Forgive my skepticism, but I have to wonder how much they were really being told. Very secret hush hush. Terror ya know. Even if this committee knew everything happening every step of the way, that would not excuse any breaking of the law.
From a little bit of checking (for the Pit version) wire tapping or any other sort of NSA surveillance of US citizens within the CONUS violates FISA, already existing wiretap laws, and the NSA officially stated mission. If nobody broke the law, it sure looks like they were skating awfully close to the edge.
There is strange thing about all the claims of the desparate need for warrantless wire taps, secret courts issuing secret warrants, etc., etc. etc… It was pointed out by Chris Mathews tonight (16 Dec.) that almost immediately after the WTC attack it developed that our federal law enforcement had detailed information on all of the hijackers and what they had been doing. There was even a FBI memo warning working its way up the chain of command about how the hijackers taking flying lessons. And this information had all been collected without the USA Patriot Act or any other extraordinary measures. The difficult wasn’t because of an inability to bypass legal safeguards on civil rights in order to get information, it was the inability to imagine such an audacious attack.
That is always the problem in this sort of things. You can have tons of data but unless to assign the right intention to the targets of the investigation you can’t come up with the useful answer and no amount of relaxing of our legal protections aganist government snooping will overcome that problem.
Why did the NYT sit on this story for more than a year? I wonder if this could have influenced a few swing voters.
Maybe. According to the Times, they were asked not to publish. The reason had to be political. Still, I wonder if it would matter one bit. After reading the PIPA report, I doubt anything would make a difference.
I don’t get the impression that the issue is so much constitutional as it is legal. As I just posted in a Pit thread, it seems these activities may have violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, specifically 50 U.S.C. 1809:
Damn liberal media!
The absolutely contrary is true. Unlawful surveillance is a bad basis for impeachment, because it is a wrong of substance and meaning. Polycarp has advised the Democrats to hold to a losing strategy: Namely remaining attached to policies soley because they are decent, just and wise. Rather, recent history has shown that American power will follow conduct that contains, at a minimum, malevolence and deceit.
Should it fall to the Democrats to play the white knight and reverse the trend enjoyed by their opponents? No, given the opportunity they should consider the many plain examples of wrong conduct of President Bush and disregard all as grounds for impeachment. Instead, something insubstantial and fleeting, say President Bush’s ongoing and deliberated racial prejudice, should form that basis. In that way the parents of the contemporary standard for impeachment could look with pride on their progeny’s maturity.
I hesitate to interpose my cynical view after two such high-minded (and laudably so) analyses of the detriment to the body politic as a result of the trench warfare that has set in over the last decades.
That said, consider if you will,that the ONLY check on the power of the president is impeachment. The Supreme Court may order what it wishes, but unless the executive moves to enforce the order, it languishes. Andrew Jackson made that plain as part of his ethnic cleansing program.
Not bi partisan commisions, not blue level panels, not the republican elders, not the joint chiefs of staff. No one but the house with the concurrence of two thirds of the senate can put a bridle on a runaway president.
Given the nature of the Andrew Johnson impeachment, I’d prefer a more recent precedent than Elvis provided, and fortunately there is one in the Nixon impeachment. Article 1 was for obstruction of justice, and Article 2 was for abuse of power. Article 2 passed the House Judiciary Committee by a 28-10 vote, garnering the votes of 7 of the 17 Republicans on the Committee.
One of the points they were specifically making at the time was that a President could, and in that case should, be impeached for acts that were not statutory crimes. One Committee member, McClory (R) of Illinois, voted for Article 2 but not for any of the other articles.
Maybe the full Congress at the time didn’t pass Article 2, but they would have, if Nixon hadn’t resigned first.
Meant to say the full House.
To follow up, I’m gonna quote a blogger who’s already summed up a bit of this - Hilzoy, guest-posting for Kevin Drum this weekend:
And that is sure enough what we’ve got.
I’d still say the primary article of impeachment should be about the long and detailed campaign of Administration lying that got us into Iraq. No laws were broken, but it was unquestionably an abuse of power.
Secondly, Bush should be impeached over the various acts that led to the torture of captives in US custody, from the removal of previous well-established standards protecting such captives without instituting equally clear standards in their place, to the establishment of a network of secret prisons.
But I can’t see why Bush shouldn’t be impeached over this too.
Please, shut up about impeachment.
Bush is not going to be impeached.
Even the most die-hard lefty dreamers must realize this.
Don’t you?
Next question: why?
I agree with you that he likely isn’t. But be completely honest about the reasons. He won’t be impeached because he has a majority in Congress on his side. Period.
He has by any reasonable standard committed offenses as wrong as Andrew Johnson and W.J. Clinton.
He shouldn’t be impeached for the reasons I gave a bunch of posts back. But that’s not the reason he won’t be. And if the 2006 elections produce a Democrat majority, all bets are off.
Now be a mensch and discuss the issues like a Great Debater Doper, not a party flack. If there aren’t grounds for impeachment, say why that’s the case. If you should by some off chance agree with me, say so.
