Lack of Congressional Oversight Will Continue

From Glenn Greenwald Monday, July 24, 2006 Specter instructs us to be grateful to the President Sen. Arlen Specter has an Op-Ed in this morning's Washington Post which attempts to justify his proposed FISA legislation -- legislation which, at its core, renders legal the President's lawbreaking and cedes to the President the right to eavesdrop on Americans with no judicial oversight. The bill would also all but kill pending litigation challenging the legality of the President's eavesdropping conduct, and endorse a theory of presidential power so extreme that even the President's own Attorney General rejects it. Despite all of this, Specter claims, apparently with a straight face, that "negotiations with administration officials and the president himself were fierce" and that the bill is "a preeminently fair compromise." What Specter's Op-Ed actually does is provide a powerful reflection of the extent to which the Congress has been reduced to an empty, symbolic vessel which is permitted to act only to the extent it retroactively endorses the President's conduct. The outright debasement of the Congress by the administration is additionally reflected by the fact that Specter is actually expressing gratitude for the President's willingness to allow courts to adjudicate the constitutionality of his conduct, as though that is something the President has the power to prohibit. Here is Specter explaining what he considers to be the grand concession he won from the White House: President Bush's record of seeking to expand Article II power has been a hallmark of his administration. The president and vice president have vociferously argued that the administration had the authority for the program without any judicial review. Bush's personal commitment to submit his program to FISC is therefore a major breakthrough. This is as incoherent as it is alarming. With the Specter legislation, Bush has not agreed to allow the FISA court, or any other court, to adjudicate the legality of his eavesdropping program (meaning whether he has been violating the law for the last five years by ordering warrantless eavesdropping). To the contrary, the Specter bill would all but kill pending litigations around the country which allege that the President acted criminally by violating FISA. Nor would the Specter bill require the President to submit eavesdropping requests to courts for approval. To the contrary, the bill expressly allows the President to eavesdrop on Americans with no judicial oversight. Read More At: Unclaimed Territory