Centerblue.org

“The president has basically said: “I’ll agree to let a court decide if I’m breaking the law if you pass a law first that says I’m not breaking the law.”

–Dem. Senator Russell Feingold.

Feingold has summarized perfectly what is so arrogant and so wrong with the President’s “request” to Congress that it grant him “additional (synonym: autocratic) authority” to implement unconstitutional warrantless surveillance and wiretapping. Bush tried to make his case today, invoking the memory of 9/11 as the fifth anniversary of that event approaches. In response to the strong rebuke from a federal court in Michigan banning the warrantless surveillance and wiretapping program as unconstitutional, Bush is seeking to strengthen the legal underpinnings of his program while he appeals the case by strong-arming Congress into endorsing a blatantly unconstitutional process. To get that consent he threw a carrot to Congress, agreeing to submit the program to a one-time FISA constitutional review–but only after Congress had approved it. Feingold is protesting that Congressional “blessing” before submission to judicial review.

Good for him, although i’m not clear how obtaining Congressional approval would somehow make the program meet constitutional muster. The program was struck down because it violated the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches, in addition to slapping the president’s overstepping his constitutional authority in ordering the warrantless surveillance. Congress can’t legislate away the Fourth Amendment, making the efficacy of its approval questionable.

At any rate, it is clear that Bush will stop at nothing to be a king, and has no shame in using the 9/11 anniversary for political purposes in attempting to obtain that power.

A US federal judge in Detroit has ruled that the NSA’s domestic wiretapping program is unconstitutional, and issed an injunction to stop it immediately.

While the decision is not yet available, I suspect the judge found the program to run afoul of the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirements on wiretaps, the lack of which constitute an unreasonable search and seizure.

The Bush order to permit warrantless wiretapping surveillance was a gross violation of well-established precedent protecting Americans from a snooping federal government. If the president really requires a wiretap that is so urgent for the sake of national security that he doesn’t have time to go through the process of getting a warrant he has the option of doing the wiretap so long as he subsequently submits the warrant request to the FISA court. Giving Bush carte blanche authority to issue wiretap orders without the possibility of having the decision reviewed by any judge for probable cause is a power-grabbing usurpation of liberty that bears no relationship to his ability to protect the US from terrorist attack.

The president is charged with enforcing the laws, not wiping his ass with them. I’m glad the federal judge was brave enough to render this decision.