The Blue State

Cartoon: Congress spies on White House

(By R.J. Matson, Roll Call, Cagle Cartoons)
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Other blogs writing about this issue: Americablog, Professor Hex, Crimes and Corruptions of the New World, Perception Managers, Make Me a Commentator, True Blue Liberal, The Lantern.

Congressional Republican: President may have broken the law

Republican U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, who is also the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is furious at the White House over specific Executive powers in the war on terrorism that have not been disclosed to Congress.  Hoekstra actually supports President Bush's warrantless domestic wiretap program.  But after meetings with intelligence officials behind closed doors, he has reason to believe that the Administration is hiding from Congress other kinds spying tactics that are being used by the intelligence community.  Hoekstra wrote a letter to the White House on May 18th blasting them over this matter.  The New York Times obtained a copy, which will appear in Sunday's newspaper:

Recently, after the harsh criticism from Mr. Hoekstra, intelligenceofficials have appeared at two closed committee briefings to answerquestions from the chairman and other members. The briefings appear tohave eased but not erased the concerns of Mr. Hoekstra and otherlawmakers about whether the administration is sharing information onall of its intelligence operations.

A copy of the four-page letter dated May 18, which has not been previously disclosed, was obtained by The New York Times.

"I have learned of some alleged intelligence community activities aboutwhich our committee has not been briefed," Mr. Hoesktra wrote. "Ifthese allegations are true, they may represent a breach ofresponsibility by the administration, a violation of the law, and, justas importantly, a direct affront to me and the members of thiscommittee who have so ardently supported efforts to collect informationon our enemies."

He  added: "The U.S. Congress simply should not have to play Twenty Questions to get the information that it deserves under our Constitution."

Now that the New York Times released this letter, I am sure that Hoekstra's feet will be put to the fire.  But Hoekstra is not alone on this.  A lot of other conservative Republicans have reservations about this program because of the lack of Congressional oversight.

I think we can relate this to a real world example:

If your teenage daughter comes home very late on Saturday night, you're obviously going to approach her and say, "How come you were out so late.  I was worried sick.  What were you doing?"

"I was fine," your daughter replies.  "Trust me."

You repeat yourself, "You didn't answer the question.  Why were you out so late?"

"I'd rather not say," your daughter fires back.  "It's none of your business.  But just trust that I would not ever get into trouble."

As it pertains to intelligence oversight, the Bush Administration is like the daughter that stays out all night, while Congress is like the concerned mother.  If the Executive Branch says they are not doing anything illegal, why are they hiding information from Congress?  It is basically an admission of guilt.

Just a side note: Peter Hoekstra will appear tomorrow morning on the weekly show Fox News Sunday.  Expect for him to be attacked by the conservative host because of his criticisms about the White House's lack of disclosure.

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Other blogs writing about this issue: Whatever Already, The Democratic Daily, Prairie Weather, Black White, Liberty Street, Bustard Blog, The Reaction, Daily Kos, Vox Verax, State of the Day, The Common Ills,

To Bush Administration, increase in Executive had little to do with 9/11

As I have often expressed on this blog, you never know how authoritarian someone is until they are given a position of power.  You can claim to be a libertarian, but might turn into a control freak when given access to potentially unlimited entitlement.  In 2000, Bush ran for president on a small government platform.  But ever since being elected, he has presided over the largest government expansion since World War II.

You might be thinking to yourself, "Well, we're at war, so that's okay."  But as Bloomberg reports, the desire for government expansion, with help from the NSA, began even before September 11th:

The U.S. National Security Agencyasked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring siteseven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimedJune 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.                

The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, thenation's largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach ofprivacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of VerizonCommunications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suitalleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W.Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S.Constitution, and seeks money damages.

``The Bush Administration asserted this became necessaryafter 9/11,'' plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephoneinterview. ``This undermines that assertion.''

This report is analogous to the one by staffers of Senators who claimed that the Patriot Act was planned before 9/11.

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Other blogs writing about this issue: Daily Kos, Americablog, Damned Empire, MyDD, Lost Chord, Gideon Starorzewski, The town Crier, Russell Silver, The Flypaper Theory, Wot is it good 4, Picks Commentary, Ramblings from my Mind, Mad in the Middle.

Sunday Editorial: As a progressive, I support the watered down line item veto legislation

I know that a lot of you will disagree with me on this.  But when it comes right down to it, I actually support the more watered down version of the line item veto bill, which is making its way to the Senate for a vote.

Very quickly, line item veto power would allow the President to eliminate specific items within a bill without killing the entire bill itself.  Until now, when the President signs a bill into law, he agrees to all of it.  The President cannot just pick and chose which parts of a bill he wants thrown out unless he is willing to dispose of the entire bill itself.  It's all or nothing.  This line item veto legislation would change that precedent.

