Wire Tapping and a Consistency Question
There's an old story you may have heard before. Its popularity is because of the point it makes. Here it is in a shortened way.
An architect is called into a relatively new high rise office building. He's called in because the glass in some of the upper floor windows of the building he designed are cracking. The architect looks at the windows and immediately takes the elevator to the basement floors of the building. He goes room to room inspecting the walls of the foundation. The architect discovers that a maintenance man is taking bricks out of the foundation a few at a time and taking those bricks home to build a barbecue grill. The loss of the bricks has weakened the foundation and is causing the cracks in the windows. Losing more bricks might have eventually caused the collapse of the building.
The foundation our country is built on is that we are a nation of laws and not of people. Our founders specifically wrote our Constitution to ensure that the Executive Branch would not have the powers of a king. I personally see this new surveillance law that was just passed by the Senate and is now before the House as taking bricks from the foundation. Taking one may not cause much damage, but taking one leads to taking more and eventually the foundation may no longer support the building.
For those of you who don't see anything wrong with George W. Bush having the powers this bill gives him, let me ask you this. Are you in favor of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama having this kind of power?
If the answer is no, then this bill should not pass.
Here is a link to a news article on this issue.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/us/13fisa.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
Respectful Disagreement On Electronic Surveillance
This Senate vote can be viewed as a triumph against polarized politics.
Partisans originally framed this issue in terms of a corrupt and maybe evil administration exceeding its authority. One view is that the uproar over so-called illegal wire-tapping was an attempt, for political gain, to embarrass and discredit the administration. Now, in spite of the early and prolonged partisan dissent, after the issue has been debated in the light of day, the legislative branch has basically validated the administration’s policies.
The Senate vote was 68-29, a landslide. While Harry Reid lamented his inability to keep his party together, the moderate middle joined together to create a bipartisan agreement. Congratulations to those who chose the logic of a moderate nonpartisan path and moved away from polarized politics.
By the way, 97 Senators voted on this bill. Three didn’t. Senators Clinton and Obama were not able to get to work for this vote. Apparently, they were promoting themselves for another job on company time.
The question is posed whether I would want Obama or Clinton to have these powers as president. My answer is “You bet I do”. I expect my Commander-In-Chief to bust his/her butt to protect me and my family. Why should I tie their hands in that task?
Actually, here are some questions I would like to ask Senators Obama and Clinton. On January 20, 2009, as Commander-In-Chief, will you use all of the legal authority and tools you possess to protect me and my family? What other legal authority and tools do you need to protect my family? If you had limited money, and you had to make one choice between counter-terrorism, universal health care, poverty, entitlements, foreclosures, or any of your other campaign promises, which one would you choose to do?
Or maybe I don’t have to ask those questions. They may show up in debates in September and October.
Just my opinion.
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Jim,
Thanks again for commenting.
I hope I wasn't unclear. I'm not opposed to us running wiretaps on our enemies so long as they are done within the law and the constitutional requirement against unreasonable search and seizure is met.
The existing FISA law goes so far as to allow a search to be begun without a warrant so long as the warrant is asked for after the fact. (You may remember the old saying that forgiveness is easier to obtain than permission.)
The difficulty I have with this matter is that this President wants a law passed that lets him wiretap whenever he wants, whoever he wants, whereever he wants without any oversight whatsoever. And, as is typical for him, he justifies it with the most brazen of fear mongering language that (according to the information I have) does not reflect the reality of the situation.
As I wrote before, we are a nation of laws, not of men (humans, if you prefer). Absolute power corrupts absolutely. When you give someone the authority to act without oversight, then you invite abuse of that authority. I therefore want no one (not Bush, Clinton, McCain, Huckabee, Obama or whoever may follow them) to have that kind of unrestrained authority. Neither did our Founders. Sooner or later, like it or not, that kind of authority will eventually be used not to listen to potential terrorists, but to political adversaries labeled as "subversives". When that happens, our Republic collapses from within. Wasn't it Benjamin Franklin who wrote that those who would trade liberty for security will have neither?
It is the duty of the Congress to resist this power grab. Unfortunately, the Senate under the threat of being called "soft on terror" knuckled under. This is why I continue to have difficulties with both Democrats and Republicans. Hopefully, the House will show more backbone.
I like your questions. In fact, President Eisenhower's granddaughter advocated asking exactly those kinds of questions at the Bipartisan Panel on the OU campus last month.
Keep that commentary coming.
