29 January 2006 (# 55)
Yes, as the Editors of the
New York Times noted today, the menu served by Bush and his neoconster minions to dissuade and distract our fellow citizens about their illegal domestic spying was extensive and, predictably, untruthful:
A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of
warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist,
and a couple of big, dangerous lies. The first was that the domestic spying program is carefully aimed only at people who are actively working with Al Qaeda, when actually it has violated the rights of countless innocent Americans.
And the second was that the Bush team could have prevented the 9/11 attacks if only they had thought of eavesdropping without a warrant.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/opinion/29sun1.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=printIt’s a remarkable editorial from the Sulzberger media empire especially given how enabling he, Keller and their Judith Miller have been to George and Karl’s propaganda endeavors these past four years. But, in publishing this particular editorial they provide a timely framework for two immediate events -- the Senate Judiciary Committee review of all of Bush’s illegal spying activities and the Alito nomination. Specifically, the editorial states:
Mr. Bush made himself the judge of the proper balance between national security and Americans' rights, between the law and presidential power. He wants Americans to accept, on faith, that he is doing it right. But even if the United States had a government based on the good character of elected officials rather than law, Mr. Bush would not have earned that kind of trust. The domestic spying program is part of a well-established pattern: when Mr. Bush doesn't like the rules, he just changes them, as he has done for the detention and treatment of prisoners and has threatened to do in other areas, like the confirmation of his judicial nominees. He has consistently shown a lack of regard for privacy, civil liberties and judicial due process in claiming his sweeping powers. The founders of our country created the system of checks and balances to avert just this sort of imperial arrogance.
Link: ibid
People for the American Way published a report on Alito entitled
“A Likely Vote to Approve Presidential Power to Eavesdrop on Americans?” in which they document why the reasonable answer to the question is “yes”:
As a senior political appointee in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), and later in remarks at Federalist Society events,
Judge Alito repeatedly endorsed construing the Constitution to give extremely broad scope to presidential power. At a Federalist Society symposium on administrative law in 2001, Judge Alito endorsed the view – known as the “unitary executive” -- that Congress lacks constitutional authority to put law enforcement power in administrative agencies that are not directly accountable to the President.
Similarly, in a 1989 Federalist Society symposium on Morrison v. Olson, the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the Independent Counsel Act, Judge Alito sided with those who claimed that the statute was unconstitutional, stating that the decision had “restricted the executive’s constitutionally guaranteed appointment power,” and referring to Justice Scalia’s dissent as “brilliant.<2> ”
And, as a member of the Solicitor General’s Office, Judge Alito argued that Cabinet officials who authorized illegal wiretaps of Americans to gather intelligence about possible terrorist activities were entitled to absolute immunity from liability.
The Supreme Court rejected this claim in Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511 (1985) (ruling that such officials were entitled to qualified immunity).
As a judge on the Third Circuit, Alito has an extremely troubling record on the Fourth Amendment, and has voted to give law enforcement officials enormous search and seizure power, despite constitutional restraints. In one 2-1 ruling, Alito wrote an opinion upholding the FBI’s warrantless video surveillance of a suspect’s hotel suite on the ground that the FBI had instructed its agents only to turn on the equipment when an informant was present in the suite to “consent” to the monitoring.<3> Judge McKee, in dissent, pointedly observed that the surveillance equipment was in the suite and capable of use 24 hours a day to see and hear “practically everything
did in the privacy of his hotel suite throughout the day and night,” and that the “limitations of that Orwellian capability were not subject to any court order.”<4> Underscoring the extent to which Judge Alito would give the FBI unchecked authority to conduct secret surveillance Judge McKee wrote, “I can not endorse my colleague’s willingness to entrust the fundamental right of privacy to law enforcement’s discretion.”<5>
Judge Alito’s statements, speeches and judicial record taken together establish that he supports an extremely broad interpretation of the President’s powers under the Constitution, and of the powers of executive branch law enforcement officers. It is hardly a surprise that a President who has repeatedly claimed unprecedented power would nominate an individual with these pro-executive views to the Court that has the last word on presidential authority and on the Fourth Amendment. Americans who are concerned about abuses of presidential power such as the recently disclosed secret wiretapping of American citizens should be deeply troubled by the Alito nomination.
Link: http://www.savethecourt.org/site/c.mwK0JbNTJrF/b.1310059/k.6B64/Alito_A_Likely_Vote_to_Approve_Presidential_Power_to_Eavesdrop_on_Americans.htmThe Senate Democrats have every reason to filibuster Alito because he represents a clear threat to our inalienable rights as protected by our Constitution. An interesting consequence of delaying the confirmation, by filibuster and refusal to allow cloture, is that the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Bush’s spying will further highlight to the American public just how dangerous it would be for Alito to be a Supreme Court Justice. By halting Alito’s confirmation, our fellow citizens will have been provided more time to compare Alito, the avowed disciple of unchecked executive power, with the brave individuals, reported on today by
Newsweek, who refused to support Bush’s illegal and un-Constitutional actions.
In the summer of 2004, Goldsmith, 43, had left his post in George W. Bush's Washington to become a professor at Harvard Law School. Stocky, rumpled, genial, though possessing an enormous intellect, Goldsmith is known for his lack of pretense; he rarely talks about his time in government. In liberal Cambridge, Mass., he was at first snubbed in the community and mocked as an atrocity-abetting war criminal by his more knee-jerk colleagues. ICY WELCOME FOR NEW LAW PROF, headlined
The Harvard Crimson.
They had no idea. Goldsmith was actually the opposite of what his detractors imagined. For nine months, from October 2003 to June 2004, he had been the central figure in a secret but intense rebellion of a small coterie of Bush administration lawyers. Their insurrection, described to
NEWSWEEK by current and former administration officials who did not wish to be identified discussing confidential deliberations, is one of the most significant and intriguing untold stories of the war on terror.
These Justice Department lawyers, backed by their intrepid boss Comey, had stood up to the hard-liners, centered in the office of the vice president, who wanted to give the president virtually unlimited powers in the war on terror.
Demanding that the White House stop using what they saw as farfetched rationales for riding rough-shod over the law and the Constitution, Goldsmith and the others fought to bring government spying and interrogation methods within the law. They did so at their peril; ostracized, some were denied promotions, while others left for more comfortable climes in private law firms and academia. Some went so far as to line up private lawyers in 2004, anticipating that the president's eavesdropping program would draw scrutiny from Congress, if not prosecutors. These government attorneys did not always succeed, but their efforts went a long way toward vindicating the principle of a nation of laws and not men.
Link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11079547/site/newsweekYes, by delaying Alito’s confirmation, the Senate Democrats can provide our fellow citizens with the opportunity to have Mr. Comey and Mr. Goldsmith and all their colleagues sit before the Senate Judiciary Committee and testify as to all that they did to try to protect our liberties, our Constitution from the grave, imperial threat of Bush, Cheney and their neoconster minions – a threat that Alito would only amplify if given the opportunity.
Please do all you can to urge everyone affiliated with the DNC to support the Senate Democrats as they filibuster Alito and as they dig into Bush and Cheney’s expansive, illegal domestic spying.
Thank you for your continued leadership,
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