The only problem is that a line item veto is unconstitutional because the Congress, not the President,is supposed to control the power of the purse.  Until recently, the line item veto legislation that the Republicans were trying to pass was an authoritarian one (I explained here).  So, over the last week or so, lawmakers tried to find a way to make the line item veto legislation not interfere with the defined separation between branches.

Therefore, both sides came up with a watered down version of the line item veto:

The House bill, which passed 247-172, would let the president try tokill individual items contained in spending or tax bills that heotherwise signs into law. Congress would be required to vote on thosespecific items again. A simple majority in both the House and theSenate could override the president's objections.

Bush said a line-item veto would reduce the incentive for Congressto spend wastefully because lawmakers would be less likely to slip petprojects into large spending bills if they knew they could be held upto public scrutiny.

So, in this watered down version, the President's veto against specific items within a bill would not kill those items for good.  The Congress would just simply go back and vote on them again, and override the presidential veto by a simple majority.  The only difference between this law and no line item veto law is the fact that when items are vetoed they get reported in the news.  And when they get reported in the news, especially the embarrassing ones, Congress might be less likely to vote for them again.

This is not unconstitutional.  All it is doing is telling Congress to take an extra look at certain items in a bill, and if they want to pass them again, then fine -- but at least they will be exposed for doing so.

In a nutshell, not only will this reduce the deficit, but it will make the public more aware of what things are being put in these bills.
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Other blogs writing about this: Don Singleton, Reality Hammer.

Spying and efficient government do not go together

The admission that the Administration has been snooping into the bank records of millions of Americans without a search warrant prompted Treasury Secretary John Snow to quickly jump to the President's defense and justify the program.  However, his justification was not a good one.  Interestingly, he thinks that the government spying on its citizens actually helps protect individual privacy:

Outgoing Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said that the program, ineffect since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is the thing"I'm proudest of" in his tenure and insisted that strong safeguardsprotect the privacy of individual Americans. "It's really government atits best," Snow said at a news conference. "It's responsiblegovernment. It's effective government."

But is this really effective government?  John Allen Paulos, a professor at Temple University, says it is a waste of resources:

It should be reiterated that such broad scale wiretapping and datamining is not only of questionable legality if not downrightunconstitutional, but it is also ineffective and a waste of resources.Terrorism is a problem, but so are handguns, health care, the deficit,the environment, education, and a host of other issues that are moreimportant to our personal and, I think, our national security.

Legally speaking, spying on Americans by the NSA for terrorism purposes must be be done with approval from the FISA courts, which was the whole reason FISA courts were set up in the first place -- according to the 1976 Foreign Surveillance Act.  Secondly, the act of a phone company handing over records of its customers, whether to the government or anyone for that matter, violates the 1996 Telecommunications Act that was specifically designed to protect consumers.  Thirdly, preventing both judicial approval and legislative oversight into this program runs counter to the constitution itself.  But as far as legal problems are concerned, this is just scratching the surface.  So, for many reasons, the Administration has a long way to go in order to justify such a program.
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Other blogs writing about this issue: Finance Trends Matter, Moron Cowboy, The Truth about Political Stuff, The Indisputable Truth, News Coma, On Life as I Know it, Majikthise.

Spying on Americans more far reaching than previously thought

It was learned today that President Bush's secret surveillance techniques are far more reaching than merely warrantless wiretapping and getting phone our records from telephone companies.  The Associated Press is reporting that the Executive is also tracking the financial records of millions of Americans:

A secret CIA-Treasuryprogram to track financial records of millions of Americans is thelatest installment in an expansion of executive authority in the nameof fighting terrorism. The administration doesn't apologize for President Bush's aggressive take on presidential powers. Vice President Dick Cheneyeven boasts about it.

Still, Treasury Secretary John Snow insists that the program is "consistent with our democratic values":

Speaking at a press conference Friday, Treasury Secretary John Snowinsisted the program was "consistent with our democratic values" and"an important source of information about global financial flows."

The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported that the records were examined under a series of broad U.S. subpoenas, with the Timesreporting that Treasury officials did not seek individualcourt-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions.

As was the case with the wiretaps and phone records, it seems like this is being done without full Congressional oversight.  When it comes to monitoring the transactions of those living abroad, most reasonable people would not have a problem with that, and would think that foreign surveillance is necessary for protecting the security of this country.  But to monitor millions of Americans, without getting judicial or legislative approval, goes against the very purpose of the three branches of government that are supposed to check one another.  We are not merely a nation of men, but more importantly we are a nation of laws.  No person and no Administration should ever be allowed to rise above the law.  Furthermore, and even more hypocritically, Bush's warrantless spying runs counter to the conservative ideal that government doesn't know best.
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Other blogs writing about this: Last Chance Democracy, Electric Monkey Pants, Prairie Weather

Line item veto becoming an issue once again

The House of Representatives is about to vote on a bill that would allow the President to have line item veto power.  A line item veto would give the President the power to eliminate certain aspects of a bill without eliminating the entire bill itself.  By law, when Congress passes a piece of legislation, the President decides either to sign all of it into law or veto the whole thing.  But a line item veto, on the other hand, allows the President the authority to pick and choose what parts of the bill he prefers to become law, and what parts he wants crossed out.

