Checks and Balances- They're All The Rage Now

While the political battles won't be over for several more weeks, President Bush didn't exactly have the week he hoped for. First, the President proudly (?!) confirmed the existence of his secret torture prisons and hoped for Democratic opposition to his planned Gitmo kangaroo court to smear them, but instead found the most vocal opposition came from highly-respected Republican senators. His Iraq speeches, and continued attempts to conflate that war with the 'war on terror', fell on the deaf ears of a populace immune to his rhetoric. The confirmation of his recess-appointed U.N. ambassador John Bolton is in limbo- or worse- after a key Republican on the panel expressed concern. Democrats succeeded in reopening a CIA unit devoted to the capture of Osama bin Laden, reminding Americans that the terrorist leader remains free. And finally, his attempts to proudly (?!) use his warrantless wiretapping program to cast another political battle appears in doubt, as the program suffered two defeats- one in a Senate committee debate, and the second in court.

First up, bad news for the White House/good news for democracy in the Senate-

President Bush's support proved insufficient to push a bill authorizing his warrantless wiretapping program through the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday...

...The need for Congress to give legal status to the program gained a sense of urgency last month when a federal judge in Detroit ruled that it violated rights to free speech and privacy as well as constitutional separation of powers...

...Specter's bill was negotiated with the administration. It would submit the program to a special court for a one-time constitutional review, expand the time for emergency warrants from three to seven days and require the attorney general to inform Congress's intelligence committees on the program's activities every six months...

...One such [opposing] measure, backed by a group of moderate Senate Republicans, poses the biggest threat to Specter's bill because it would impose tighter restrictions on the administration's power to wiretap. The House, too, was considering a measure that would impose tougher checks on the president's power.

Just to recap for those new to Sen. Specter's game, his bill (responding with faux-concern to a program known to have targeted innocent Americans with no proveable success), would actually solidify the White House's claim to unlimited power on the wiretap issue by having a court give a one-time permanent rubberstamp to the program, a move not mandatory as the President would have the option of submitting the program for review, also expand the time required before getting a warrant (the ones the President refused to get anyway, starting this whole thing), would grant a retroactive amnesty for all violations of wiretapping law, and would make it more difficult for courts and Congress to challenge future Presidents on the issue.

Sen. Feingold has the money quote on this whole farce: "The president has basically said: 'I'll agree to let a court decide if I'm breaking the law if you pass a law first that says I'm not breaking the law.' That won't help re-establish a healthy respect for separation of powers. It will only make matters worse."

The Village Voice's Nat Hentoff has an excellent column this week on Specter's sham:
Arlen Specter's Sellout-
Senate Judiciary Committee chair intent on rescuing Bush from felony charges

The second defeat for the program this week came from yet another court smackdown-

A Portland-based federal judge [U.S. District Judge Garr M. King] on Thursday refused to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the Terrorist Surveillance Program -- just as President Bush was urging Congress to authorize it...

...King ruled that the NSA program is hardly secret anymore, and the Oregon charity can attempt to prove that some of its private conversations were picked up by the eavesdropping program.

"The existence of the surveillance program is not a secret, the subjects of the program are not a secret and the general method of the program -- including that it is warrantless -- is not a secret," King wrote. "Where plaintiffs know whether their communications have been intercepted, no harm to national security would occur if plaintiffs are able to prove the general point that they were subject to surveillance."...

This is all encouraging news.

I end by quoting a commentary piece from the UK's Guardian newspaper on the issue of defending liberties in a post-9/11 political environment: "At the same time as insisting that they are defending Western freedom, the [neocons] declare war on it. They urge us to exchange liberty for security while implying that to do so somehow increases the state's powers to fight terrorism... Libertarians are just as interested as he is in hunting down terrorists, but they believe that it should be done within the law as it stands, because to do otherwise is to attack the very values that we are defending... Freedom is the thing which patrols and constrains government and that is why it is not amenable to compromise and will not suffer such notions as 'preventive interrogation'."