Wednesday Evening NSA Update
Congressional Democrats appear to have lost the battle to make the NSA story into a year-long campaign commercial:
Congress appeared ready to launch an investigation into the Bush administration’s warrantless domestic surveillance program last week, but an all-out White House lobbying campaign has dramatically slowed the effort and may kill it, key Republican and Democratic sources said yesterday.
The Senate intelligence committee is scheduled to vote tomorrow on a Democratic-sponsored motion to start an inquiry into the recently revealed program in which the National Security Agency eavesdrops on an undisclosed number of phone calls and e-mails involving U.S. residents without obtaining warrants from a secret court. Two committee Democrats said the panel — made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats — was clearly leaning in favor of the motion last week but now is closely divided and possibly inclined against it.
They attributed the shift to last week’s closed briefings given by top administration officials to the full House and Senate intelligence committees, and to private appeals to wavering GOP senators by officials, including Vice President Cheney. “It’s been a full-court press,” said a top Senate Republican aide who asked to speak only on background — as did several others for this story — because of the classified nature of the intelligence committees’ work.
In response, the Democrats are doing what they do best these days – running to the Daily Kos to make statements.
More on the latest and greatest NSA developments from Glenn Greenwald, The Real Ugly American, the MinuteMan, and AJ Strata (who also has an update on Able Danger)…
Mark, I can’t help but notice once again that you appear to be burying your head in the sand on this and calling it a non-issue at every available opportunity, without necessarily addressing the actual issues at hand. I understand that you’re a partisan Republican, and you’ve said as much, but as someone who’s also a rational person, why would you try to deflect the importance of this issue? What is there to lose by there being hearings? I’d submit that it’s nothing, even on your side, compared to what would be gained by a resolution to the issue, one way or the other.
Fargus, I’ve stated that I would like to see the program made explicitly legal through new legislation, and if hearings were aimed at that, I have no problems with them. However, I question the willingness of, for example, John Conyer to seek a legislative solution.
Chuck Hagel had this to say, and for once, I agree with him: “If some kind of inquiry would be beneficial to getting a resolution to this issue, then sure, we should look at it. But if the inquiry is just some kind of a punitive inquiry that really is not focused on finding a way out of this, then I’m not so sure that I would support that.”
So you’re not interested in a definitive answer to whether or not the President actually broke the law? See, that’s the whole issue, to me. I don’t think that there’s any way it would fail, in the Congress, to be made officially legal. It would be legal already if Bush had brought it before them when he wanted to start it. The issue isn’t the wiretapping. The issue is the potential lawbreaking, and to that end, there should be punitive hearings.
…”there should be punitive hearings.”
You just gave your whole game plan away here, Fargus. I was under the impression that hearings should be conducted in a fair or impartial manner, with no assumptions made before the proceedings are underway. Punitive hearings? I guess you’re just another objective person who wants “the truth” to come out, for the benefit of the greater republic. Surrrre!
Talk about a Freudian slip.
Good Lord, man. I only said punitive because it was in the language of what Mark posted above. All I meant is that there should be hearings to determine whether laws were broken, and if there were, the president is NOT immune to being held responsible for that.
I said “punitive hearings,” again, because it was how Mark framed it with his quote. This vs. that. I’d rather see “punitive hearings” in the sense of retrospectively trying to see if laws were broken than just see Senators going ahead and trying to retroactively make this legal even if it wasn’t already.
So.
Are you with Mark, and think hearings should be exclusively devoted to finding a way for Congress to place its legislative stamp-of-approval on the NSA Program? Or do you think they should attempt to determine whether the Program violated the Law?
If the latter, what do you think Congress should do if they find that the answer is “Yes, it did violate the Law”?
Whoa! My previous comment was directed at dmac, not Fargus (obviously).
Our comments crossed in the æther.
