GOP, Courts: Had Enough?

[Omaha Steve]

Full article: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0715-28.htm

Published on Saturday, July 15, 2006 by the Boston Globe
GOP, Courts: Had Enough?
by Robert Kuttner


Is President Bush's effort to claim extra-constitutional powers as a wartime commander-in-chief finally being reined in by congressional Republicans and courts? Or will the Republican Congress and increasingly docile judges figure out ways to legalize Bush's extralegal incursions after the fact?

Exhibit A is the administration's secret program to wiretap American citizens in express violation of even the wide police and spying powers of the USA Patriot Act. The administration claimed, in a doctrine put forth by Alberto Gonzales, then White House counsel, now attorney general, that the commander-in-chief role superseded other laws, and that Congress's post-9/11 votes for war essentially gave Bush dictatorial powers.

This rankled even some Republicans, since the White House had not bothered to inform congressional leaders of the extralegal spying. Now Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, after weeks of negotiations with Gonzales, has emerged with a compromise that would superficially bring the White House into constitutional compliance, but would actually make Congress complicit in gutting both the law and the Fourth Amendment's protections against illegal searches and seizures.

The idea is that the secret FISA court, named for the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, would decide whether it is constitutional for the wiretap program to ignore the court's legally mandated role to authorize such taps. If the court found that the White House needed additional authority for an illegal program, it would guide Congress on how to legalize it.

So much for the Pennsylvania senator's overrated role as the rare Republican legislator who still cares about the Constitution. Specter's real role is fig leaf.