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Larry, it is interesting contrasting viewpoints we have. Where you see “the most brazen of fear mongering language”, I see an attempt to explain the need for an important program.
I happened to flip to C-SPAN yesterday afternoon, Thursday, Feb 14. It was showing Senate proceedings. Mitch McConnell was talking about how it was irresponsible for the House to delay action on the FISA Bill (or is it called something else?). After all, he said, the Senate had just passed a version 68-29, and he had proof that the House would pass that version if it were only brought to a vote. I guess Blue Dogs – moderate Democrats, I suppose, had supported the Senate version.
With a backdrop of the current bill expiring on Saturday, the problem, according to McConnell, was that the House leadership refused to bring the bill to a vote.
What McConnell said made sense to me.
Then Harry Reid talked about how George Bush was creating a false crisis, and the bill really didn’t need to be passed. In addition, all of the Republicans were in lockstep with the Bush Administration. I thought what a crock, blaming George Bush again. No wonder congress has a 22% approval rating.
Dick Durbin got involved, as did John Conyer. There was much back and forth, with McConnell and Conyer talking about the recent Senate vote and the irresponsibility of House leadership and Reid and Durbin talking about a false crisis and the need for more conferences. My reaction was don’t these guys have something better to do? After all, they already voted.
Then Jay Rockefeller stood up. Rockefeller is a Democrat who was a co-sponsor of the Senate bill. Rockefeller told Reid that he did not get any direction from the administration or the Republicans. He said he sponsored the bill because he thought it was the right thing to do and it needed to be done. I turned the TV off then. Case closed.
So what was that about? Those are smart and knowledgeable people, but they clearly represented competing interests. Or, why were the Democrats acting so weird?
As I understand it, the bone of contention was immunity for telecommunications companies involved in the program. Here comes my opinion. I hear that the ACLU has filed about 40 lawsuits against the telecommunications companies, and passage of this law would wipe out these lawsuits. So, it follows that the House leadership sat on this bill to protect the interests of the ACLU, and Reid and Durbin were defending Pelosi. That explains my impression of weird behavior by Reid and Durbin.
Just my opinion.
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Jim,
See what Richard Clarke, the former head of Counter-Terrorism for both Bush and the Clinton Administration has to say about this.
"Let me be clear: Our ability to track and monitor terrorists overseas would not cease should the Protect America Act expire. If this were true, the president would not threaten to terminate any temporary extension with his veto pen. All surveillance currently occurring would continue even after legislative provisions lapsed because authorizations issued under the act are in effect up to a full year."
I'll post his entire editorial on the Blog. He makes his case very well.
You're right. The main issue is the protection of the telecom companies who failed in their responsibility to their customers (people like you and I) and allowed wiretapping without warrants. By the way, the assertion elsewhere is that the only reason some of the telecoms cut off the wiretapping is that the government stopped paying them for the service, not because it was illegal.
Keep them cards and letters coming. I appreciate your expressing your point of view.
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Let’s review the bidding here. Last Thursday afternoon, I saw the Senate on C-SPAN. The Senate had passed a bill 68-29 and was discussing the House decision not to bring the bill for a vote. Apparently, if the vote had been taken, it would have passed. Deal done. Move on to the next item of business. Democracy in action, right? Wrong.
My impression was that Harry Reid and Dick Durbin were defending House leadership in their inaction. I thought that immunity for the telecom companies was the bone of contention, and I suggested that House leadership was acting on behalf of left-wing partisans in their lawsuits against the telecom companies.
In my view, the issue was, or could have been, settled. The pros and cons of the issue, Richard Clarke’s opinion, whether George Bush was to blame, or whether there was fear-mongering or not is irrelevant. My thought was that the Senate had approved the bill overwhelmingly, so why are they still wasting time talking about it? No wonder the approval rating of congress is at 22%, I thought.
I am unimpressed with the opinion of partisans who have dogs in the hunt, like Richard Clarke. If his article had been more objective, and if he had discussed the immunity lawsuit issue, his opinion would be of some value to me.
I would welcome any objective clarification of why Democratic Senate leadership continued on this subject after a decisive vote was completed. I also would welcome any objective analysis on the immunity and lawsuits issue. I do not welcome more references to unobjective partisan articles.
Larry, we can disagree on whether the telecom companies failed in their responsibilities and the effect of payments, or non-payments, to the telecom companies.
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Humm... interesting,
Nice info on wire tapping
Thanks for writing about it
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