Now, Jacques, I’m not talking rubber-stamping…I think that necessarily the subject of whether the program as practiced is legal would have to be considered in drafting any new legislation. I guess the point would be whether we are going to really have a hearing with no predetermined outcome either way, and the anxiousness of the participants to run to the extremely partisan Daily Kos doesn’t fill me with optimism that this would be anything but a show trial…
I have no problem with the hearing concept, per se…I think the one the other day was informative (though others would disagree, I’m sure). I also know there have been private briefings since the Specter hearing, and that those briefings (as well as pressure from the White House) have apparently had an effect. I’ve yet to hear of a single person who was briefed coming out and saying “By God, we’ve got to shut this down now!”…
Having said all that, the President is not above the law, and if it is determined he broke the law, there should be consequences. I don’t think impeachment is politically possible, but who knows what would happen if the Dems retake Congress? You rolls the dice and you takes your chances…
If the Program is legal, why would new legislation be necessary?
Short of impeachment, what “consequences” should there be?
And, if you believe that a Republican-controlled Senate would never impeach a Republican President (I’m not sure whether that’s what you’re actually saying, but it sounds like it), then how is this distinguishable, in practice, from the President being above the law?
Well, your last question first: I absolutely believe there are circumstances where a Republican-led Congress would impeach a Republican president, but not on this issue – I don’t think the public will support it, at least not now, and that’s going to derail any efforts on that front.
On the first one, I don’t know how to answer that without getting into the whole thing again of the administration’s argument versus its opponents: one side says its legal, the other that it is not, and there has been no conclusive judicial judgment that it is not, so let’s work on new legislation that removes the ambiguity if we all think it’s a good program that needs to continue, and that certainly seems to be the case with most Republicans and a good chunk of Democrats, as well…
As to what other remedies there are for an ‘imperial presidency’, there is censure, and there is the unofficial punishment of declining political fortunes and credibility, plus the withholding of funds for programs that the President would like pursued, and the introduction of legislation that further clips his wings, plus the bringing of lawsuits such as the one recently brought by the ACLU…
Does that mean ratifying the Program as is? Or could/should the Congress impose (say) some form of Judicial oversight?
[The reason I ask is that, short of resolving the question of the legality of the Program in the negative, there's no reason the Administration would be compelled to submit to such oversight. Remember, the theory under which the Program is legal is that the powers of the Presidency (either his inherent powers, or those granted unwittingly with the AUMF) trump Congressional statute (specifically, FISA). If the President was not obligated to adhere to previous statutes on this matter, why would he be obligated to adhere to new ones? Under such circumstances, new legislation seems a pointless exercise.]
It seems to me that
1) current opinion polls paint a very different picture.
2) the first responsibility of Congressmen is to do what’s right, not what’s popular.
I’m also curious why you think that Censure, say, is a more palatable remedy in the eyes of a Republican Congress than Impeachment.
Jacques, if you’re asking for my opinion, I’m okay with some degree of judicial oversight, but it doesn’t seem like the administration will be, does it?…So, yeah, I grant your point that based on the administration’s arguments for the legality of the program, there doesn’t seem much room for compromise.
Of course, you’re right that Congress should do the right thing…but then again, in a perfect world, I would be a man of leisure…
I may have left the wrong impression on censure – I’m not saying it’s likely or palatable, just saying there are alternatives to impeachment (and we could play deuling polls, but what’s the point? My own opinion is impeachment is not an option, but let’s see how the wind is blowing after the 2006 midterms)…
But if those alternatives have as little chance of being envoked by a Republican Congress as (you say) Impeachment does, then I stand by my previous comment that there is no practical difference between this and an imperial Presidency.
If (for argument’s sake) the President broke the Law and if any hope of remedy hinges on the Democrats taking control of the Senate in 2006, then I fear for our Republic (and expect you to be stumping hard for Democratic Senatorial candidates this year).
Sadly, Jacques, if it’s up to me to stump for Democratic Senatorial candidates, then the Republic has indeed fallen (except for Lieberman – I’d stump for Joe anyday)…
Jacques – I stand corrected – next time I’ll make sure to re – read the post in it’s entirety.