Deja Vu All Over Again
Feb 26th, 2006 at 4:49 pm by Susie
Glenn Greenwald on Arlen Specter’s proposed wiretapping law:
It is, of course, so disorientingly bizarre to hear about a proposed law requiring FISA warrants for eavesdropping because we already have a law in place which does exactly that. It’s called FISA. That’s the law the Administration has been deliberately breaking because they think they don’t have to comply with it and that Congress has no power to make them. Reading this article about Specter’s proposed legislation is somewhat like hearing that a life-long, chronic bank-robber got arrested for robbing a bank over the weekend and, in response, a Senator introduces legislation to make it a crime to rob banks.
In fairness to Specter, one can conjure up a rationale for passing a law which requires (again) that the NSA program be conducted only with the FISA framework — namely, that such a newly enacted law will negate the Administration’s claim for future eavesdropping that the Congress gave the Administration an exemption to FISA via the AUMF (obviously, if Congress, subsequent to enactment of the AUMF, enacts a law specifically requiring any and all eavesdropping by the NSA to be conducted only under the purview of the FISA court, not even the Administration could argue that it remains exempted from FISA by virtue of the AUMF).
Regardless of the intentions, there are two glaring problems with Specter’s proposed legislation. The first is that it renders the “rule of law” a meaningless illusion. Nothing in Specter’s proposed legislation would release the Administration from liability or other consequences from their four-year history of intentional law-breaking, and, from what I know, he is still pursuing his legislation requiring that the question of the program’s legaility be adjudicated by the FISA court.
Nonetheless, this new, proposed legislation would plainly endorse the excuse that there was something previously unclear about whether FISA warrants were required for the NSA eavesdropping - hence, the need for a new law. Not even the Administation claims that the eavesdropping in which they engaged on American citizens was outside the scope of FISA. There was nothing unclear about the law. It criminalized exactly the activities in which the Administration engaged, and no new law is needed.
The far bigger problem is that Specter’s legislation ignores the actual crux of this scandal. As I’ve pointed out many times before, the problem we are confronting is not that the Administration specifically believes that it has the power to eavesdrop without warrants in violation of the law. It does believe that, but only as a manifestation — a consequence — of a much broader and more ambitious theory that vests in George Bush the power to break Congressional laws and act even in defiance of court orders on all matters relating to national security, broadly defined.
via Firedogleke:We’ll try to have some kind of Roots project action in Specter’s back yard soon. If you’ve got a blog that covers local Pennsylvania politics and would like to take the lead on this like Josh from Thoughts From Kansas did for the Kansas project, please email me, we really want to work through local people on this.
As usual, Lawmakers like Specter continue to prop up this outlaw regime, and at the further expense of the working American taxpayer. This (Specter’s legislation) is not only a waste of time and money it is a direct insult to any half thinking citizen. When will this absurd circus cease? The lucid sector of Pennsylvania’s population need to purge the party line ideologs from duty next fall at the polls, as they do damage to the nation and the state.
Isn’t the rumor that Specter is raising a fuss to ensure he’ll get a sufficient number of pork projects for his state?
Isn’t that always the rumor? It seems issues of constitutional debate or national interest should supersede pork. Last time I looked, Specter’s job and branch of government was established as the check and balance to what may be an overbearing executive branch. Indeed, I think most people would consider that the Bush administration easily falls into the catagory, and many as myself consider the administration criminal.
All of our legislators have sworn an oath to uphold our constitution of these United States and it’s application concerning the the individual citizen.