Friday, December 16, 2005

Rule of Law? Over There, Behind my Socks

You know, I was going to give a pass to the whole domestic spying scandal. To me it's a symptom of bigger issues. But I couldn't pass up a fine piece of writing by Hilzoy over at Political Animal.

This is against the law. I have put references to the relevant statute below the fold; the brief version is: 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. It therefore acted illegally.

Bush's order is arguably unconstitutional as well: it seems to violate the fourth amendment, and it certainly violates the requirement (Article II, sec. 3) that the President "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."

I am normally extremely wary of talking about impeachment. I think that impeachment is a trauma for the country, and that it should only be considered in extreme cases. Moreover, I think that the fact that Clinton was impeached raises the bar as far as impeaching Bush: two traumas in a row is really not good for the country, and even though my reluctance to go through a second impeachment benefits the very Republicans who needlessly inflicted the first on us, I don't care. It's bad for the country, and that matters most.

But I have a high bar, not a nonexistent one. And for a President to order violations of the law meets my criteria for impeachment. This is exactly what got Nixon in trouble: he ordered his subordinates to obstruct justice. To the extent that the two cases differ, the differences make what Bush did worse: after all, it's not as though warrants are hard to get, or the law makes no provision for emergencies. Bush could have followed the law had he wanted to. He chose to set it aside.

And this is something that no American should tolerate. We claim to have a government of laws, not of men. That claim means nothing if we are not prepared to act when a President (or anyone else) places himself above the law.


I personally am not going to throw around impeachment -- I think it's now permanently tarred as a device of partisan hackery, be that true or not. But the point is valid: in my pragmatism, I have no problem with the actual activity set out in the stories. It's the fact that there is a process in place to avoid abuse and that process was completely circumvented that worries me to no end. As soon as the law becomes inconvenient ...

Much like when the President mis-spoke the other day and said "It's the President's job to decide when to send in the troops" (No, that's Congress' job. It says so in a little thing we like to call the Constitution, Article 1 Section 8), the disconnect between how people seem to think the government should work, believe it does work, how it's actually designed to work, and how it actually works has reached a critical mass. Personally I blame shitty 6th grade Social Studies teachers. We should round them up and inter them all without due process. And what's terrifying is that there is a precedent for just such an act.

But this is the fundamental question people need to be asking themselves: is this how they think the government should work? If the answer is "yes", then fine, you feel free to live in whatever version of America you want, but don't pretend it is in any way related to the one set out in the Constitution, or even the one defined by common sense. Just go back to calling the rich folk "Your Lordship" and sleep better at night. If the answer's "no", well then, you have to decide if keeping the gay folk from marrying or disdain for universal healthcare and/or Michael Moore is worth living in a police state.

Oh, and by the way, for those of you who use a certain argument against gay marriage -- THIS is what a "slippery slope" looks like in the real world.

37 comments:

Hawise said...

This is Americans forgetting that the whole thing was designed so that one could simply roll up a single document and go anywhere and still be American. America was created by people that still remembered that they or their ancestors had picked up bags and moved to get away from intolerable situations.
The current government seems to have forgotten that America is not a place, it is an idea. This current government is abyssmally unaware of its own history, its own ancestry and worse yet, the true meaning of the oaths that they swore. It is a shame that the country is going to have to deal with for a long time and impeachment may be a wound but some wounds heal.

Konrad West said...

This is just a symptom of the neocon ideology: the end justifies the means.

If that means breaking the law and going against the Constitution, so be it.

It's just a shame that they ignore the fact that the founding fathers' idea behind enshrining civil liberties in the Constitution was that an end *never* justifies the means.

Kirk said...

The flaw in believing the end justifies the means is that the end, isn't. It's just another step on the way to tomorrow. And so the means you took to get to today will in turn bear consequences down the road.

Karl said...

Am I the only one who gets a distinct feeling that Bush will be the first president to attempt going past the two term rule?
You know, he does want a dictatorship.

Shawn said...

Hi, first time posting, so bear with me.

I think this goes well beyond the long-practiced belief that the end justifies the means. What ends are we talking about here, ridding the world of terrorism (a fool's dream) or holding more power over We the People? It's not clear, really. Terrorism is obviously a real threat, but is our government's reaction to it worth the price we're paying? Are they overreacting or using it as an excuse to do away with burdensome laws and that outdated yellow parchment at the National Archives?

I believe there are those inside the administration who view the idea of representative government as abhorrent. They would like to do away with any and all checks and balances; they want absolute power (think Dick Cheney). Meanwhile, the figurehead, I mean president, is rather disinterested in all the goes on around him. I wouldn't doubt the documents his lawyers hand him to sign fail to grasp his attention, let alone his comprehension. I belief this 2002 executive order falls into that category. "Just sign, Mr. President. Your Gameboy's calling."

So does incompetence justify impeachment? Don't know, but repeatedly breaking the law over the past three years might.

GM Doug said...

While I'm on the outside looking in on this one - I'm struck with the worrying effect that any impeachment might have.

Assume Bush is "forced" to resign. Who takes over? Does anyone actually want President Cheney?

Anonymous said...

You may have missed this article at Capitol Hill Blue citing multiple sources alleging that Bush angrily referred to the Constitution as "just a goddamned piece of paper" in an Oval Office meeting about renewal of the Patriot Act.

Now, CHB is itself not above a bit of partisan hackery, but it's a pretty serious charge even if it doesn't rise to the illegality standards of the wiretap scandal. If true, this indicates clearly that Bush is unwilling to one of the two specific things he had to swear to do upon assuming the office.

I suppose one might make the argument that Bush only swore to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution to the best of his ability. Suddenly the "put an idiot puppet in office" strategy makes a lot more sense.

Unknown said...

Karl said...

"Am I the only one who gets a distinct feeling that Bush will be the first president to attempt going past the two term rule?
You know, he does want a dictatorship."

I made that half-joking preditction just after the 2004 election. And though I can't see it really happening, this administration's disdain for the rule of law makes me wonder.

But I honestly think that the scales are starting to fall from some people's eyes. People are starting to realize that Bush isn't the divine leader they were told he was. So even if the tin-foil hat theory of Bush engineering a repeal of the 22nd amendment comes to pass (or tries to convince the nation that changing presidents at a time of war is bad for America), it wouldn't work.

Unless they have, you know, rigged voting machines or something.

Karl said...

I'd imagine pulling a captured or dead Usama out of his magical hat would quickly quell the memory of Iraq dissappointment enough to justify his attempt on the amendment.

Anonymous said...

Bush just admitted openly that he personally signed orders to do this: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=1416154&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

This puts him in that interresting intersection where "Bold" and "Stupid" meet.

He won't run for a third term though, his popularity isn't high enough, and more importantly he wouldn't need to. Bush isn't the problem, the people that back Bush is the problem. As long as you have a huge block of people that will excuse torture, agree with wars of aggression, and have disdain for civil liberties, then they just need to find another cowboy/politician to run for office. I don't think they set a particularly high bar with W.

Anonymous said...

Imagine if Clinton had been successfully impeached - wouldn't Bush then tread a little more carefully? He needs to be impeached NOW as a warning to the next megalomaniac to enter the White House.

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