It would be nice to have some committed Americans posting here, as opposed to committed Republicans and committed Democrats.
Aw, be nice to me; I put that one in for comic relief as well as because it shows that the process can indeed be simply, nakedly partisan vendetti, not cloaked in the dignified robes of accusations of criminal conduct as Bricker falsely claimed. Two of the 3 times it’s been used have been just that, shamefully.
Speaking of whom, Bricker, do you claim Bush shouldn’t be impeached? That his continued presence in office does not present a danger to the Republic so grave that it can’t wait for the next election to remedy? It’s quite odd for one as fond of posting and discussing hypotheticals as you to request that one *not * be discussed here - is there more to it than your fear of where it would lead you?
Bush is probably not going to be impeached. Probably.
However, it might happen. I’m really seeing a continuing unravelling here, that reminds me a bit of the Nixon era. There might not be a choice about such things, eventually, if Cheney gets busted for Plame, if DeLay goes down in Texas, if the Abramoff scandal hits harder and harder… and it seems to be headed that way.
He’s had to say ‘The information was wrong’ about the war. Now, we know the information (The OSP) was specially provided to him. If it can be proven the information was shaped… the shaper’s toasty. If it can be shown, and it might be possible, that Bush or Cheney had a handle in the shaping…
If the redistricting is undone in Texas…
It might be possible he gets impeached, in order to purge the party. Might.
Good points. But it would be difficult for the House members to impeach and the Senate to convict. The election is too close and the Republican members of Congress would be faced with the question - If he is so bad as to be guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors how come you stuck with him so long? Maybe the voters would decide to do more purging than the members had in mind. That’s enough to make any politician cautious.
I think Bush is just enough insulated from reality that he really believes that in a war the President does have dictatorial powers. His intent could be to protect the US and not to tear it down and he doesn’t see the long term danger in destroying the system of checks and balances that has worked pretty well.
I don’t think the Iraq thing is totally GW’s fault. He seems to lack any sense of proportion or the fitness of his actions relative to the problem to be solved. The Congress has nearly abandoned its oversight of how the Executive is performing and has not demanded an accounting of results and explanations for the expendature of lives and money there.
Ahh Nixon. Wasn’t he impeached for telling his buddies to break the law (Watergate burglary and the subsequent obstrucion of justice charges)? If Bush signed an executive order authorizing warrantless domestic spying on US citizens, then he was telling agencies to break the law. Did these surveillance agencies (or anyone else including the Attorney General) attempt to get a warrant for wiretaps with 72 hours? How about after 15 days? Did the spying stop after 72 hours or 15 days?
The law forbids warrantless surveillance of US citizens, and it provides procedures to be followed in emergencies that do not leave enough time for federal agents to get a warrant. If the NY Times report is correct, the government did not follow these procedures. There is no evidence that there was any intent to follow existing laws or procedures. They therefore acted illegally. They chose to completely ignore laws, which did in fact provide for such “terror emergencies”. Isn’t the president sworn to uphold and defend (and obey) the law?
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Its Section 1809a makes it a criminal offense to “engage in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute.”
FISA does authorize surveillance without a warrant, but not on US citizens.
FISA says that the Attorney General can authorize emergency surveillance without a warrant when there is no time to obtain one. But it requires that the Attorney General notify the judge of that authorization immediately, and that he apply for a warrant “as soon as practicable, but not more than 72 hours after the Attorney General authorizes such surveillance.” … In the absence of a judicial order approving such electronic surveillance, the surveillance shall terminate when the information sought is obtained, when the application for the order is denied, or after the expiration of 72 hours from the time of authorization by the Attorney General, whichever is earliest. In the event that such application for approval is denied, or in any other case where the electronic surveillance is terminated and no order is issued approving the surveillance, no information obtained or evidence derived from such surveillance shall be received in evidence or otherwise disclosed in any trial, hearing, or other proceeding in or before any court, grand jury, department, office, agency, regulatory body, legislative committee, or other authority of the United States, a State, or political subdivision thereof".
Nixon wasn’t impeached.
Bush’s people put the OSP (or “Iraq desk”) in the Pentagon specifically to look for ways to drum up fervor and tweak data. Further, according to the Brit Hume interview, when directly asked if he would have gone to war even if there were no WMD evidence (sidestepping the issue of cooked intel), Bush’s answer was YES. So, weapons or not, UN inspectors or not, the decision had already been made. In fact, WMD were irrelevant, except as a good scary excuse.
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/12/15/wmd-irrelevant/
http://streaming.americanprogress.org/ThinkProgress/2005/invasion.320.240.mov.htm
BUSH: I said I made the right decision. Knowing what I know today, I would have still made that decision.
HUME: So, if you had had this — if the weapons had been out of the equation because the intelligence did not conclude that he had them, it was still the right call?
BUSH: Absolutely.
So while Bush used to insist there were weapons, and then insisted that “he didn’t know”, now he says “it doesn’t matter anyway”.
He needs and deserves not just impeachment, but jail time. Unfortunately, that probaly won’t ever happen.