The Washington Post is reporting of a new Position Paper defending the President's authorization of warrant-less searches. The paper offers a nutshell of the Bush argument:
The Justice Department's lengthy legal analysis also says that if a 1978 law that requires court warrants for domestic eavesdropping is interpreted as blocking the president's powers to protect the country in a time of war, its constitutionality is doubtful and the president's authority supersedes it.Where to start...?
Let me break it down for you even more: there is a 1978 law requiring warrants. if that interferes with the president's powers to protect the country in a time of war, Bush says its unconstitutional and that he doesn't have to follow that law.
The first problem here is that isn't his job. Courts decide what's unconstitutional. he gets himself in deeper because he refuses to ask congress to change the law he doesn't like and he refuses to ASK a court to rule on his assertion (and THAT makes what he's doing a crime. a felony, actually, punishable by jail time).
The next problem is that he says it interferes with his constitutionally prescribed war powers. This is a very thorny issue because this nation has fought wars for the last 50 years without declaring them (declaring a war is what initiates the war powers he asserts). This is a highly debateable issue, but not one i will address here (though if you WANT to debate/discuss it i'll be glad to do that).
Lastly (for now), the law doesn't keep them from doing their searches. it explicitly allows them. they simply don't want to be bothered with the process. that lack of interest in doing what required is not only unlawful, criminal, and unconstitutional...it is literally a violation of the President's oath of office!
2 comments:
I had to read this [the position] several times, I couldn't understand it.
first off its a hypothetical "if X then Y" which I guess means that so long as its not interpreted in the way that the administration is opposed to then it isn't unconstitutional. But in that case their claim is that the law is unconstitutional, which would mean that if you interpreted to limit the president's powers in a time of war, the law itself could be overturned, making all searches without warrants legal. Is this a veiled threat? "If you oppose this we'll do it to everyone?"
Maybe I'm alone but I don't think the ends always justifies the means. Desperate times may call for desperate measures but it seems to me that everyone needs to watch The Siege and take its criticisms more seriously.
one other thing to ponder is that this was supposed to be secret. we were never to know of it, let alone anyone else that could conduct oversight, so no one could ever issue an opinion on 'constitutionality'.
as for the ends justifying the means, that implies they couldn't get the 'ok' to do what they wanted to do in the first place. actually they couldn't be bothered to try, so it isn't honest to say the court somehow 'barred' them.
Their arguments are so weak that only the most ardent Bush apologists of the limbaugh/hannity sort even try to defend this (oh, and people on the bush payroll...they're all over this).
politically this may not be realistic, but in the terms of Presidential action, this is perhaps the most clearly impeachable offense by any president ever. He better hope they dont' lose the majority in 2006. the free ride is about to end.
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