If The Constitution Falls In The Woods And No One Is Around To Hear It...

With last month's release of a 350+ page report by Democrats members of the House Judiciary Committee entitled 'The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War, and Illegal Domestic Surveillance' roundly ignored by the media, it is increasingly obvious that we as a nation will never have a much-needed national debate on the constitutional implications of what the President has done in the name of the 'war on terror'.

At this point, I am not even sure why I bother to discuss it here, but I think it's important to document this, so when my grandchildren ask me about this point in American history, I can say "hey I gave a shit". Anyway, here's where we stand...

The Bush administration has "asked a federal judge to delay enforcing her order for a halt to the government's warrantless communications surveillance program." The Justice Department stated the recent decision in a federal court ruling warrantless wiretapping unconstitutional places 'the gravest of harms to the government and to the American public'.

Why the government cannot simply get the required warrants for their surveillance (as required by law, with retroactive windows available for emergencies) and/or how ignoring said law improves the quality of intercepted communications is- surprise- not something that the Justice Department addressed.

Why, it's almost as if the program was based less on security concerns and more on a larger agenda of unlimited executive power!

The Village Voice's Nat Hentoff explored the ruling in his most recent 'Liberty Beat' column-

...Not only did the president violate a statute but he also, the judge added, "blatantly disregarded the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights" (very much including the Fourth Amendment)...

...What makes this regeneration of the powers of Constitution all the more important, even if her ruling is overruled by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on its inevitable way to the Supreme Court, is that Judge Taylor represents the awakening, at last, of more of the judiciary to its crucial responsibility to respect—and act—on the separation of powers.

In June, the Supreme Court itself unambiguously told the president he had acted outside the law in establishing the sham military commissions at Guantánamo—and has violated the Geneva Conventions and our own 1996 War Crimes Act in our abusive and, I would add, sometimes fatal, treatment of suspected terrorist prisoners wherever we hold them...

That landmark Supreme Court case I wrote about in July; it disproves the spin by the Bush defenders that Judge Taylor's ruling was out of the ordinary. Numerous judges have been knocking down the President's theories on executive authority.

Hentoff also wrote a good piece last month on signing statements: Bush's Invisible Ink

I am not sure what can be done to get the media and/or the public at large to care about these stories. Perhaps if we tell everyone that the Bush/Cheney 'unitary executive' theory killed Jon Benet, the cable news channels will come to investigate. In the meantime, the only realistic hope is for a Democratic takeover of the House, placing people who believe in accountability, and checks and balances, back into positions where they can do something about it.