Two news stories this week should have resulted in 44 Senators signing on to censure the President of the United States for his abuse of power in ordering massive domestic spying on American citizens without a warrant. Two administration actions reinforce the fact that Congressional laws have been rendered meaningless: (1) the President's signing statement on the Patriot Act; and (2) the administration's answers to Judiciary Committee questions about the warrantless spying program.
When President Bush signed the Patriot Act into law, he issued a signing statement which in its application, is effectively a quasi-veto of its oversight provisions:
WASHINGTON -- When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers.
The bill contained several oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. [...]
In the [signing] statement, Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law's requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would ''impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties."
Democrats who voted for the Patriot Act reauthorization and promised us that oversight would protect our civil liberties, how do you feel now? You still feel glad that the "compromise" that was reached was nothing more than you compromising your principles in the hopes that a power-hungry executive would recognize your existence?
Let's move on to the second revelation. As you know, there are two legislative proposals on the table that deal with the NSA scandal. Republicans DeWine, Snow, Hagel, and Graham are introducing The Terrorist American Surveillance Act of 2006, which legalizes the President's crimes and gives the Executive carte blanche to do whatever it wants to American citizens. Senate Judiciary Chairman Specter is proposing an alternate bill, which would provide "oversight" by having the FISA court examine the program. Specter claims his bill will be the one that will ultimately be passed, namely because he has Democratic support. This week, in response to a series of questions posed by the House Judiciary Committee, the administration revealed that it has NO intention of abiding by any law passed by Congress with respect to domestic surveillance. Glenn Greenwald writes:
[T]he DoJ made clear to Congress that even if Congress passes some sort of newly amended FISA of the type which Sen. DeWine introduced, and even if the President "agrees" to it and signs it into law, the President still has the power to violate that law if he wants to. Put another way, the Administration is telling the Congress -- again -- that they can go and pass all the laws they want which purport to liberalize or restrict the President's powers, and it does not matter, because the President has and intends to preserve the power to do whatever he wants regardless of what those laws provide.
Democrats don't just seem
haunted by the ghost of accountability anymore--they are willfully blind to a constitutional crisis. As such, in my eyes, they are violating their oaths to protect and preserve the Constitution.
In an earlier post, "Republicans Rally Around Their King," I wrote this about how the administration views the legislative branch:
With Yoo holding the knife, the President has castrated Congress, and instead of screaming out in pain and justice, the Republicans play around in a pool of their own blood. Republicans just don't get it; President Bush's radical theory of Executive power is killing Congress.
Every Senator that endorses this cover-up proposal [the DeWine/Hagel/Snowe/Graham bill] thereby endorses the radical and undemocratic theory of the President as King. Do Senators Snowe and Hagel agree that the President can order the crushing of children's testicles? Do they agree that the President can order targeted assassinations on our own soil? Do they agree that the President can round up dissenters and lock them up if he thinks they're a threat to his precious War On Terror? Apparently so, because that is what President Bush's argument is all about: absolute, infallible Executive power.
Enough is enough. Democrats who fail to sign on to Feingold's resolution are just as guilty as Republicans are rallying around a President King. I cannot think of two clearer pieces of evidence which prove that this is a constitutional crisis that threatens our system of governance. Good god, Democrats,
wake up. You've been punk'd by the President. There is no Congress. There is no legislative branch. The laws you pass are
meaningless. Have the clerk scribble them on a piece of toilet paper because all the President is going to do is wipe his ass with your precious "oversight bills." What pride can be had in being a Senator of the United States when you are nothing more--
nothing more--than pawns in the ultimate Presidential power grab? I cannot make it any clearer. According to the President: You. Are. Nothing.
Nothing. And unless you do
something, my dear Democrats, there's a real danger that we--the base, the citizens who give a damn about the Constitution--will do
nothing for you come midterms this year. It's your move.