Skip to main content

Pavlovian Democrats roll over to Master Bush ... again

They've done it before, remember? And here. I think this abomination by the Democrats reinforces my own answer to my question here.

Glenn Greenwald

Saturday August 4, 2007 11:39 EST

Democrats' responsibility for Bush radicalism

    It is staggering, and truly disgusting, that even in August, 2007 -- almost six years removed from the 9/11 attacks and with the Bush presidency cemented as one of the weakest and most despised in American history -- that George W. Bush can "demand" that the Congress jump and re-write legislation at his will, vesting in him still greater surveillance power, by warning them, based solely on his say-so, that if they fail to comply with his demands, the next Terrorist attack will be their fault. And they jump and scamper and comply (Meteor Blades has the list of the 16 Senate Democrats voting in favor; the House will soon follow).

    I just finished a discussion panel with ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero which was originally planned to examine his new (superb) book about the work his organization has done for years in battling the endless expansion of executive power and presidential lawbreaking. But the only issue anyone in the room really wanted to discuss -- including us -- was the outrage unfolding on Capitol Hill. And the anger was almost universally directed where it belongs: on Congressional Democrats, who increasingly bear more and more responsibility for the assaults on our constitutional liberties and unparalleled abuses of government power -- many (probably most) of which, it should always be emphasized, remain concealed rather than disclosed.

    Examine virtually every Bush scandal and it increasingly bears the mark not merely of Democratic capitulation, but Democratic participation.>

Let that sink in

    In August of 2006, the Supreme Court finally asserted the first real limit on Bush's radical executive power theories in Hamdan, only for Congress, months later, to completely eviscerate those minimal limits -- and then go far beyond -- by enacting the grotesque Military Commissions Act with the support of substantial numbers of Democrats.

What did we elect them for

    What began as a covert and illegal Bush interrogation and detention program became the officially sanctioned, bipartisan policy of the United States.

Gawd, I could hi-light everything? Please read it all

    Grave dangers are posed to our basic constitutional safeguards by the replacement of Sandra Day O'Connor with Sam Alito, whose elevation to the Supreme Court Congressional Democrats chose to permit. Vast abuses and criminality in surveillance remain undisclosed, uninvestigated and unimpeded because Congressional Democrats have stood meekly by while the administration refuses to disclose what it has been doing in how it spies on us. And we remain in Iraq, in direct defiance of the will of the vast majority of the country, because the Democratic Beltway establishment lacks both the courage and the desire to compel an end to that war.

    And now Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, with revealing symbolism, cancel their scheduled appearances this morning at Yearly Kos because George Bush ordered them to remain in Washington in order to re-write and expand FISA -- a law which he has repeatedly refused to allow to be revised for years and which he has openly and proudly violated. Congressional Democrats know virtually nothing about how the Bush administration has been eavesdropping on our conversations because the administration refused to tell them and they passively accepted this state of affairs.

    The intense rush to amend this legislation means that most of them have no idea what they are actually enacting -- even less of an idea than they typically have. But what they know is that George Bush and Fox News and the Beltway establishment have told them that they would be irresponsible and weak and unserious if they failed to comply with George Bush's instructions, and hence, they comply. In the American political landscape, there have been profound changes in public opinion since September of 2001. But in the Beltway, among our political and media establishment, virtually nothing has changed.

    I don't have time this morning to dissect the various excesses and dangers of the new FISA amendments, though Marty Lederman and Steve Benen both do a typically thorough job in that regard. Suffice to say, craven fear, as usual, is the author of this debacle.

    There are many mythologies about what are the defining beliefs and motivations of bloggers and their readers and the attendees at Yearly Kos. One of the principal myths is that it is all driven by a familiar and easily defined ideological agenda and/or a partisan attachment to the Democratic Party. That is all false.

    The common, defining political principle here -- what resonates far more powerfully than any other idea -- is a fervent and passionate belief in our country's constitutional framework, the core liberties it secures, and the checks and balances it offers as a safeguard against tyrannical power. Those who fail to defend that framework, or worse, those who are passively or actively complicit in its further erosion, are all equally culpable. With each day that passes, the radicalism and extremism originally spawned in secret by the Bush presidency becomes less and less his fault and more and more the fault of those who -- having discovered what they have been doing and having been given the power to stop it -- instead acquiesce to it and, worse, enable and endorse it.

    -- Glenn Greenwald

Marty Lederman's analysis of the original bill

Jack Balkin's theory as to Master Bush's distaste for the original bill

Mary (the law school prof I've linked to before) gets to the point about Master Bush's need for everything he wants

    Sec 1802 of FISA already allows the AG to authorize warrantless wiretaps of foreign power to foreign power communications, but (and herein lies the rub and some of what I keep re-mentioning on self-interest being at the heart of part of the revolt and hospital scene) under that provision, the AG is required to certify under oath that they are not also scooping up US persons communications.

    So therein lies the rub.

    Now, here's a kicker - is that rub purely a rub - which could be by legislative changes, or is it merely the legislative recognition of the Constitutional limitation against general warrants?

    Is McConnell asking Congress to attempt to legislatively violate the fourth amendment? I do no buy for a minute that if they were tracking truly foreign to foreign call, even through a US switching station, that FISA or a FISA court would interfere with that. I think what they are doing almost has to be involving what 1802 expressly disallows: using the foreign to foreign exception to sneak in or otherwise include all kinds of US transmissions.

    The program was set for 90 day reviews. That means this came up at the first review - probably in March with a possible carryover to April. Why is it an issue now? Well, I'm guessing they hoped that the second rotation might get them a judge with a different opinion on what they were doing, but they got shot down again, and that secondarily this was all pretty much planned, like the MCA which somehow, suddenly had to pass before everyone went back to be elected and which all Dem leadership - including Obama and Clinton - absolutely failed to make any effort to block whatsoever.

    They schedule the abominations for emergency votes and the Dems cave and cave. You have a handful like Feingold and Whitehouse and Leahy and the rest are distinguishable from Boehner largely by their lesser tan.

Video report from PBS's Now on the Spying on Americans Program as it relates to ATT's involvement

Every time a bell rings, a Congressional Democrat rolls over and drools