Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter said Wednesday he remains skeptical about a government surveillance program despite an explanation from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. "I would summarize it by saying I have grave doubts about his legal conclusion," Specter, R-Pa., said of a meeting with Gonzales, who was confirmed before Specter's committee early this year. "I'm skeptical, but I'm prepared to listen." Specter said he expects Gonzales to be the leadoff witness at a hearing on the surveillance... http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=1431108 I suppose John from powerlineblog knows better than Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (republican), right hapa?
And I suppose any given Congressman knows better than the Constitution, the Supreme Court, the federal appellate courts, the FISA Court of Review, and numerous lawyers on both sides of the political aisle, right dddooo?
The fact that Specter does not limit himself to knee jerk party line partisan crap talking points enhances his position of objectivity and clarity.
Come on hapa, the law, the courts and FISA authorize warrantless spying for foreign intelligence purposes but they do not authorize warrantless spying on american citizens. You're trying hard to obfuscate this "little" nuance but that's the key issue of the whole legal debate. Specter clearly understands that, you and John from powerlineblog don't. I don't believe the article you quoted came up with a single legal precedent stating that spying on american citizens without a warrant is OK. Correct me if I am wrong. And while we're on it please explain why a federal judge resigned in protest from the court overseeing FISA. You may turn out to be right in the end and it's quite possible that Bush did not break the law but so far I have not seen any reasonable explanation of why the 4th amendment was not violated together with FISA provision that president can ONLY authorize warrantless surveillance gathering foreign intelligence if he's reasonably sure an american person is not involved. The fact that he's commander in chief does not explain anything.
Why Didn't He Ask Congress? By George F. Will The Washington Post Tuesday 20 December 2005 The president's authorization of domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency contravened a statute's clear language. Assuming that urgent facts convinced him that he should proceed anyway and on his own, what argument convinced him that he lawfully could? Presumably the argument is that the president's implied powers as commander in chief, particularly with the nation under attack and some of the enemy within the gates, are not limited by statutes. A classified legal brief probably makes an argument akin to one Attorney General John Ashcroft made in 2002: "The Constitution vests in the president inherent authority to conduct warrantless intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority." Perhaps the brief argues, as its author, John Yoo - now a professor of law at Berkeley but then a deputy assistant attorney general - argued 14 days after Sept. 11, 2001, in a memorandum on "the president's constitutional authority to conduct military operations against terrorists and nations supporting them," that the president's constitutional power to take "military actions" is "plenary." The Oxford English Dictionary defines "plenary" as "complete, entire, perfect, not deficient in any element or respect." The brief should be declassified and debated, beginning with this question: Who decides which tactics - e.g., domestic surveillance - should be considered part of taking "military actions"? Without more information than can be publicly available concerning threats from enemies operating in America, the executive branch deserves considerable discretion in combating terrorist conspiracies using new technologies such as cell phones and the Internet. In September 2001, the president surely had sound reasons for desiring the surveillance capabilities at issue. But did he have sound reasons for seizing them while giving only minimal information to, and having no formal complicity with, Congress? Perhaps. But Congress, if asked, almost certainly would have made such modifications of law as the president's plans required. Courts, too, would have been compliant. After all, on Sept. 14, 2001, Congress had unanimously declared that "the president has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism," and it had authorized "all necessary and appropriate force" against those involved in Sept. 11 or threatening future attacks. For more than 500 years - since the rise of nation-states and parliaments - a preoccupation of Western political thought has been the problem of defining and confining executive power. The problem is expressed in the title of a brilliant book, "Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power," by Harvey Mansfield, Harvard's conservative. Particularly in time of war or the threat of it, government needs concentrated decisiveness - a capacity for swift and nimble action that legislatures normally cannot manage. But the inescapable corollary of this need is the danger of arbitrary power. Modern American conservatism grew in reaction against the New Deal's creation of the regulatory state, and the enlargement of the executive branch power that such a state entails. The intellectual vigor of conservatism was quickened by reaction against the Great Society and the aggrandizement of the modern presidency by Lyndon Johnson, whose aspiration was to complete the project begun by Franklin Roosevelt. Because of what Alexander Hamilton praised as "energy in the executive," which often drives the growth of government, for years many conservatives were advocates of congressional supremacy. There were, they said, reasons why the Founders, having waged a revolutionary war against overbearing executive power, gave the legislative branch pride of place in Article I of the Constitution. One reason was that Congress's cumbersomeness, which is a function of its fractiousness, is a virtue because it makes the government slow and difficult to move. But conservatives' wholesome wariness of presidential power has been a casualty of conservative presidents winning seven of the past 10 elections. On the assumption that Congress or a court would have been cooperative in September 2001, and that the cooperation could have kept necessary actions clearly lawful without conferring any benefit on the nation's enemies, the president's decision to authorize the NSA's surveillance without the complicity of a court or Congress was a mistake. Perhaps one caused by this administration's almost metabolic urge to keep Congress unnecessarily distant and hence disgruntled. Charles de Gaulle, a profound conservative, said of another such, Otto von Bismarck - de Gaulle was thinking of Bismarck not pressing his advantage in 1870 in the Franco-Prussian War - that genius sometimes consists of knowing when to stop. In peace and in war, but especially in the latter, presidents have pressed their institutional advantages to expand their powers to act without Congress. This president might look for occasions to stop pressing.
