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Dean's screaming again
The following is an e-mail from Democratic National Committee Chairman
Howard Dean to his supporters:
This is not an easy letter to write, and I'm afraid it may be a hard one to
believe.
By now you have probably heard the news that George Bush is using the
National Security Agency to conduct surveillance on American citizens
without the consent of any court. After initially refusing to confirm the
story, the President has admitted to personally overseeing this domestic
spying program for years and he says he intends to continue the program.
These actions explicitly violate a law designed to protect US citizens. But
the administration says that other laws somehow allow for this unprecedented
use of a foreign intelligence agency to spy on Americans right here in the
United States. According to reports, political appointees in the Justice
Department's Office of Legal Counsel wrote still-classified legal opinions
laying out the supposed justification for this program.
I have asked our General Counsel to draft a Freedom of Information Act
request for the relevant legal opinions and memos written by that office.
Since the program's existence is no longer a secret, these memos should be
released -- Americans deserve to know exactly what authority this
administration believes it has.
You can help pressure the administration to release these documents by
signing on to our Freedom of Information Act request in the next 48 hours:
www.democrats.org/foia
This extra-legal activity is even more disturbing because it is unnecessary
-- the administration already has access to a secret Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court. That court was created precisely to provide speedy,
secure judicial review to the actions of our intelligence agencies.
To allow authorities act as quickly as possible, officials can even apply
for a retroactive warrant days after the surveillance has already begun.
Secret warrants have been approved over 19,000 times -- only five
applications were rejected in nearly thirty years. The court, which
regularly acts within hours, is hardly a roadblock, but it prevents abuse by
providing the oversight required by our system of checks and balances.
This administration must demonstrate clearly what legal authority allows it
to disregard criminal prohibitions on unilateral domestic spying. Sign on to
the request now -- it will be delivered on Thursday:
www.democrats.org/foia
In an interview on Monday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez admitted that
the administration asked certain Members of Congress about getting a new law
to allow spying on Americans without a warrant. Realizing that even a
Republican-controlled Congress wouldn't authorize such a measure, they
decided to manipulate current law and proceed with the program anyway.
Manipulation of a law like this is dangerous. The same Office of Legal
Counsel used vague assertions of sweeping authority in the infamous torture
memos. The victim of this reasoning is the rule of law itself -- when this
administration asserts sweeping authority to step over any line of legality,
it asserts that there are no lines at all.
Does this administration believe there are any lines it can't cross?
Americans deserve to know. Join our Freedom of Information Act request now:
www.democrats.org/foia
Some Republicans will try to pretend that this is just another political
fight. But Americans of every political viewpoint are rightfully disturbed
by this extra-legal activity. The Republican chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, shocked by the report of this activity,
promised to convene hearings in January.
Even Bob Barr, who was one of the most conservative members of Congress and
the first member to file articles of impeachment against President Clinton,
said:
"What's wrong with it is several-fold. One, it's bad policy for our
government to be spying on American citizens through the National Security
Agency. Secondly, it's bad to be spying on Americans without court
oversight. And thirdly, it's bad to be spying on Americans apparently in
violation of federal laws against doing it without court order."
We need to know whether George Bush went beyond the limits of the law -- and
whether he and his administration believe that there are any limits at all…
…Even after the press found out about these actions, the administration
tried to cover up its existence. According to Newsweek, George Bush summoned
the publisher and executive editor of the New York Times to the Oval Office
to try to stop them from running the story of these illegal activities.
We have seen this kind of arrogance of power before.
Richard Nixon once said in an interview that, "if the president does it, it
can't be illegal."
He found out that wasn't true. This administration may need a reminder.
Thank you.
Governor Howard Dean, M.D.
Spying
Editorial by: Roger Wm. Hughes
Advance knowledge cannot be gained from ghosts and spirits,
inferred from phenomena, or projected from the measures of Heaven,
but must be gained from men for it is the knowledge of the enemy’s true
situation.
Sun-tzu –The Art of War
President Bush, with the revelation that the National Security
Agency has listened to communications between al Qaeda and American
citizens, has created a conflagration of angst among liberals and
libertarians. The conflict resides around the basic question of how our
government works.
One of the central characters in this drama is Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.)
who is quickly positioning himself as the Howard Dean of the 2008
presidential race. Feingold takes the position that Congress in passing the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) wrote the law in stone as to
what can and cannot happen.
However, the law is more complicated than that. When establishing the right
to detect communications between known al Qaeda operatives and Americans,
the administration had to take into account not only the FISA act but the
fact that Congress has provided the President with war powers.
This leads us to the Constitution: What does the Constitution say about this
situation? It is true, as Feingold has stated, that the Bill of Rights is
the defense of American citizens’ “Civil Liberties”. However, the
Constitution also states that the President is the “Commander in Chief” and
that only Congress can declare war.
The Supreme Court has ruled that military actions by the President are not
limited to the granting of war powers to the President. There are many
recent incidents in our history exampling this -- including Grenada. The
Supreme Court has long granted the President the ability to act in broad
scopes in order to protect the nation.
This is a question that may well eventually reside with the Supreme Court to
decide. The question almost certainly resides around: a new technological
ability to detect communications among hundreds of millions of other
communications; the fact that the President is authorized to spy on
America’s enemies; whether FISA offered the President an adequate avenue to
utilize new technology that could protect the nation; whether FISA really
didn’t matter given the granting of war powers to the president; and whether
the protection of the nation is trumped by the Bill of Rights.
In the past, the Supreme Court has ruled that the protection of the nation
has frequently trumped the Bill of Rights.
The political significance of this conflict pales in comparison to the
long-term nature of what America is. Political parties reside against the
framework of what the citizens’ government is. Parties tend to represent
various factions that provide the tension to the opposition as to where the
lines are drawn in the nature of what government does. National protection
and individual civil rights may be the most important governmental conflict.
This conflict has the ability to influence the basic nature of all other
governmental conflicts. Therefore, this conflict has the possibility of
affecting the dynamic of the nature of American politics and the nature of
its political parties.
Those who whimsically claim mantle to one side or other in this conflict are
not likely to be the champions of their side in the long run. There is no
doubt that some may find short-term political gain, but real truth always
beats lies in the long run. This is a simple truth that many have not yet
come to own, as is this truth: We are in a clash of civilizations, and there
are individuals that want to kill you and me just because of who and what we
are.
In a time of unprecedented partisan politics, let's not lose sight of the
truth.
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