Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Christopher Hitchens: What Reason Do We Have to Trust the State to Know Best?. Although I am named in this suit in my own behalf, I am motivated to join it by concerns well beyond my own. I have been frankly appalled by the discrepant and contradictory positions taken by the Administration in this matter. First, the entire existence of the NSA's monitoring was a secret, and its very disclosure denounced as a threat to national security. Then it was argued that Congress had already implicitly granted the power to conduct warrantless surveillance on the territory of the United States, which seemed to make the reason for the original secrecy more rather than less mysterious. (I think we may take it for granted that our deadly enemies understand that their communications may be intercepted.) It now appears that Congress may have granted this authority, but without quite knowing that it had, and certainly without knowing the extent of it. This makes it critically important that we establish an understood line, and test the cases in which it may or may not be crossed. Let me give a very direct instance of what I mean. We have recently learned that the NSA used law enforcement agencies to track members of a pacifist organisation in Baltimore. This is, first of all, an appalling abuse of state power and an unjustified invasion of privacy, uncovered by any definition of "national security" however expansive. It is, no less importantly, a stupid diversion of scarce resources from the real target. It is a certainty that if all the facts were known we would become aware of many more such cases of misconduct and waste. We are, in essence, being asked to trust the state to know best. What reason do we have for such confidence? The agencies entrusted with our protection have repeatedly been shown, before and after the fall of 2001, to be conspicuous for their incompetence and venality. No serious reform of these institutions has been undertaken or even proposed: Mr George Tenet (whose underlings have generated leaks designed to sabotage the Administration's own policy of regime-change in Iraq, and whose immense and unconstitutionally secret budget could not finance the infiltration of a group which John Walker Lindh could join with ease) was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom. I believe the President when he says that this will be a very long war, and insofar as a mere civilian may say so, I consider myself enlisted in it. But this consideration in itself makes it imperative that we not take panic or emergency measures in the short term, and then permit them to become institutionalised. I need hardly add that wire-tapping is only one of the many areas in which this holds true. The better the ostensible justification for an infringement upon domestic liberty, the more suspicious one ought to be of it. We are hardly likely to be told that the government would feel less encumbered if it could dispense with the Bill of Rights. But a power or a right, once relinquished to one administration for one reason, will unfailingly be exploited by successor administrations, for quite other reasons. It is therefore of the first importance that we demarcate, clearly and immediately, the areas in which our government may or may not treat us as potential enemies. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 2:52:53 PM    comment []

A "steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names" sent by the NSA to the FBI following 9/11, "soon became a flood," reports the New York Times, quoting one former FBI official as saying: "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration." [Cursor.org] 11:07:19 AM    comment []

The Wall Street Journal reports on the lack of progress in tracing or recovering billions of dollars in Iraqi oil money handed out in cash by the Coalition Provisional Authority. A special inspector general's office "says it hasn't located many of the contracts" and must "pursue higher priorities." [Cursor.org] 11:05:03 AM    comment []

Full Court Press The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights are set to file lawsuits Tuesday to stop the administration's warrantless eavesdropping program. [Cursor.org] 11:03:49 AM    comment []

After a grieving mother in Ohio asked President Bush to help her learn details of her son's death in Iraq, "his campaign called and asked her to appear in a commercial for him," and documents related to the friendly fire fatality were reportedly "not issued until after Bush was reelected -- with the help of a slim margin in ... Ohio." [Cursor.org] 10:56:14 AM    comment []

Clinton didn't violate FISA with searches. Clinton didn't violate FISA with searches [The Raw Story | A rational voice - Alternative news] 9:35:35 AM    comment []

Martin Garbus: We Cannot Say Ben Franklin Did Not Warn Us. The confirmation of Samuel Alito will contribute towards a total reorganization of this form of government. The Rehnquist era started the shift of the power to the states and away from the federal government - away from the Congress, away from the federal agencies, away from the regulatory system created to protect employees, consumers, investors - the people of America. The Roberts-Scalia-Alito-Thomas-Kennedy Court will not only continue the work of the Rehnquist Court and make the rightward turn more dramatic - it will also preside over the expansion of presidential powers in ways never before imagined. But even more importantly, it will insulate the President from accountability - the Chief Executive, under the new regime, will be responsible to no one. Most radically, his interpretation of a law passed by Congress he signs will become more significant than Congress's own intent, is the legally binding one. Our Founding Fathers created a republican form of government - a state in which the supreme power rests in the people through their elected representative - a self-government based on a structure of checks and balances. The story goes that, as Benjamin Franklin (whose 300th birthday we celebrate today), left the Constitutional Convention in 1787, he was approached by a Mrs. Powell, who asked him, "What have you given us, Dr. Franklin?" "A republic," he replied, "if you can keep it. Well, we can't seem to keep it. At least not for the long foreseeable future - for decades. The three branches of government are totally out of joint. The Congress's role is to pass laws, it is their intent (not the President's) that is to be used in interpreting the laws. Under the Constitution, the President has absolutely no power to say what the intent of a law is. But because he issues a statement at the time he signs the law Bush claims his interpretation of the law has effect. Alito claims, as do conservative academics, that the "signing statement" would "increase the power of the executive to shape the law." The Supreme Court was supposed to be a check and balance on the Executive. Chief Justice John Roberts's Court will no longer be that. It will give Bush a blank check; not only in foreign matters but in domestic issues as well. 9/11 was a tragic godsend for those who wanted to restructure the government. Often in war times, presidents are given greater powers - and then years later, in peacetime, those powers are diluted. It's a cycle we have repeatedly seen during our history. But, now with a permanent war, the presidency will get a free, unfettered hand from the Court. The Congress will not be able to stop the President for the Courts will rule they do not have that power. The Courts, in taking away the ability of Congress, takes away power from its 535 elected representatives in the Senate and House. It eviscerates the right and the ability to self govern. We no longer have three equal branches of government. Ken Starr, in his book "First Among Equals," argued, as the title makes clear, that the Supreme Court, since it can define the structure of the government, of the democracy, has more power than the other branches. It is deserved, he says, because they, unlike the elected officials, are better able to interpret the Constitution, better educated, and, from a higher level of our culture, Starr claims, they give us the Platonic form of government we wanted where our betters lead the way. Nonsense. History shows us the effects of that are disastrous. The self-anointed Best and Brightest are not what we want, not what this democracy wants. The Conservatives have spent the last three decades refocusing the path of legal opinions. All that Edwin Meese, Robert Bork and John Roberts wanted when they formed the Federalists has come to pass. Martin Luther King's life reminds us how long a struggle for a democracy rights can take. King's death signified the end of a liberal era. We must now struggle to try to move forward to end this conservative cycle. His death reminds us we once lived in an era of giants. Where are the giants now? We start now to fulfill his vision. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 9:29:09 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2006 Patricia Thurston.