As Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut rose the morning of December 17, 2007 to speak against the FISA Amendments Act of 2007, he brought up the shifting explanations for the Bush administration’s program of spying on Americans without the warrant that the 4th Amendment to the Constitution so clearly requires:
The bill that the Majority Leaders will seek to make the pending business of the Senate later today—the FISA Amendments Act of 2007—has a long and twisted history behind it. Its origins lie in President Bush’s years of warrantless spying on Americans.
That abuse of power was exposed by the press in late 2005. The New York Times revealed that under a presidential order signed in 2002, the NSA [National Security Agency] has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years.
In fact, we later learned that the president’s warrantless spying was authorized as early as 2001.
Disgraced former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, in a 2006 white paper, attempted to justify that spying; his argument rested on the specious claim that, in authorizing the president to go to war in Afghanistan, Congress had also somehow authorized him to listen in on phone calls in America.
But many of those who voted on the original authorization of force found this claim to new executive powers to be a laughable invention. Here’s what former Majority Leader Tom Daschle wrote:
As Senate majority leader…I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel’s office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up….I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.
Such claims to expanded executive power based on the authorization for military force have since been struck down by the courts.
In recent months, the administration has changed its argument, now grounding its warrantless surveillance power in the extremely nebulous “authority of the president to defend the country” that they find in the Constitution.
Of course, that begs the question: Exactly what doesn’t fit under “defending the country� If we take the president at his word, we would concede to him nearly unlimited power, as long as he finds a lawyer willing to stuff his actions into that boundless category.
And after this, Senators voted 76 to 10 to let the law go on toward a vote.
Was there an upcry from the American people? No. It’s almost Christmas, after all, and most Americans lack an understanding of what’s going on… because they won’t educate themselves.
I believe we are seeing the end of American democracy. Maybe now, maybe five years from now, I don’t know exactly when the final sword will fall, but our democracy cannot survive with this sort of Congress, and this apathetic citizenry.
The Democratic Party shows every sign of consolidating its power by moving toward the right, gathering up discontented Republicans into its ranks.
It disgusts me, the way that Americans are allowing this to happen without much more than a peep of protest.
So they just called the question but didn’t actually vote on the bill yet? And the house would have to pass it too? did the house vote it out of committee? Maybe you guys could track procedural stuff a little bit.
Yeah J. Clifford – i’m with you on that disgust.
To me, politics has been high-jacked by corporate lobbyists (and none exist for the common citizen). There’s nowhere to go but down and out – since our government, once based on balance of powers, is now broken and no longer works as designed. The environment is suffering, taxes are out of whack, the deficit is at an all time high, the dollar continues to lose ground and will soon be replaced by the euro as the currency of choice, and the stupid, illegal, immoral war in Iraq spins on and on. Washington doesn’t care that 70% or more of its citizens want an immediate end to it. Bush goes on with his secret government of illegal spying on us and there’s no one taking him to task for abusing the Constitution! Whatever happened to impeachment? He should be in JAIL. The majority of people don’t care any more because Washington is so far out of touch with us. They don’t respond to our concerns (unless its in their best interest to do so), and corporate lobbyists write the laws.