In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the line item veto was unconstitutional because only the Legislative Branch, not the Executive Branch, has the authority to control the power of the purse.

All in all, this is yet another battle over Executive power.

Personally, I find it contradictory for the U.S. House, a chamber of the Legislative Branch, to vote for a resolution that would decrease its own power.  Sounds self-defeating to me.

Cheney manipulated phone companies into not talking to Judiciary Committee about wiretaps

You can expect the issue of President Bush's warrantless domestic wiretap program to pop back into the news for at least the next month.  Republican Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter wrote a letter to Dick Cheney criticizing the Vice President for keeping his committee out of the process of overseeing the program, which the White House is supposed to allow by law.  The letter also hints at a growing personal feud between the two.  Read this -- you'll get a laugh:

"I was surprised, to say the least, that you sought to influence,really determine, the action of the committee without calling me first,or at least calling me at some point," Mr. Specter wrote. "This wasespecially perplexing since we both attended the Republican senatorscaucus lunch yesterday and I walked directly in front of you on atleast two occasions en route from the buffet to my table."

All this talk about buffets is making me want to plan a trip to Vegas!

On a more serious note, the the Thursday edition of the USA Today spelled out precisely the problem, and how Cheney's personal relationship with phone companies is going too far:

The Bush administration instructed telephone companies not to discussclassified information about domestic intelligence programs with theSenate Judiciary Committee, the panel's chairman said in a letter toVice President Cheney on Wednesday.

This is really bordering on illegal.  The White House cannot hold secret meetings with private companies without disclosing those meetings to the Senate, or in this case the Judiciary Committee.  The White House held those meetings in private, plus they told phone companies not to talk to the Judiciary Committee because the information was classified.  This is a case of the Executive Branch actively trying to underline another branch of government.

So will Specter actually do anything about it?  Probably not.  That Republican, although I admit he is very moderate when it comes to the issues, does a lot of talking but really fails to actively work against the Administration during committee hearings.  Is this letter a hint that he plans to take more of a principled stand than usual?  Let's hope.

Emptying our judicial system

The right-wing attack against lawyers over the last 20 years has paid off.   The Supreme Court is facing a shortage of cases, notes Saturday's USA Today:

Justices are running well behind in filling their argument calendar forthe term that begins in the fall. They have accepted 18 cases, comparedwith 27 by this time last year and 32 in 2004.

There are probably a few reasons for this.  First, the new look Supreme Court, with the additions of Samuel Alito and John Roberts, has a new set of standards that it uses to decide whether to accept certain cases.  Also, we are at war.  Under Bush, Executive power, has increased overwhelmingly, meaning that less cases are accepted that have to do with government authority.  The court is clearly sending the message that they would rather stay away from that contentious issue, and instead let the Legislative Branch sort that one out.

Bipartisan ticket is out of the question

Wishful thinking on the part of the advocacy group Unity08:

A group of old Washington hands has launched a campaign to remakeInternet politics, taking a forum that until now has been associatedwith ideologues and angry partisans and using it to start a movementculminating in a bipartisan presidential ticket in 2008.

Thegroup is called Unity08, and no one would accuse its founders ofthinking small. They include Democrats Hamilton Jordan and GeraldRafshoon, who gained political fame for their role in electing JimmyCarter 30 years ago, as well as Doug Bailey, a media adviser to formerpresident and representative Gerald R. Ford (R-Mich.). They are beingjoined by former Maine governor Angus King, an independent.

Their goal is to offer an alternative to the two major party choices --a unity ticket that will emerge after secure, online balloting thatthey hope will include millions of Americans. In an announcementstatement, Unity08 said its efforts are a reaction to a system that has"polarized and alienated the American people" through partisanship andinterest-group politics.

A unity ticket never works because there would turn out to be a major argument over who would be on the top of the ticket.  The president, not the vice president, has the ultimate say in Executive decisions. 

Such a unity ticket would result in one of two polar extremes.  One possibility is that the Democrat and Republican would secretly work against each other while in the White House.  The vice president would constantly be trying to alienate the president, while the president would have to watch his back the entire time.  As a result, with nothing getting done, this leads to an unhealthy decrease in the role of the Executive.

The other possibility is that the president and vice president would work together, bringing their parties together as a result.  Therefore, the U.S. would only have a one-party system -- meaning no other party could be there to hold the party in power accountable.  Is that really good for democracy?

So in either case, in my view, the unity party idea is a bad idea.