The next edition of Bill Moyers' Journal on Friday, September 7, 9:00pm appears to be a must-watch. The topics will include:
Wiretapping and Domestic Surveillance
Defining Torture
Mountaintop Mining
Is anyone out there listening?
Moyers' guests for this segment will include Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU, and Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman and one of the founding trustees of the Heritage Foundation and national chairman of the American Conservative Union.
The discussion topic will be wiretapping and domestic surveillance. Given this week's smackdown of National Security Letters and the NSA spy program documents, there should be plenty to discuss.
It's pretty clear where Romero will come down on illegal wiretapping and domestic surveillance. One could assume that Edwards will be taking the side of BushCo on the issues, but he has apparently seen that the power grab by King George is not good for separation of powers defined in the Constitution.
In an article Edwards published on HuffPo, he said:
... The problem is not merely presidential overreaching (self-aggrandizement is not a trait peculiar to this President alone), but acquiescence by those constitutionally obligated to maintain a check on presidential power ... Even those who would defend his assertion of the right to ignore provisions of legislation he himself signs into law (generally because they agree with his approach to the ongoing "war on terror" or just share his general political outlook) have an obligation to join in the effort to rein in Mr. Bush's unprecedented expansion of presidential power.
In an article Edwards posted on The Nation, he said:
... Bush's signing statements amount to more than an expression of opinion designed to influence the courts; they are a de facto instruction to federal agencies to disregard Congressional mandate.
Although the ABA task force in particular has a very limited mandate--to propose a policy position solely in regard to the use of signing statements--the issue arises against a disturbing backdrop that includes not only the gathering of telephone records but the deliberate disregard of a law prohibiting electronic surveillance of US citizens without a court-ordered warrant. Thus the real issue at stake is not one of presidential policy but of the continued viability of the separation of powers, the central tenet in America's system of constrained government ...
... The concentration of power in the hands of a single chief executive, whether President or King, is an outcome neither the left nor the right should welcome. But with a President who assumes that all important decisions are his to make, and a Congress whose members routinely act as though they are part of the White House staff, that may well be where we are headed...
This is not the first über conservative that Moyers has brought on his show to point out that Bush is making a power grab like no president in history. On the July 13, 2007 show, "Tough Talk on Impeachment," he had Bruce Fein as a guest. Fein wrote the first article of impeachment against President Clinton. He served in the Reagan Justice Department, and was affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. During Moyers' program, he said:
... I think Bush's crimes are ... more worrisome than Clinton's ... because he is seeking more institutionally to cripple checks and balances and the authority of Congress and the judiciary to superintend his assertions of power. He has claimed the authority to tell Congress they don't have any right to know what he's doing with relation to spying on American citizens, using that information in any way that he wants in contradiction to a federal statute called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He's claimed authority to say he can kidnap people, throw them into dungeons abroad, dump them out into Siberia without any political or legal accountability. These are standards that are totally anathema to a democratic society devoted to the rule of law ... we cannot entrust the reins of power, unchecked power, with these people. They're untrustworthy. They're asserting theories of governments that are monarchical.
Defining Torture
The second segment will be an interview with Jack Landman Goldsmith. Goldsmith headed the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in the Justice Department from October 2003 until his resignation in the summer of 2004. The OLC advises the President about the limits of executive power.
Goldsmith has written a soon to be published book titled "The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration." According to Moyers' website, "Goldsmith breaks his silence about his battles with the White House against an expanded notion of executive power, as well as the circumstances surrounding his resignation after 9 months at his post."
From the Amazon.com Editorial Review:
Jack Goldsmith's duty as head of the Office of Legal Counsel was to advise President Bush what he could and could not do...legally. Goldsmith took the job in October 2003 and began to review the work of his predecessors. Their opinions were the legal framework governing the conduct of the military and intelligence agencies in the war on terror, and he found many—especially those regulating the treatment and interrogation of prisoners—that were deeply flawed.
Goldsmith is a conservative lawyer who understands the imperative of averting another 9/11. But his unflinching insistence that we abide by the law put him on a collision course with powerful figures in the administration. Goldsmith's fascinating analysis of parallel legal crises in the Lincoln and Roosevelt administrations shows why Bush's apparent indifference to human rights has damaged his presidency and, perhaps, his standing in history.
Goldsmith is a tenured professor at Harvard Law School and a visiting scholar for the American Enterprise Institute. Yes, that American Enterprise Institute
Telling it on the Mountain
The last segment of the show revisits "Evangelical Christians who were turning to their faith to fight the effects of mountaintop mining on their communities."
The issues shown on Moyers' website include:
- The Environmental Protection Agency rewrote clean water regulations to add mine waste to the list of materials that can be used to fill in streams for development and other purposes.
- The EPA released a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) assessing the environmental and social impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining. The study confirmed that mountaintop removal coal mining has affected forest areas and streams in negative ways, and identified proposed actions that government agencies might take to minimize the adverse effects of mountaintop mining operations and excess spoil valley fills. Despite these findings, the Bush administration called for an easing of existing environmental restrictions on this mining method. The "Preferred" Action Alternative offered in the report recommends that "The agencies would developed enhanced coordination of regulatory actions, while maintaining independent review and decision making by each agency."
- Rule changes are proposed which reduce the surface mining law's buffer zone rule that prohibited mining activities within 100 feet of larger streams. New guidelines would required companies to respect the buffer zone "to the extent practicable."
- The proposed new rule codifies the 2004 buffer zone proposals and, according to THE NEW YORK TIMES, "seems specifically to authorize the disposal of 'excess spoil fills,' a k a mine waste, in hollows and streams."
For "political junkies," these issues are not really new, but Moyers always adds something substantial to any discussion he undertakes. If you know people who are less than informed, suggest that they watch this program.
Some airtimes:
New York - WNET / Channel 13: Friday 9pm, Sunday 7pm
Los Angeles - KCET / Channel 28: Friday 8pm, Saturday 5pm
San Francisco - KQED / Channel 58: Friday 10pm, Saturday 1am, 5am, 9am, 1pm, 5pm, 9pm
Chicago - WTTW11 / Channel 11: Friday 9:30