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Thursday July 10, 2008 08:25 EDT
Democrats' strategy: Strength through bowing
(updated below - Update II)
Historians writing about the Bush era were given a great gift yesterday
-- an iconic headline that explains so much of what has happened in
this country over the last seven years:
Their
rationale for doing that is that it prevents the Republicans from
depicting them as "weak," because nothing exudes strength like bowing.
Here's more evidence of the brilliance of the Democratic strategy to
show how "strong" and "tough" they are by bowing to Bush and all of his
demands, from this morning's New York Times article by Eric Lichtblau:
WASHINGTON — The Senate gave final approval on Wednesday to a major expansion of the government's surveillance powers, handing President Bush one more victory in a series of hard-fought clashes with Democrats over national security issues. . . .
Even as his political stature has waned, Mr. Bush has managed to maintain his dominance on national security issues in a Democratic-led Congress.
He has beat back efforts to cut troops and financing in Iraq, and he
has won important victories on issues like interrogation tactics and
military tribunals in the fight against terrorism. . . .
Debate over the surveillance law was the one area where Democrats had held firm in opposition. . . . .But in the end Mr. Bush won out, as administration officials helped forge a deal between Republican and Democratic leaders that included almost all the major elements the White House wanted.
The measure gives the executive branch broader latitude in
eavesdropping on people abroad and at home who it believes are tied to
terrorism, and it reduces the role of a secret intelligence court in
overseeing some operations.
President Bush generously
patted the Democrats on the head for their compliance with what they
were told to do. Here is the head-patting headline on the White House's
website:
The
Leader wasn't entirely pleased, as it took longer for Democrats to
comply with his orders than he wanted, and he thus pointed out -- with
the disapproving tone a teacher uses to scold a mildly delinquent
student -- that the bill "is long overdue." Nonetheless, he singled out the most compliant members for special praise:
I
want to thank the members of my administration who worked hard to get
this legislation passed. I thank the Democratic and Republican
leadership in the Congress for their efforts, particularly House
Majority Leader Hoyer, House Republican Whip Blunt, Senators Bond and
Rockefeller, Congressmen Hoekstra, Reyes and Smith.
And the
President has every right to be pleased. Eric Lichtblau -- who went
through the trouble of exposing the illegal NSA spying program for, as
it turns out, no good reason -- put it this way:
The program
was disclosed in December 2005 by The New York Times. . . . . The vote
came two and a half years after public disclosure of the wiretapping
program set off a fierce national debate over the balance between
protecting the country from another terrorist strike and ensuring civil
liberties. The final outcome in Congress, which opponents of the
surveillance measure had conceded for weeks, seemed almost anticlimactic in contrast.
"Anticlimactic"
is a mild description for a scandal that began with disclosure that the
President of the United States and the telecom industry were committing
felonies for years in how they spied on American citizens, only to end
with a Congress controlled by the "opposition party" legalizing the
surveillance, protecting the lawbreakers, terminating the only
meaningful process for discovering what really happened, and embracing
the premise that the President has the power to order private actors to
break the law as long as, in his sole discretion, he decrees that doing
so is legal.
On the bright side, we can rest assured that -- even though there is no
individual warrant requirement for huge categories of eavesdropping on
our telephone calls and email communications -- they promise not to
abuse that power:
There
is nothing to fear in the bill, said Senator Christopher S. Bond, the
Missouri Republican who was a lead negotiator, "unless you have Al
Qaeda on your speed dial."
Such promises -- that our
magnanimous Government Leaders will only use eavesdropping powers for
the Right Reasons, and therefore we can trust in them and thus don't
need any of this bothersome "oversight" nonsense -- don't really have a
very glorious history in our country. From a July 25, 1969 article in Time:
During
his presidential campaign, Richard Nixon said that he would take full
advantage of the new [eavesdropping] law -- a promise that raised fears
of a massive invasion of privacy. To calm those fears, the
Administration last week issued what amounted to an official statement
on the subject.
In his first news conference since becoming the President's chief legal
officer, Attorney General John N. Mitchell pointedly announced that the
incidence of wiretapping by federal law enforcement agencies had gone
down, not up, during the first six months of Republican rule. Mitchell
refused to disclose any figures, but he indicated that the number was
far lower than most people might think. "Any citizen of this United States who is not involved in some illegal activity," he added, "has nothing to fear whatsoever."
Six
years after Mitchell issued that assurance, a Congress that actually
performed its Constitutional duties of oversight commissioned the
Church Committee to investigate the history of government eavesdropping
in the U.S., and it found "a massive record of intelligence abuses over the years" whereby the
"the Government has collected, and then used improperly, huge amounts
of information about the private lives, political beliefs and
associations of huge numbers of Americans." Still, on a daily basis, I
get emails like this one which I received yesterday:
As for
President Bush, I love the way that liberals like yourself depict this.
