http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10561966/
Spying, the Constitution — and the ‘I-word’
2006 will offer up Nixon-era nastiness and a chorus of calls to
impeach Bush
By Howard Fineman
MSNBC contributor
Updated: 4:01 p.m. ET Dec. 21, 2005
WASHINGTON - In the first weeks and months after 9/11, I am told by a
very good source, there was a lot of wishing out loud in the White
House Situation Room about expanding the National Security Agency’s
ability to instantly monitor phone calls and e-mails between American
callers and possible terror suspects abroad. “We talked a lot about
how useful that would be,” said this source, who was “in the room” in
the critical period after the attacks.
Well, as the world now knows, the NSA — at the prompting of Vice
President Cheney and on official (secret) orders from President Bush —
was doing just that. And yet, as I understand it, many of the people
in the White House’s own Situation Room — including leaders of the
national security adviser’s top staff and officials of the FBI — had
no idea that it was happening.
As best I can tell — and this really isn’t my beat — the only people
who knew about the NSA’s new (and now so controversial) warrant-less
eavesdropping program early on were Bush, Cheney, NSA chief Michael
Hayden, his top deputies, top leaders of the CIA, and lawyers at the
Justice Department and the White House counsel’s office hurriedly
called in to sprinkle holy water on it.
Which presents the disturbing image of the White House as a series of
nesting dolls, with Cheney-Bush at the tiny secret center, sifting
information that most of the rest of the people around them didn’t
even know existed. And that image, in turn, will dominate and define
the year 2006 — and, I predict, make it the angriest, most divisive
season of political theater since the days of Richard Nixon.
We are entering a dark time in which the central argument advanced by
each party is going to involve accusing the other party of committing
what amounts to treason. Democrats will accuse the Bush administration
of destroying the Constitution; Republicans will accuse the Dems of
destroying our security.
Some thoughts on where all of this is headed:
# The president says that his highest duty is to protect the American
people and our homeland. And it is true that, as commander-in-chief,
he has sweeping powers to, as his oath says, “faithfully execute the
office” of president. But the entity he swore to “preserve, protect
and defend” isn’t the homeland per se — but the Constitution itself.
# The Patriot Act will be extended, but it’s just the beginning, not
the end, of the never-ending argument between the Bill of Rights and
national security. The act primarily covers the activities of the FBI;
the sheer volume of intelligence-gathering across the government has
yet to become apparent, and voters will blanch when they see it all
laid before them. The department most likely to get in trouble on
this: the Pentagon, which doesn’t have a tradition of limiting
inquiries, and which, in the name of protecting domestic military
installations, will want to look at everyone.
# If you thought the Samuel Alito hearings were going to be
contentious, wait till you see them now. Sen. Arlen Specter, the
prickly but brilliant chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has
said that the issue of warrant-less spying by the NSA — and the larger
question of the reach of the president’s wartime powers — is now fair
game for the Alito hearings. Alito is going to try to beg off but
won’t be allowed to. And members who might have been afraid to vote
against Alito on the abortion issue might now have another,
politically less risky, reason to do so.
# Arguably the most interesting — and influential — Republicans in the
Senate right now are the libertarians. They’re suspicious of the
Patriot Act and, I am guessing, pivotal in any discussion of the NSA
and others' spy efforts. Most are Westerners (Craig, Hagel, Murkowski)
and the other is Sen. John Sununu. He is from New Hampshire, which, as
anyone who has spent time there understands, is the Wild West of the
East Coast. All you have to do is look at its license plate slogan:
“Live Free or Die.” It’ll be interesting to see how other nominal
small-government conservatives — Sen. George Allen of Virginia comes
to mind — handle the issue.
# For months now, I have been getting e-mails demanding that my
various employers (Newsweek, NBC News and MSNBC.com) include in their
poll questionnaires the issue of whether Bush should be impeached.
They used to demand this on the strength of the WMD issue, on the
theory that the president had “lied us into war.” Now the Bush foes
will base their case on his having signed off on the NSA’s
warrant-less wiretaps. He and Cheney will argue his inherent powers
and will cite Supreme Court cases and the resolution that authorized
him to make war on the Taliban and al-Qaida. They will respond by
calling him Nixon 2.0 and have already hauled forth no less an
authority than John Dean to testify to the president’s dictatorial
perfidy. The “I-word” is out there, and, I predict, you are going to
hear more of it next year — much more.
© 2005 MSNBC.com
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Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Hello, theocracy with a fundamentalist US Supreme
Court who will ensure church and state are joined
at the hip like clergy and altar boys.
America 1776-Jan 2001 RIP
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul
of the people. On some great and glorious day the
plain folks of the land will reach their heart's
desire at last and the White House will be adorned
by a downright moron." --- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
Religion is the original war crime.
-Michelle Malkin (Feb 26, 2005)
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