"As Republicans have become increasingly nervous about whether they will be able to maintain control of the House in the midterm elections, they have resorted to the straw-man strategy of identifying a parade of horrors to come if Democrats gain the majority. Among these is the assertion that I, as the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, would immediately begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush."
“Rather than seeking impeachment,” Conyers later says, “I have chosen to propose comprehensive oversight of these alleged abuses. The oversight I have suggested would be performed by a select committee made up equally of Democrats and Republicans and chosen by the House speaker and the minority leader.”
In an article that documents the history of Congressional oversight, paying special attention the over 1000 subpoenas issued against the Clinton administration (compared to 15 for Bush), Zachary Roth, editor of the partisan Washington Monthly, writes:
“Congress's disinclination to hold President Bush accountable has few historical parallels, say congressional experts. “In our lifetimes, I can't recall a greater failure on the part of a Congress to do serious oversight,” says Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “The attitude of the Republicans in Congress has been: Avoid embarrassing the president at all costs.”
There is no shortage of angry liberals out there who advocate impeachment, as a simple google search attests to (the words “impeach President Bush,” returned almost 11 million hits). But assuming that bad judgment alone is not an impeachable offense, what grounds do these sites propose impeachment? John Dean has often attempted to make the legal argument for impeachment both for Bush’s executive order authorizing the NSA to conduct domestic wiretapping (“There can be no serious question that warrantless wiretapping, in violation of the law, is impeachable. After all, Nixon was charged in Article II of his bill of impeachment with illegal wiretapping for what he, too, claimed were national security reasons”), as well as for lying about Iraqi WMD (“Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be “a high crime” under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.”)
Personally, I think Democrats are wise not to jump to conclusions and advocate investigations and oversight. This is not only politically smart, as calling for Bush's head will only make them look like bitter fanatics, but morally the right course of action. The failure of our Congress has not necessarily been its unwillingness to remove President Bush from office, but to wholly ignore even the most conspicuous evidence of wrong-doing (even the 9/11 Commission had to be thrust upon them by the outcry of 9/11 families). Whether or not the uncovering of alleged abuse leads to censure (as Senator Russ Feungold has already proposed) or impeachment are for the investigations to uncover.
6 comments:
The legalities aside (which I'm not up on and wouldn't mind an explanation of), it wasn't my impression that many people were aware of the how broad the scope of NSA activities were even before Bush.
I don't know that I see much difference between Echelon having carte blanche to hear every detail of your calls overseas but not domestically, both from a practical standpoint (especially given the extent of domestic terror cells, and trends in globalization) or ideologically.
Of course none of this excuses Bush's cavalier attitude toward the appearance of concern for separation of powers, respect for the rule of law, etc., etc., ad infinitum.
The collusion of the telecoms was also pretty disturbing.
I think we may get to a point where it makes more sense to distinguish between what the government can do to foreign vs. U.S. nationals, than where it does it. If government uses its power to pursue intelligence activities even in areas where it has nominally recognized the jurisdiction of another, then certainly one would think it powerful enough to be also capable of distinguishing whether a surveilled individual would fall under the category of deserving the same rights as other U.S. nationals.
Certainly the relationship between the government and its own citizens should be given higher priority - seeing as how we basically expect it to violate the privacy of individuals outside U.S. borders. If government has the power to violate other countries' norms - no matter how customary and accepted spying is - then it should certainly have the attendent capacity of making the crucial - and possibly more important - distinction I highlight above. I wonder if that isn't the distinction we should be imploring the government to emphasize, so that its hands only need be bound with the greater legal strictures you mention when pursuing U.S. nationals - at home or abroad.
The problem, I think, with your argument, MUL, is that the Constitution is supposed to protect what we think of as inalienable rights. It either is ok for the government to spy on people in the US or not. If it is ok, it is ok for them to spy on all of us. If not, then it is not ok for them to spy on anyone -- that is, without due process.
dcat
I think there is a difference between recognizing a universally broad humanistic semblance of what we would characterize as inalienable rights, and deciding whether it is the U.S. government's job - or that of another government, depending on the citizenship status of the individual - to be the primary agent tasked with arguing on behalf of, defining, legally defending and enforcing them.
Of course, we can also draw distinctions between rights in this regard - including what degree of due process one is afforded, etc. But that would require definitions that assume the above. I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone argue that every right/privilege of a U.S. citizen should be extended by the U.S. government universally. Though due process is an important one, at some point one must concede that diplomatic considerations ultimately seem to navigate how these issues are governed. I think we shouldn't lose sight of why that is.
MUL --
But nonetheless, once you think of things in terms of rights, it makes it a bit more problematic to simply say that natives live according to one set of protections, foreigners another. Really, should't the question be probable cause, or evidence of intent, or something> We are talking about an administration that, after the fact, claimed that reports of terrorists hijacking planes and flying them into buildings was not "actionable intelligence." We now should trust that they can find actionable intelligence through wiretapping and mass collection of phone records? (I understand that you are not advocating these things. I am just saying, this is a tough administration to trust to do the right thing in the name of the war on terrorism.)
dcat
dcat
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