It is as if he and the VP are sitting in the oval office with a box of
thin mints and headphones listening to someone have phone sex with
their mistress.
Bush doesn't "listen in" on our phone calls. He doesn't care who you or
I call. The electronic surveillance system focuses on international
calls, specfically to terrorist hotbeds not on your phone calls to your
liberal cronies. To think he cares who you call or even who a convicted
felon calls shows how out of touch you are.
This electronic surveillance is necessary and is part of the plan that keeps us safe.
One
can mock that authoritarian, un-American mentality if one likes (I
trust my Leader with unchecked power because he's Good!), but it's a
perfectly mainstream view. It's the precise mentality that led the
Democratic-led Congress yesterday to pass a bill with broad new
eavesdropping powers, with Kit Bond and Jay Rockefeller playing the
role of John Mitchell.
Yesterday's episode also illustrates why I've been so ambivalent about campaigns such as those to demand that John Yoo lose his tenure.
Although Yoo ought to be far outside of the mainstream of American
political thought, he simply isn't. The Democratic-led Congress
yesterday just passed a bill by a wide margin that institutionalized
Yoo's signature theory -- namely, that when the President orders something, then it is legal
and proper, even if it's against what Congress calls "the law."
Why should we pretend that John Yoo is some sort of grotesque
authoritarian aberration when his defining belief in presidential
omnipotence is, to varying degrees, shared by the leaders of both
parties? Yoo has long been mocked for his belief that the President --
simply by uttering the magical phrase "National Security" -- has the
power to break the law, but Congress, yesterday, just passed a bill
grounded in exactly that premise.
There are many things that one can say about what the Democrats did
yesterday. Claiming that they showed how "strong" they are, or avoided
being depicted by Republicans as "weak," isn't one of them.
* * * * *
The Art of the Possible, a blog of liberals and civil-liberties-minded libertarians, has an interview with Trevor Lyman and Rick Williams,
the libertarians who are coordinating the Strange Bedfellows Money Bomb
to hold accountable those responsible for yesterday's travesty and
similar rule-of-law-destroying measures. The interview can be read here. Our campaign can be joined here or here.
Relatedly, an ideologically diverse coalition has banded together to oppose a "Senate housing bill that would
establish a mandatory fingerprint registry for many workers in the
mortgage and real estate industries." I'm increasingly convinced that
the effort to battle the growing lawlessness of our political class and
the sprawling surveillance state that assaults core Constitutional
liberties will come not from the Democratic Party, but from citizen
coalitions of this sort. Does yesterday's episode allow any doubt about
that?
I'll be on NPR's On Point this morning for an hour, beginning at 10:00 EST, to discuss the Obama campaign. That can be heard here. Digby has a very good analysis of the political foolishness of the strategy of Democrats generally and
the Obama campaign specifically to win elections by repudiating their
own supporters and moving as close as possible to Republicans.
UPDATE: The President will waste no time signing the FISA bill:
Bush readies pen; Relishes signing wiretap bill
President Bush is poised to sign a bill that overhauls the bitterly
disputed rules on secret government eavesdropping and grants immunity
to telecommunications companies that helped the U.S. spy on Americans
in suspected terrorism cases.
The Senate sent the measure to the president on Wednesday and he is to sign it in a Rose Garden ceremony Thursday afternoon.
John Cole makes the always-important point that to say that Democrats "surrendered" on this bill gives them too
much credit in many cases. While some Democrats vote for measures like
this out of standard, craven political fear, many -- perhaps most -- do
so because they simply believe in the National Security and
Surveillance State.
On a more positive note, Howie Klein writes about (and lists) the 12 members of Congress and Congressional candidates who will
receive $1,000 checks each from our Blue America fund for having stood
very firm on the FISA bill. The list begins with Russ Feingold and
Chris Dodd, and includes members of Congress from red states who
nonetheless voted against the bill (Sen. Jon Tester of Montana);
vulnerable freshmen who voted NAY (Rep. Carol Shea-Porter of New
Hampshire); House members who are running for the Senate in tough
states yet also voted NAY (Tom Allen in Maine and Rep. Tom Udall in New
Mexico); and challengers who have been outspoken against telecom
immunity and warrantless eavesdropping (Darcy Burner in Washington, Jim
Hines in Connecticut and Rick Noriega in Texas).
Finally, this afternoon I'm going to interview Jameel Jaffer, the
Director of the ACLU National Security Project, regarding the
constitutional challenge the ACLU intends to bring against the FISA
bill. I will post the podcast later this afternoon when it's available.
