George the Fourth

When the administration’s widespread, illegal wiretapping program was exposed, George Bush, Jr. admitted it on tv. He promised to continue it. There was no debate about whether he flaunted the F.I.S.A. provisions; he simply took the position that as President, he can violate the law.

Congress, of course, is controlled by Republicans; so Congress caved in. Rather than dispute George Bush, Jr.’s claim of privileged status, Congress proposed changes in the law which would essentially make executive requests for warrants voluntary. Republicans and Democrats submitted questions about the intercept operation to Bush’s Department of Justice, and the Department of Justice responded, in part, with this:

Just as one President may not, through signing legislation, eliminate the Executive Branch's inherent constitutional powers, Congress may not renounce inherent presidential authority. The Constitution grants the President the inherent power to protect the nation from foreign attack, and Congress may not impede the President's ability to perform his constitutional duty.*

The executive branch’s opinions are certainly relevant; but theoretically, they don’t have the last say. Theoretically, the constitutionality of laws is determined by the Supreme Court. Since no case turning on this issue has yet reached the Court, the validity of Bush’s defense cannot be assumed merely because he wishes it. As the facts currently stand, he is a confessed felon. He is in favor of the new guidelines and committed to ignoring them. When he signed the Patriot Act reauthorization earlier this month, he added a statement that he was not required to comply with the Act.

I simply do not believe that James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and the rest of our founders contemplated extraordinary war-time powers for an executive who could then start wars purely as a device to gain more control. I don’t think they were that stupid. And as I recall, they were generally opposed to monarchy.

* See http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/ for 3/25/2006 for links to the Justice Department pdfs and the Boston Globe report on Bush’s signing statement. The article is titled "Administration tells Congress (again) — We won't abide by your 'laws'"
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Honest Abe

Obeying Whenever Possible

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor spoke at Georgetown University on March 9, 2006, about Republican proposals for “judicial reform.” The suggestions include extensive impeachment of judges, limitations on jurisdiction, and even the elimination of some courts through budget cuts. Such schemes undermine the independence of judges, she said, and pose a direct threat to the Constitutional freedoms of all Americans. The experiences of developing nations and former Soviet states have shown that judicial reforms prompted by blatantly partisan politics allow tyranny to arise.

When the administration’s broad domestic spying operation was belatedly exposed, polls indicated overwhelming public opposition. Even Republicans expressed concerned and talked about an investigation. But investigating is exactly what they didn’t do. Instead, they adopted new guidelines for eavesdropping, demanding executive requests for warrants only “whenever possible.”


President Eisenhower once wrote that the Constitution means what the Supreme Court justices say it means. But in a democracy, the federal government is also obligated to accept those responsibilities “which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken.” With those thoughts in mind, ask yourself what you believe the Fourth Amendment means:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Given the secrecy surrounding the administration’s activities, it may be years before a legal challenge to the guidelines makes its way to the Supreme Court. If that happens, the ideological disposition of the justices will be a critical factor.

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Sedition!

Laura Berg (left) is a Veterans Administration nurse in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She’s been a V.A. nurse for fifteen years, specializing in mental health emergencies of veterans. More than a decade ago, she worked with veterans of the Persian Gulf invasion; and she deals today with soldiers returning from Iraq.

She found that veterans from other wars were also affected by the invasion of 2003. Even some World War II veterans experienced increased aggressiveness, nightmares, or anxiety. Six months ago, like millions of other Americans, she watched the massive failure of federal response unfold in the wake of Katrina. So she sat down at home to write a letter to a local paper, The Alibi, criticizing the Bush administration for its handling of Iraq and Katrina. She called on citizens to “act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.”

The V.A. reported her letter to the F.B.I. Her computer at work was seized in case she had used it to write her letter, which would have been a misuse of government property. The computer was found innocent and was returned, but Berg learned that she was under investigation for sedition.

Sedition is a thought-crime, the advocacy of the violent overthrow of government. The Sedition Act of 1798 further outlawed “false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States” along with writing that defamed the government or brought it into disrepute. Section 3 of the 1917 Espionage Act prohibited “any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States.”

The Sedition Act of 1798 expired in 1801; the 1917 provision was repealed in 1921. In retrospect, it seems incredible that such manifestly un-Constitutional laws were ever enacted; but it is frightening to realize that the notion of sedition is still alive. Laura Berg did not bring the Bush team into disrepute; they did that themselves. Was her letter disloyal? No, quite the opposite. Can anyone at the Justice Department distinguish between “forcefully” and “forcibly”? Let us hope. I would hate to think that she is under investigation simply to intimidate her — and others — into silence.

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Civil War in Iraq? Mission Accomplished!

William F. Buckley, Jr., editor at large for the far-right National Review, has declared defeat. “One can’t doubt,” he wrote on 2/24/2006, “that the American objective in Iraq has failed.” According to Buckley, the Bush administration operated on the assumptions that Iraqis would transcend their differences, cooperate to end insurgent violence, and pursue a society with religious freedom. But that hasn’t happened. And Mr. Bush, as “military leaders” are sometimes compelled to do, must “acknowledge a tactical setback, but…insist on the survival of strategic policies…And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.”

Despite the troubles in Iraq, the administration:

can defend itself historically, standing by the inherent reasonableness of the postulates. After all, they govern our policies in Latin America, in Africa, and in much of Asia…

In Buckley’s estimation, it would be better for Americans to concede defeat in Iraq than to abandon the principles which impelled us. “The killer insurgents are not entitled to blow up the shrine of American idealism.”

These claims, coming from a former C.I.A. operative who worked to undermine the Mexican government in the early 1950s, have no credibility.

By Buckley’s own account, he spent a year working under Everette Howard Hunt, Jr., one of the worst of the worst. Hunt is most famous for his Watergate caper with fellow C.I.A. officer James McCord against Richard Nixon, but Hunt has a lot of other dubious achievements. He was propaganda officer for the 1954 coup in Guatemala and the 1961 invasion of Cuba. In the mid-1980s, he sued Spotlight magazine over an article about his alleged involvement in some unpleasantness in Dallas, Texas — and lost. I’m not trying to convict Buckley by association. I’m merely noting that whatever he learned from Everette Howard Hunt, Jr. couldn’t be good.

And that makes me question Buckley’s concern for his metaphorical shrine to American idealism. What ideals does he have in mind? Toppling legitimate foreign leaders to replace them with thugs? Rigging elections? Building a better plutocracy? Raising mercenary armies and paying them with drug money? In the name of freedom and democracy, the U.S. has worked tirelessly against freedom and democracy in Latin America and elsewhere. We always have high-sounding excuses for supporting tyrants and butchers.

Buckley thinks we must preserve the “strategic policies” behind our invasion of Iraq. He doesn’t say what those policies might be, perhaps because they are insufficiently uplifting. The terrible reality is that we have no exit strategy for Iraq because we don’t plan on leaving. (Why else are we building permanent bases there?) If the United States converted to renewable energy sources tomorrow, the neo-cons would still press for occupation of Iraq, with an eye on Iran. Modern armies run on oil, and the neo-cons anticipate a lot of wars in the future. They want their hands on the oil spigot to thwart future adversaries — like Europe and China.


When we were defeated in Vietnam, some commentators lamented that our noble cause had gone tragically awry. But it was never a noble cause; it was a war built on lies from the very beginning — just as the invasion of Iraq was the bastard child of government deceit. The idea that civil war in Iraq represents a failure of U.S. policy presumes that the U.S. wants stability. Is there any reason to believe that?

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