Let's see now...President Bush is about as popular with the American people as tooth decay, he has no credibility, his Attorney General is under investigation for lying to Congress, and his Administration has been caught spying on the public without the search warrants as required by law. With the help of craven telecommunications companies and other enablers, the Administration vacuums up obscene amounts of phone records, E-mail messages, and library reading lists, and even claims the right to open our snail mail.
Sounds like a perfect time for another power grab.
Earlier this year, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, which normally gives rubber-stamp approval to national-security search warrants, rejected much of the Administration's spying program, calling it illegal and unconstitutional. So Bush rammed a bill through Congress with the Orwellian name of the "Protect America Act."
Ostensibly "modernizing" FISA, the bill allowed such snooping retroactively, with no meaningful judicial or Congressional oversight and no way for anyone to find out who is being spied on or why. Not only that, the very same people put in charge of running the spy program - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell - were also given the job of certifying that it was being done legally. And to top it all off, the White House timed the bill's introduction so that Congress had almost no opportunity to examine and vote on it before leaving for its August recess.
The Democrats, who were elected in November on a platform of reining in Bush's authoritarian excesses, folded like Superman on laundry day. It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.
In hindsight, the White House's plan for getting the bill passed was painfully obvious. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's much-derided "gut feeling" of terror attacks this summer set the mood. Fox News and other propaganda outlets faithfully chimed in with apocalyptic rumblings of possible attacks to come, presenting a program of all fear, all the time. McConnell, transformed into yet another mindless Bush-bot, asked Congress "to provide the legislative changes needed to protect the nation in this period of heightened threat."
Bush himself went out on the road, making speech after speech in which he said that, "America is in a heightened threat environment. Reforming FISA will help our intelligence professionals address those threats - and they should not have to wait any longer. Congress will soon be leaving for its August recess. I ask Republicans and Democrats to work together to pass FISA modernization now, before they leave town. Our national security depends on it."
The message to the Democrats was clear: give the President whatever he wants, do it now, and you get to live.
A majority of Congressional Democrats were sufficiently clear-headed to see through this cynical fear campaign and voted against the bill, but some - too many - could see only the specter of attack ads in the next election and caved in.
And so now the President can legally spy on anyone, anywhere, at any time, and for any reason. He doesn't even have to pretend that it's related to a terrorism investigation. The only bright spot is that the new law expires automatically in six months.
In an interesting juxtaposition, Bush issued an executive order on July 17 claiming the power to freeze the assets of anyone he deems to be "threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people." Combine these two with last year's Military Commissions Act, which gives Bush the unilateral authority to declare anyone to be an "enemy combatant" and to order them locked up without charge, without trial and without end, and you've got a nearly picture-perfect recipe for dictatorship. All you need is a President more reckless and amoral than Bush.
What do you want to bet that at least some in the White House are itching to use these powers on political dissidents at home?
Sounds like a perfect time for another power grab.
Earlier this year, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, which normally gives rubber-stamp approval to national-security search warrants, rejected much of the Administration's spying program, calling it illegal and unconstitutional. So Bush rammed a bill through Congress with the Orwellian name of the "Protect America Act."
Ostensibly "modernizing" FISA, the bill allowed such snooping retroactively, with no meaningful judicial or Congressional oversight and no way for anyone to find out who is being spied on or why. Not only that, the very same people put in charge of running the spy program - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell - were also given the job of certifying that it was being done legally. And to top it all off, the White House timed the bill's introduction so that Congress had almost no opportunity to examine and vote on it before leaving for its August recess.
The Democrats, who were elected in November on a platform of reining in Bush's authoritarian excesses, folded like Superman on laundry day. It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.
In hindsight, the White House's plan for getting the bill passed was painfully obvious. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's much-derided "gut feeling" of terror attacks this summer set the mood. Fox News and other propaganda outlets faithfully chimed in with apocalyptic rumblings of possible attacks to come, presenting a program of all fear, all the time. McConnell, transformed into yet another mindless Bush-bot, asked Congress "to provide the legislative changes needed to protect the nation in this period of heightened threat."
Bush himself went out on the road, making speech after speech in which he said that, "America is in a heightened threat environment. Reforming FISA will help our intelligence professionals address those threats - and they should not have to wait any longer. Congress will soon be leaving for its August recess. I ask Republicans and Democrats to work together to pass FISA modernization now, before they leave town. Our national security depends on it."
The message to the Democrats was clear: give the President whatever he wants, do it now, and you get to live.
A majority of Congressional Democrats were sufficiently clear-headed to see through this cynical fear campaign and voted against the bill, but some - too many - could see only the specter of attack ads in the next election and caved in.
And so now the President can legally spy on anyone, anywhere, at any time, and for any reason. He doesn't even have to pretend that it's related to a terrorism investigation. The only bright spot is that the new law expires automatically in six months.
In an interesting juxtaposition, Bush issued an executive order on July 17 claiming the power to freeze the assets of anyone he deems to be "threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people." Combine these two with last year's Military Commissions Act, which gives Bush the unilateral authority to declare anyone to be an "enemy combatant" and to order them locked up without charge, without trial and without end, and you've got a nearly picture-perfect recipe for dictatorship. All you need is a President more reckless and amoral than Bush.
What do you want to bet that at least some in the White House are itching to use these powers on political dissidents at home?
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