Then we should all applaud Joe Liebermann for not limiting himself "to knee jerk party line partisan crap talking points" and having a position "of objectivity and clarity" when he disagreed with Democratic leadership about the situation in Iraq.
As you have just said, "the law, the courts and FISA authorize warrantless spying for foreign intelligence purposes." Now, if Al Qaeda is making a call to an asset in the US - American or not - is not the monitoring of that call for the purpose of gathering "foreign intelligence," which includes information about terrorist threats? So I ask again, is your theory that if NSA is monitoring a foreign operative hostile to the US, and that operative calls someone in the US, that NSA should cease monitoring that conversation? You again bring up the 4th amendment, and I AGAIN have to explain that it states it protects the people from "UNREASONABLE" searches. So I ask again, and maybe this time you'll answer, if an Al Qaeda operative is talking to an American, or that American's phone number or e-mail address is found on a terrorist's cell phone or computer, is it "unreasonable" for our government to be monitoring that conversation or messages in order to detect and deter a possible terrorist attack on us again? As for the FISA provision violation you're fixated on, I'll AGAIN quote what the FISA Court of Review stated: "We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power." You keep asking the same questions, and I keep answering them. Now give me equal consideration and answer the questions I've posed above to you.
American's can well distinguish between a President committing an allegedly illegal offense for personal or partisan reasons vs. responding to legitimate issues concerning national security. Perjury during a deposition when one is the subject of a sexual harassment suit will win you few defenders. Even worse is covering up the crimes of political associates who are burglarizing and bugging a rival candidate on your behalf during an election campaign. In both of these cases the motivation behind illegal activity was clearly self-serving preservation. The personal want to squash a political opponent or to avoid financial penalty in a civil suit. The American people, the media and the finger in the wind Congress acutely go for blood in those instances. George Bush has no personal agenda compelling him to protect American's from terrorists. He doesn't ride the subway, he doesn't shop in crowded holiday malls, he most certainly does not fly on commercial airliners. And he'll never again be a candidate for political office. If Bush had been wiretapping Maureen Dowd, or trying to have George Soros thrown out of the country, or had a politically motivated FEC go after moveon.org, or even had the FDA follow around Michael Moore and count the 18,000 calories a day he greedily ingests, THEN this story would have traction and implications of political or personal abuse. Ultimately, about as many Americans will take umbrage at Bush for spying on potential terrorists as would suburbanites yack at a county prosecutor who conducts a web sting ferreting out internet pedophilia. To a society, of which the vast majority are law abiding, yet whom on a regular basis are subject to drunk driving checkpoints, airline searches and in some cases random IRS audits, the notion of big brother conducting warrantless surveillance against potential terrorists is hardly nerve shattering. I have no idea whether actual violations of the law occurred. There seems to be conflicting statutes, interpretations ect. However as I said about Libby several weeks ago, wiretapping is a noun that will not be seen in the media beyond February 1st.