Walking Backwards
by ChrisMarch 14th, 2006 12:51 am
About a month ago, I had a conversation with a local journalist about what might leak out of a Judiciary Committee investigation into the domestic spying scandal, should one actually occur. My basic contention was that, regardless of how damning the revelations might be, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. So far, we’ve had a President who has flat out admitted that he broke the law by ordering a program that violates the FISA statute, and it barely even moved the public outrage needle. The narrative and the conventional wisdom are so skewed and distorted, even at this late date, that a significant erosion of our civil liberties doesn’t seem to really register. Granted, the President’s favorability ratings are in the toilet, but it’s probably safe to assume that has far more to do with Iraq and Katrina, than with the domestic spying scandal. Anyway, the gentleman I was speaking with felt that I was being overly cynical. Since he is a more intelligent and more experienced person than myself, I took (and take) some comfort in that.
Unfortunately, today’s events seem to bear out my skepticism. At one point or another today, seemingly every elected Democrat, with a national profile, said something along the lines of “Russ Feingold? Never heard of him. Censure? You speak with a forked tongue crazy journalist,” to the national press. This was their way of running away from Russ Feingold’s effort to Censure the president. In Feingold’s own words:
The facts and the case for censure are clear. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, makes it a crime to wiretap American citizens without a court warrant - which is what the President has admitted doing. Before the program was revealed, he also misled Congress and the American people about the wiretapping that was being done. For example, at a 2004 speech in Buffalo, he said, “Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires, a wiretap requires a court order.” And at a 2004 speech in my home state of Wisconsin, he said that “the government can’t move on wiretaps or roving wiretaps without getting a court order.”
When the domestic spying story first broke, the President went from saying he wouldn’t be able to talk about it, to suggesting there was no other way to wiretap terrorists, to implying that the FISA law is out of date. He went on to claim that sweeping inherent powers of the presidency or the authorization of force back in 2001 gave him such authority — neither of which is legally or factually correct. While the President has cherry-picked information before, he cannot do the same with the laws of our land.
Censuring the President is not something that should be taken lightly. But the President has BROKEN the law and there needs to be action and accountability.
The afternoon was rounded out by the sorry spectacle of the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, proclaiming on the Senate floor that the President broke no laws, because FISA is unconstitutional. Apparently, he mistook himself for the Supreme Court. Lovely.
So should you still bother writing to Arlen Specter demanding a real investigation of the domestic spying program, including such formalities as sworn testimony? Hell yes. Even though the guy is clearly in the administration’s back pocket and our chances of success are just a little better than nothing? Hell yes. Look, I’m clearly as pessimistic about this as anyone, but even if our chances of swaying the senator are infantesimal, that’s still a better chance than what’s offered by keeping our thoughts to ourselves and screaming at the wall. If you are a Pennsylvanian, and almost everybody who visits this site is, take a few minutes and send your senior senator an email, fax, or letter letting him know where you stand on domestic spying and what you expect out of him. Once you’re done, fire off a copy to the newspaper(s) of your choice. There’s too much at stake worry about the odds.
Go here for a list of newspaper contact information. For Senator Specter’s contact information and more on the project, have a look a Vichy Democrats. If you are a Pennsylvania blogger, please consider writing a post of your own.
