Glenn Greenwald, in typically persuasive form, published
an analysis today that discusses the General Hayden confirmation, the role of FISA, the rule of law, and the President's violation of that law.
While the basis of whether a law is constitutional or not is a fundamental conversation to be had in a republic or a democracy, I think that all of the current FISA/domestic spying/warrantless eavesdropping debate really misses the point (tho I agree with the substance of the debate).
What is the point? Read more to find out ...
The point is, we have allowed as a nation in our laziness and idle consumptive stupor the opportunity for an elite cabal of powerful and self-serving interests to establish an entrenched network of self-reinforcing control mechanisms. in Texas, where our Homeland Protector claims to hail, this is often called a "good old boy's club"
These interests, consciously or unconsciously, do not hold the Law or a constitution as anything more than a tool to be manipulated.
Back in the 1930s in Germany, Hitler had support from a similar good old boy's club of monied, powerful interest: the weapons industry, the energy industry and the manufacturing industry -- among others. and he and his supporters subverted laws while all the time maintaining a semblance of adherence to the notion that these laws were relevant except in matters of national security.
Opponents of Hitler continuously missed this point until it was too late: they were either jailed, killed or had fled the country. everyone else was silent -- even when the majority of citizen held a less than positive view of their "Decider"
Now surely we haven't arrived at the Fascist endgame that this process represents. but we have had our Reichstag fire -- a putative "terrorist act" that frightened a significant portion of the German public into accepting whatever party platform that spoke to their desire to be led safely out of the perception of imminent danger. and we have had the building blocks of our own Enabling act: the method by which the rubber stamp right wing Congress of Germany delivered the reigns of executive power to Hitler. and we see in rising and party sanctioned anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and anti-gay rhetoric the attempts to manipulate and sway citizenry through fear and hate just as Jews, gypsies, Slavs and homosexuals were demonized in propaganda and popular culture before the march to the Deatch Camps began.
All of these steps were (and are) part of a deliberate and methodical process used as cover to consolidate and seize absolute power in a polity presumably governed by popular will.
That's the point.
We can debate the law all we want, but the law will not necessarily aid us if we do not address the fundamental achilles heel of a democratic soceity that through authoritarian and/or fascist social movements as been repeatedly exploited since the 19th century.
How do we move the conversation from: "goddamn, he broke the law! yes he did" to "goddamn, he broke the law and he will be punished according to the law"? And how do we emphasize the will be punished part and enforce it to the appropriate end result before it is too late and the law means nothing at all?