Remember when Dems had real leaders - Democratic Underground

OzarkDem

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Mon Aug-06-07 08:31 PM
Original message

Remember when Dems had real leaders

Edited on Mon Aug-06-07 08:36 PM by OzarkDem

I do, and admit I always assumed it would continue. But the quality of Democratic leaders in DC has gradually eroded until we have such a stunning contrast between leaders of today and those of the Watergate Era.

If Sen. Sam Ervin were alive today, what would he think? Would he even recognize his own party? How would he feel about the way his own party's leaders gutted the law he helped establish - FISA?

Senator Ervin made a deep impact on American history through his work on two separate committees at the beginning and ending of his career that were critical in bringing down two powerful opponents: Senator Joe McCarthy in 1954 and President Richard M. Nixon in 1974. The Senate Select Committee to Investigate Campaign Practices, which investigated Watergate, was popularly known as the "Ervin Committee."

He got his start in investigative matters, even before Watergate, when in January 1970 it was revealed by Christopher Pyle, an investigator for Ervin's Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, that the U.S. Army was performing domestic investigations on the civilian population. Ervin's further investigations on the matter over the following years, together with the Church Committee inquiries, led to passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (after Ervin had left office).

Ervin gained lasting fame through his stewardship of the Senate Select Committee to Investigate Campaign Practices, also known as the Senate Watergate Committee, from the 1972 presidential election.

Edit for link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Ervin

Recall the days when anti-war activists knew they could still rely on a southern conservative Democrat to protect their rights. Back then we really did think that once these crimes were exposed and laws like FISA passed that we wouldn't have to worry about our own government spying on us again. Its inconceivable to me that my party leaders now allow their members in Congress to roll back those changes.

http://www.cmhpf.org/senator%20sam%20ervin.htm

"For the past four years, the U.S. Army has been closely watching civilian political activity within the United States." So charged Christopher H. Pyle, a former intelligence officer, in the January 1970 edition of Washington Monthly. <1> Pyle's account of military spies snooping on law‑abiding citizens and recording their actions in secret government computers sent a shudder through the nation's press. Images from George Orwell's novel 1984 of Big Brother and the thought police filled the newspapers. Public alarm prompted the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, chaired by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, to investigate. For more than a year, Ervin struggled against a cover‑up to get to the bottom of the surveillance system. Frustrated by the Nixon Administration's misleading statements, claims of inherent executive powers, and refusals to disclose information on the basis of national security, the Senator called for public hearings in 1971 to examine "the dangers the Army's program presents to the principles of the Constitution."<2>

Sam Ervin, the "ol' country lawyer" from Morganton, intended his hearings to focus on the narrow topic of how the Army's domestic surveillance of American civilians threatened civil liberties. He wanted to illustrate some "down home truths" about how the federal government should never trample on his beloved Constitution or endanger the privacy rights of individual Americans. But the Senator found himself engaged in an extended public debate with the Nixon administration over one of the central questions of the American political experience--a question that has recently taken on a renewed significance since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon--how to balance the constitutional rights of the individual with the national security needs of the state.