A President or an Emperor?
Honestly, I wonder when George Bush last read the US Constitution, assuming he ever read it, period. You know, the document he swore to "preserve, protect, and defend" not once but TWICE?!? The title "commander-in-chief" is not a catch-all that allows a President to circumvent enacted laws of the United States AND the Constitution at will … so long as there’s a war going on.
The first argument Bush has used to defend his domestic spying on Americans is the resolution to use force against those nations, groups, or persons who conducted the 9/11 attacks. Tom Daschle, former US Senator from South Dakota, refutes this understanding of the force language in today’s Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201101.html) where he reveals that Bush did ask for expansive language to conduct military operations within the United States and that Congress refused this authority. NO ONE who voted for that resolution did so with the understanding that it would grant Bush the right to conduct spying operations in secret without court approval on US Citizens. That reading of the resolution is false, and Bush knows it’s false.
The second argument is that the US Constitution grants him this authority as Commander-in-Chief. As Bob Barr (of all people) pointed out this Wednesday in the AJC, for Bush’s interpretation to have any standing, the Constitution would need to read, "The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States and when carrying out duties in such capacity shall not be subject to the laws of these United States or of this Constitution." The underlined portion would be the NEW material.
The FISA law is clear that it does not allow warrantless spying on US persons, which includes citizens, legal residents, etc. The penalty for this is found in 50 USC 1809 (c): "An offense described in this section is punishable by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both." God only knows how many times Bush has spied on Americans in the last 4 years or so, but each incident of circumventing the court like this would require a $10K fine and/or 5 years in the federal pen. Since Bush’s two "excuses" for spying have been shown to be shame, he flagrantly violated the law.
The sad thing is that had he come to Congress and asked for the law to be amended to do the type of spying he SWEARS he’s soley doing (i.e. scanning communications to and from certain areas or containing certain key words and then spying on those that get flagged), the Congress would have probably gone along with it, especially in 2003 when the GOP gained full control of the government. The thing is, we’re supposed to just trust that Bush isn’t abusing his power. Excuse me if I’m a skeptic. Nothing this President has done warrants that kind of trust, and even if he was trustworthy, he needs to have oversight in this activity because of the sensitive nature of the intrusion. Besides, it’s already been shown that animal rights groups, Quaker groups, and other political enemies of the President have been spied on by the Pentagon. We have no reason to believe that Bush isn’t using his newfound "power" to spy on people who oppose him.
Then you have these right wing idiots who say Bush has done nothing wrong, and how dare anyone mention the words "breaking the law" and "impeachment". It seems that so long as a right winger is in the White House, the pundits on the right have no problem with any abuse of rights or breaking of the law as long as it’s purpose is to "git the terr’rists". There is a right and wrong way to fight this war on Terror, and time after time, Bush has chosen the wrong way because it’s "easier". He needs to actually read the Constitution carefully. Perhaps Laura can read it to him before he goes to bed every night for a week, especially Article II about the presidency. George Bush needs to realize that he’s a PRESIDENT, not a King or an Emperor like in the Roman days. Otherwise, our republic may not be able to stand another 3 yrs of this man’s reign.
