King George Has Changed his Mind
Back in January when Bush was feeling all bipartisan and conciliatory because he’d just got thumped in the mid-term elections, he thought he’d try and make nice with the new Democratic majority by ceasing his illegal NSA wiretap program and start obeying the surveillance laws outlined in FISA.
King George has changed his mind:
Senior Bush administration officials told Congress on Tuesday that they could not pledge that the administration would continue to seek warrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program, as it agreed to do in January.
Rather, they argued that the president had the constitutional authority to decide for himself whether to conduct surveillance without warrants.
As a result of the January agreement, the administration said that the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program has been brought under the legal structure laid out in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for the wiretapping of American citizens and others inside the United States.
But on Tuesday, the senior officials, including Michael McConnell, the new director of national intelligence, said they believed that the president still had the authority under Article II of the Constitution to once again order the N.S.A. to conduct surveillance inside the country without warrants.
During a hearing Tuesday of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. McConnell was asked by Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, whether he could promise that the administration would no longer sidestep the court when seeking warrants.
“Sir, the president’s authority under Article II is in the Constitution,” Mr. McConnell said. “So if the president chose to exercise Article II authority, that would be the president’s call.”
…
The administration’s proposal would also provide legal immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the National Security Agency’s surveillance program without warrants before it was brought under the surveillance act in January. It would also provide legal protections for government workers who took part in the N.S.A. program.
I went back and read Article II, and I didn’t see what Michael McConnell claims to see. I read it twice and I couldn’t find where the president was exempt from laws protecting our civil liberties. I read the Fourth Amendment too, and that made it pretty clear to me that the Bush was clearly violating our Constitution.
And notice in that last paragraph where the Administration wants to grant retroactive immunity to corporate telecommunications companies? And, just as was done in the Military Commissions Act, they want to retroactively grant immunity to all government officials who may have broken laws while carrying out their orders for the past six years.
There is a name for the merger of corporate and state interests that consolidates power in the hands of the few. It’s called fascism.
What this story tells me is that some people are finally recognizing the Bush Administration as a fascist regime, and some members in Congress are trying to hold them accountable for their blatant violations of law. So now the Administration is trying to cover its ass by pushing through laws that grant immunity for everything they and their wealthy corporate coconspirators have done.
High crimes and misdemeanors? Yes, I think so.
Start the revolution.
