With Congress MIA, Courts To Address Bush's Spying Program

The NY Times had an excellent editorial yesterday summing up the folly of Senate Republicans trying to work with the White House to find a legislative solution to the domestic spying issue, when the real problem is that the White House believes it is above their laws and that no one yet knows how extensive this spying has been.

For more than six months, a few senators have been fumbling around in the dark, trying to write laws covering a domestic wiretapping operation that remains a mystery to most of them. Their ideas are far from radical; some just want to bring the White House back under the rule of law by making the spying retroactively legal. But Vice President Dick Cheney, who is in charge of both overseeing the spying and covering it up, has now made it crystal clear that the White House does not intend to let anything happen. It's time for the Senate to stop rolling over and start focusing on uncovering the extent of the spying and enforcing the law.

A good place to start is by compelling the executives of the major telecommunications companies to testify about reports that they have turned over data on the phone calls of millions of Americans without a court order. Those reports were a reminder that this is not a debate about whether the government should spy on terrorists by tapping their phone calls. President Bush wants Americans to believe that critics of the program oppose that, but nobody does. The real issue is that Mr. Bush does not want to bother with legal niceties like getting a warrant or to acknowledge Congress's power by accounting for his actions...

...Mr. Specter — who last week was bemoaning the fact that Mr. Cheney watched him pass by twice at a Senate buffet lunch without mentioning that he had just stabbed him in the back — still thinks it's a good sign that the vice president's office offered to review his legislation and suggest changes. Mr. Cheney and his underlings are the problem, not the solution, and Mr. Specter should realize that by now. Mr. Specter has the votes to subpoena the executives. All he has to do is drop his idea of meeting behind closed doors, and side with the panel's Democrats, who want to have the hearing in full view of the Americans whose rights are being violated.

The full editorial has details on the various proposals the Senate is considering.

Here's some good news to start... much to the White House's chagrins, courts are beginning to look at the program. The U.S. District Court in Detroit will begin hearing a case today brought up by the ACLU. It is arguing against the program on constitutional grounds-

The National Security Agency's domestic spying program faces its first legal challenge in a case that could decide if the White House is allowed to order eavesdropping without a court order.

The case goes to the heart of the larger national debate about whether President Bush has assumed too much power in his declared war on terrorism....

See? The real issues here aren't too hard to understand. Reuters gets it. Of course, the administration's defenders probably get it as well, but it is easier to pretend what concerns their critics is some strawmen debate over fighting terrorism. As the section I bolded in the NY Times editorial above notes, it has never been about that. But six months later, we are still battling through the strawman narrative, no thanks to the cable news network, who enjoy helping to blur those lines. As I said in my post on Saturday, this is an issue of whether we are a nation of laws or a nation of men. And since it's become conventional wisdom that it would be extreme somehow to discuss impeachment (or heck, even censure) at this point, the absolute least we can do is debate the real issues of this scandal which is- as Glenn Greenwald so aptly states in his new book- a President run amok. Of course, if this case ends up going anywhere, I expect many a NY Post editorial whining about how the press or the courts are trying to aid terrorism.

[PS- Glenn Greenwald takes a second look at the Washington Post report about Specter proposing amnesty in the whole spying brouhaha. I take his point that the Post article may have gotten some facts wrong- Specter strongly insists that's the case- but I think Greenwald may still be giving Specter too much benefit of the doubt. Time and time again, Specter has huffed and puffed at the White House and done little to follow up on his threats. Specter is not serious and never has been. Short of the Democrats in the Senate joining Feingold in stepping up to the plate here, this issue is likely to be buried along with other administration misdeeds.]