US President Gerald Ford’s administration over the president’s powers to eavesdrop without warrants to gather foreign intelligence. And guess who were some of the principle characters in this this whole thing and what they were arguing for 30 years ago?
Read the report here.