It's important to recognize that yesterday's defeat is not the end of
anything. It should only fuel more resolute and resourceful battles in
defense of these core political values.
UPDATE II: The hour-long panel discussion in which I participated earlier today on NPR's On Point, regarding the Obama campaign, can be heard here. The other panelist was The Nation's
Katrina vanden Heuvel, who generally defended Obama's recent conduct
while I . . . did not. Our segment began roughly 8 minutes into the
segment, after Newsweek's Richard Wolffe reported on the happenings on the "Obama bus."
On a separate note, there are some rather moving pictures from this
afternoon's signing ceremony at the White House Rose Garden I wanted to
share, where various Democrats and Republicans gathered to celebrate
the signing of the new FISA law. Here is George Bush shaking Jay Rockefeller's hand while a grinning Dick Cheney, Orrin Hatch, and Joe Lieberman look on. Here are proud members of Congress from both parties gathered behind the President as he signs the bill into law. Here is a close-up that beautifully captures the Joys of Washington Bipartisanship.
Wednesday July 9, 2008 14:11 EDT
Congress votes to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, legalize warrantless eavesdropping
(updated below - Update II)
The Democratic-led Congress this afternoon voted to put an end to the
NSA spying scandal, as the Senate approved a bill -- approved last week
by the House -- to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, terminate all pending
lawsuits against them, and vest whole new warrantless eavesdropping
powers in the President. The vote in favor of the new FISA bill was
69-28. Barack Obama joined every Senate Republican (and every House
Republican other than one) by voting in favor of it, while his
now-vanquished primary rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, voted against it.
John McCain wasn't present for any of the votes, but shared Obama's
support for the bill. The bill will now be sent to an extremely happy
George Bush, who already announced that he enthusiastically supports
it, and he will sign it into law very shortly.
Prior to final approval, the Senate, in the morning, rejected three
separate amendments which would have improved the bill but which, the
White House threatened, would have prompted a veto. With those
amendments defeated, the Senate then passed the same bill passed last
week by the House, which means it is that bill, in unchanged form, that
will be signed into law -- just as the Bush administration demanded.
The first amendment, from Sens. Dodd, Feingold and Leahy, would have
stripped from the bill the provision immunizing the telecoms. That
amendment failed by a vote of 32-66, with all Republicans and 17
Democrats against (the roll call vote is here).
The next amendment was offered by Sen. Arlen Specter, which would have
merely required a court to determine the constitutionality of the NSA
spying program and grant telecom immunity only upon a finding of
constitutionality. Specter's amendment failed, 37-61 (roll call vote is
here).
The third amendment to fail was one sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman,
merely requiring that the Senate wait until the Inspector General
audits of the NSA program are complete before immunizing the telecoms.
The Bingaman amendment failed by a vote of 42-56 (roll call vote here). Both Obama and Clinton voted for all three failed amendments.
The Senators then voted for "cloture" on the underlying FISA bill --
the procedure that allows the Senate to overcome any filibusters -- and
it passed by a vote of 72-26. Obama voted along with all Republicans for cloture.
Hillary Clinton voted with 25 other Democrats against cloture
(strangely, Clinton originally voted AYE on cloture, and then changed
her vote to NAY; I'm trying to find out what explains that).
With cloture approved, the bill itself then proceeded to pass by a vote of 69-28 (roll call vote here),
thereby immunizing telecoms and legalizing warrantless eavesdropping.
Again, while Obama voted with all Republicans to pass the bill, Sen.
Clinton voted against it.
Obama's vote in favor of cloture, in particular, cemented the complete
betrayal of the commitment he made back in October when seeking the
Democratic nomination. Back then, Obama's spokesman -- in response to demands for a clear statement of Obama's views on the spying controversy after he had previously given a vague and noncommittal statement -- issued this emphatic vow:
To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.
But the bill today does include retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.
Nonetheless, Obama voted for cloture on the bill -- the exact
opposition of supporting a filibuster -- and then voted for the bill
itself. A more complete abandonment of an unambiguous campaign promise
is difficult to imagine. I wrote extensively about Obama's support for
the FISA bill, and what it means, earlier today.
With their vote today, the Democratic-led Congress has covered-up years
of deliberate surveillance crimes by the Bush administration and the
telecom industry, and has dramatically advanced a full-scale attack on
the rule of law in this country. As I noted earlier today, Law
Professor and Fourth Amendment expert Jonathan Turley was on MSNBC's
Countdown with Rachel Maddow last night and gave as succinct an
explanation for what Democrats -- not the Bush administration, but
Democrats -- have done today. Anyone with any lingering doubts about
what is taking place today in our country should watch this:
What
is most striking is that when the Congress was controlled by the GOP --
when the Senate was run by Bill Frist and the House by Denny Hastert --
the Bush administration attempted to have a bill passed very similar to
the one that just passed today. But they were unable to do so.
