What Sheldon Whitehouse D RI discovered in Bush's OLC papers just before he voted YES on cloture.

madfloridian

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Thu Jun-26-08 10:50 PM
Original message

What Sheldon Whitehouse D RI discovered in Bush's OLC papers just before he voted YES on cloture.

Make that the Office of Legal Counsel. He, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, spent hours going over these papers. What he wrote about it is terrifying in its clarity...Bush considers himself in total control, able to do anything he wants, when he wants.

Yesterday Senator Sheldon Whitehouse voted YES on cloture on the FISA bill. They apparently won't vote until July, but we know how it will go. Just like the vote on the Iraq invasion. Just like the trade deals. Just like the bankruptcy bill which left the elderly and ill vulnerable to losing their homes through no fault of their own.

Whitehouse knew the extent of the powers Bush had claimed for himself, and he voted to end the discussion of the FISA bill that gives him even more legal powers to spy.

From Kagro X at Daily Kos...the discoveries made by Whitehouse in the OLC files.

Profiles in WTF. Sheldon Whitehouse

These are Whitehouse's statements after reading the files.

To give you an example of what I read, I have gotten three legal propositions from these OLC opinions declassified. Here they are, as accurately as my note taking could reproduce them from the classified documents. Listen for yourself. I will read all three, and then discuss each one.

An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.

The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.

The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.

To use more of Whitehouse's words on the topic.

In a nutshell, these three Bush administration legal propositions boil down to this:

"I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them."

"I get to determine what my own powers are."

"The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is."

Then Sheldon Whitehouse said:

When the Congress of the United States is willing to roll over for an unprincipled President, this is where you end up.

He was correct. Then he rolled over. He voted for cloture on the bill that will undermine further the 4th amendment rights to privacy, probable cause, and warrants.

Kagro X had more to say on the topic.

FISA: Yeah, but... what if?

If there's one thing the 110th Congress has taught us, it's that this bill can only be the "exclusive means by which electronic surveillance and the interception of domestic wire, oral, or electronic communications may be conducted" to the extent that the Congress itself insists it is.

Insists. Using all their powers. Every time. All the time. Forever.

How much you wanna bet?

UPDATE: And Hoyer closes his speech with the same ridiculous argument. What a capper.

UPDATE 2: The House Majority opposes the bill by a margin of 105-128. The bill passes.

UPDATE 3: And the great payoff for this week's "bipartisan compromises?" Republican one minute speeches blaming Democrats for high gas prices.

The groups that our Democrats are trying to pacify by such a bill are already on the attack. They are not going to rollover and exclaim that the Democrats are just so strong on National Security.

They do not compromise their principles...flawed as they may be. A few in the independent middle might do so. But they were already skeptical of this administration.

We know the price of this bill. I don't think many of our Democrats did know when they voted for it. They voted on faith without reading it. After all they only had 24 hours to read all of it, and one hour to discuss.

I vowed the day that we invaded Iraq and the bombs were dropping as the media salivated over it....I vowed I would not be silent about things that mattered like wars, hurting our elderly, giving our jobs away....and a party that is shirking its responsibility to hold the most incompetent president ever responsible for the horrors he has wrought on this country, and the world.

How can we just go along with this without speaking out? Even if it does no good, and the party ignores us again...how can we not express our anger.

I do not give Obama a pass on giving and voting for such a sell-out bill. I do not give a pass to 105 House Democrats who voted YES.

I will vote for our nominee, but the farther away he moves from the center to the scary right....the more fears I have. In truth, I believe he is doing it because that is what Democrats have been trained to do for decades...they think they must appeal to the extreme right to win.

I don't want to hear the argument from some here who do it every time....the argument that it was the Blue Dogs who gave us the 2006 win. That is hooey. When your party leaders descend on your district and dry up the money, when you are called in by the other candidate by party leaders and told to drop out.. you might as well do it. So if only conservative Dems are running, of course they win.

The far right is jaded and tough. They think it is a joke when we pander and hope to win their favor. At this time in our history with the destruction of our country by this bunch of incompetents, it is just plain dumb to think we have to cater to them to win.