The Roots Project has a big, coordinated effort today to influence the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter especially, to take a firmer stand against Bush's warrantless spying. This campaign encourages everybody, particularly Pennsylvanians, to contact Specter and write LTEs to newspapers demanding that the Senate confront rather than evade the constitutional crisis provoked by the President's law-breaking.
It's a shame that this has gotten inadequate attention here, so I'm pitching in with this diary. Sen. Specter can be moved by public pressure. In fact, that is a hallmark of his career. We brought a lot of pressure to bear on him last December when this story broke, and he began to take a reasonably firm stand against the NSA spying. Pressure let up, and Specter's begun to look for a 'compromise' via new legislation.
The Roots Project maintains that Specter's proposed legislation is unacceptable for several reasons--and in any case premature. Without a thorough investigation of the NSA program first, no meaningful solution to this crisis can exist. Extended play on side B.
The most obvious problem with Specter's legislative proposal is that Bush has argued that he has the inherent Article II authority to ignore laws. He has also issued signing statements that undercut the substance of the legislation he pretends to accept. And he has violated laws in secret, even while proclaiming that he does (and must) obey them. There is no reason, then, to trust that Bush will abide by any legislation even if he appears to accept it.
Also, nobody but the worst apologists for George Bush endorse any of the convoluted, and evolving, justifications his administration has given for warrantless spying on Americans. We cannot even determine yet what justifications they used, and when, since they've given evasive and contradictory testimony about that. The grounds for the spying were considered so shaky that the program, whatever it is, was suspended during the 2004 election. We learned the other day that even a former Bush official, David Kris, rejected all the administration's justifications when he was brought back into the loop last December to try to bring coherence to them. Kris has now come out in public firmly against the spying.
In addition, it has to be stressed that we cannot even say what the program exposed by the famous NYT article actually entails. The administration claims that only phone calls to suspected terrorists abroad are targeted. But news reports have challenged even those few alleged facts. In any event, it is increasingly clear that there are other shadowy programs of warrantless searches going on, which the White House won't even admit to.
As Kris stresses, the ONLY way to discuss the legality of the NYT-program (or indeed any such spy program) intelligently, will first require a full and detailed investigation of the facts. I would add that, since the Bush administration has proven itself again and again to be unreliable about facts--deceitful, in fact--there are no good grounds for trusting its version of events, its chronology, its facts. Nor should we believe, without further evidence, that the legal arguments it advances are being made with intellectual honesty.
In short, we must convince the Judiciary Committee to look straight at the facts rather than evading them. And the facts are unpleasant. The President has willfully violated the law. No legislation now can undo that. Therefore the Senate must address his lawbreaking, as well as investigating whether the FISA law does indeed deserve to be revised.
It's about lawbreaking, first and foremost, not about tinkering with old legislation (that the Bush administration itself has said does not need tinkering with).
So, help scare up support to assist in this campaign to urge Specter not to stand in the way of meaningful investigation.
Here is a link to a Roots Project: Pennsylvania page, that will give you more info about the campaign, with links to contact Specter or your own Senator.
To call your Senator, the number for the Senate switchboard is 888-355-3588.
Here is a link to a month-old diary of mine, which has detailed contact info for all members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Here are Greenwald's thoughts on Specter's proposed legislation. I would (and did) say that Glenn is being far too sanguine about the potential benefits from this bill.
Please, help to shake some sense into the Judiciary Committee before it too, like the pathetic Intelligence Committee, turns its back on this constitutional crisis, sells our civil rights down the river, and settles for some new, obscure, and unsettling version of our Constitution.