The administration had to wait until Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the
Democrats took over Congress before being able to put a corrupt end to
the scandal that began when, in December of 2005, the New York Times revealed that the President had been breaking the law for years by spying on Americans without the warrants required by law.
Yet again, the Democratic Congress ignored the views of their own
supporters in order to comply with the orders and wishes of the Bush
administration. It is therefore hardly a surprise that, yesterday,
Rasmussen Reports revealed this rather humiliating finding:
Congressional Approval Falls to Single Digits for First Time Ever
The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history. This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category.
The
Congress, with a powerful cast of bipartisan lobbyists and the
establishment media class lined up behind telecom immunity and
warrantless eavesdropping, looked poised to pass this bill back last
December, but a large-scale protest was organized -- largely online --
by huge numbers of American who were opposed to warrantless
eavesdropping and telecom immunity, and that protest disrupted that
plan (the movement borne of opposition to this bill is only beginning
today, not ending, here). Today, Sen. Chris Dodd, the leader of the opposition effort along with Russ Feingold, said this on the Senate floor:
Lastly,
I want to thank the thousands who joined with us in this fight around
the country -- those who took to the blogs, gathered signatures for
online petitions and created a movement behind this issue. Men and
women, young and old, who stood up, spoke out and gave us the strength
to carry on this fight. Not one of them had to be involved, but each
choose to become involved for one reason and one reason alone: Because
they love their country. They remind us that the "silent encroachments
of those in power" Madison spoke of can, in fact, be heard, if only we
listen.
Today, the Democratic-led Senate ignored those
protests, acted to protect the single most flagrant act of Bush
lawbreaking of the last seven years, eviscerated the core Fourth
Amendment prohibition of surveillance without warrants, gave an
extraordinary and extraordinarily corrupt gift to an extremely powerful
corporate lobby, and cemented the proposition that the rule of law does not apply to the Washington Establishment.
* * * * *
I was on the Brian Lehrer Show this morning debating the FISA bill with
former Clinton National Security Advisor Nancy Soderberg (who favors the bill). Because of some technical difficulties, I wasn't on the show until roughly 7:30 in. That debate can be heard here. Tomorrow, at 10:00 a.m. EST, I'll be on NPR's On Point to discuss the Obama campaign and the FISA vote. That can be heard here.
UPDATE: The ACLU announced today that it will challenge this bill in court as soon as it is passed on
the ground that its warrantless eavesdropping provisions violate the
Fourth Amendment:
In advance of the president's signature, the ACLU announced its plan to challenge the new law in court.
"This fight is not over. We intend to challenge this bill as soon as
President Bush signs it into law," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the
ACLU National Security Project. "The bill allows the warrantless and dragnet surveillance of Americans' international telephone and email communications. It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment."
EFF, the other non-profit organization behind the telecom lawsuits, announced the same,
emphasizing the unconstitutionality of the grant of immunity. That
challenge will likely be on the ground that by resolving these pending
lawsuits in favor of the telecoms, Congress has usurped the judicial
function -- one which the Constitution, in Article III, assigns to the
courts, not to Congress or the President ("The judicial Power of the
United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such
inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and
establish").
The effort to target those responsible for this travesty is here.
Those wishing to donate to the campaign (the objectives and strategies of which I detailed here) in advance of the August 8 Money Bomb can do so here.
UPDATE II:
Democrats generally, and especially the vocal minority of
all-justifying Obama supporters, defend behavior such as today's vote
by arguing that it prevents the Republicans from depicting them as
"weak" (see, for instance, this classic in that genre). Here are the headlines which, as usual, Democrats generated today with their full-scale complicity and capitulation:
Will
Democrats ever learn that the reason they are so easily depicted as
"weak" isn't because they don't copy the Republican policies on
national security enough, but rather, because they do so too much,
and thus appear (accurately) to stand for nothing? Of course, many
Democrats vote for these policies because they believe in them, not
because they are "surrendering." Still, terms such as "bowing,"
"surrendering," "capitulating," and "losing" aren't exactly Verbs of
Strength. They're verbs of extreme weakness --- yet, bizarrely,
Democrats believe that if they "bow" and "surrender," then they will
avoid appearing "weak." Somehow, at some point, someone convinced them
that the best way to avoid appearing weak is to be as weak as possible.
Bush & Co never go to jail because the FBI and the CIA have the proof on everyone in government. When ever an Eliot Spitzer kicks up his traces, the FBI puts him out of business. They spy on Americans not terrorists.