Progressive World Review

The Senate is set to vote next week on, and most likely pass, an update to FISA that shreds the fourth amendment and is a slap in the face to the rule of law.  President Bush has been wantonly breaking the law by spying on American citizens without warrants or any oversight whatsoever since 9/11 at least.  And once this became public knowledge, instead of immediately commencing impeachment proceedings, Congress’ Constitutional duty, they’re poised to make Bush’s blatantly un-American activities legal.

Sold to voters as a “compromise,” Democrats instead have given in completely to Bush and the Republican’s demands.  And as if this wasn’t bad enough, Barack Obama, the candidate for “change,” has given his approval to this travesty.  This is from a statement posted on his website,

This was not an easy call for me. I know that the FISA bill that passed the House is far from perfect. I wouldn’t have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush’s abuse of executive power. It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush Administration’s program of warrantless wiretapping.
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But I also believe that the compromise bill is far better than the Protect America Act that I voted against last year.

But on closer inspection, Obama’s reasons for supporting this bill don’t hold up.  First he claims that he’ll work to eliminate the provisions granting immunity to the telecoms, knowing full well it won’t succeed,

That’s why I support striking Title II from the bill, and will work with Chris Dodd, Jeff Bingaman and others in an effort to remove this provision in the Senate.

But is there any reason to trust his sincerity on this?  This is one of the two glaring faults with this bill, why support a bill with this kind of problem with it as if it’s a mere afterthought?  Granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms goes against everything this country stands for.  If they did nothing wrong then let them plead their case in a court of law but the reality is; they did break the law, they know it as do their defenders.  The “conventional wisdom” is that if the president asks for your cooperation, you give it, and the FISA extension essentially says the same thing, if the telecoms can demonstrate that they acted at the president’s request and were assured that the requests were legal then they’re off the hook.  But at the risk of repeating myself, this is precisely what our system of government was set up to prevent.  Immunity from the law because the president says it’s okay is virtually the same as the president writing his own laws, completely bypassing the checks and balances that are the hallmark of our government.  We all learned about checks and balances in school, how they exist to prevent the tyranny the Founding Fathers were all to well aware of, why then are we so eager to toss them aside.  The fact is, it’s ridiculous for Obama to support a bill that includes provisions that are clearly in contradiction with the founding principles of this country.  If that’s not a reason to reject a bill, exactly what is?

The other “compromise” that Obama cites as a reason to accept this legislation is that it is specifically stated that FISA will now be the exclusive means for the president to conduct warrantless spying.  This is absurd on two counts.  First, FISA already contained this exclusivity clause.  This is from a recent federal court ruling regarding FISA,

Of special relevance to the court’s present inquiry, Congress included in the FISA bill a declaration that the FISA regime, together with the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 codified at chapter 119 of Title 18 of the United States Code, 18 USC §§ 2510-22 (”Title III”), were to be the “exclusive means” by which domestic electronic surveillance for national security purposes could be conducted. (emphasis added)

To cite something we already possess as a reason to accept a law that by his own admission “is far from perfect,” and that he “wouldn’t have drafted” himself represents either the height of ignorance or the depths of dishonesty, either way, hardly qualifies him as a defender of the Constitution.

The problem obviously goes far deeper than the lack of integrity of one candidate.  Indeed, even with Obama’s reversal over FISA he still is far and away the better choice for president over McCain.  No, the problem began with a president that has nothing but contempt for the rule of law, helped along by a rubber stamp Republican Party more concerned with power and loyalty to each other than they are to the Constitution.  And finally, an “opposition” party that hasn’t truly opposed anything that Bush has desired.

This is the State of the Union on the day we celebrate its birth, habeas corpus already a distant memory, torture, an accepted part of our culture, the rule of law all but abandoned and the fourth amendment to the Constitution declared null and void.

–Paul Wilden

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