Could someone please explain to me how, after everything we've been through over the past six years, the Senate - with the help of a number of prominent Democrats, I might add - completely caved to one of the most unpopular administration's in US history?
The Senate bowed to White House pressure last night and passed a Republican plan for overhauling the federal government's terrorist surveillance laws, approving changes that would temporarily give U.S. spy agencies expanded power to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order.The 60 to 28 vote, which was quickly denounced by civil rights and privacy advocates, came after Democrats in the House failed to win support for more modest changes that would have required closer court supervision of government surveillance. Earlier in the day, President Bush threatened to hold Congress in session into its scheduled summer recess if it did not approve the changes he wanted.
The legislation, which is expected to go before the House today, would expand the government's authority to intercept without a court order the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States who are communicating with people overseas.
As currently written, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act already gives U.S. spies broad leeway to monitor the communications of foreign terrorism suspects, but the 30-year-old statute requires a warrant to monitor calls intercepted in the United States, regardless of where the calls begin or end.
Democratic leaders expressed disappointment about the result, but they pointed to language that would require lawmakers to reconsider the key provisions in six months.
"My Republican colleagues chose to rubber-stamp a flawed administration proposal that fails to provide the accountability needed in the light of the administration's past mismanagement of key tools in the war on terror," said Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).
Sixteen Democrats and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) joined all 43 Republicans in supporting the measure, which is nearly identical to a proposal prepared by the Bush administration. "We're at war. The enemy wants to attack us," Lieberman said during the Senate debate. "This is not the time to strive for legislative perfection."
This one shouldn't have even been close. The warantless wiretapping of US citizens living on US soil shouldn't be open for debate. Technology might change, but the constitution does not. A judge ruled the previous program unconstitutional. Shouldn't we at least stop to find out why before we rush headlong into granting the government these sorts of powers?
It's not like the previous FISA system was terribly rigorous. It allowed the government to get warrants after the wiretap had already taken place. It allowed the government to get warrants that didn't explicitly name the targets of the investigation. And in only a tiny fraction of cases did FISA ever actually say no to the government. And yet in this case, the FISA Court said no. Shouldn't that matter?
I really don't understand what is wrong with Senate Democrats on this one. In the last NBC News / WSJ Poll, for example, 57% of Americans disapproved of this president, 42% of them strongly. In the last CBS Poll, 53% disapproved of the way he was fighting terrorism. At the same time, a majority of Americans are unhappy with the way the Democratic Congress has performed since elected. Could it be perhaps that the two are related, and that Americans think they aren't fighting Bush hard enough? I haven't seen any data on that, but it would seem to be the most logical explanation, wouldn't it?
This isn't 2002. It isn't 2004. 2006 should have signaled that. And yet now they still cave? Are you kidding me?
Sure thing, the 6 month sunset is nice, but it isn't enough. You don't just pitch civil liberties overboard in a rush to "do something" just because the president says you must. Why is this so hard for people to understand?
UPDATE: A list of Democrats who voted with the president on this one:
Evan Bayh (Indiana); Tom Carper (Delaware); Bob Casey (Pennsylvania); Kent Conrad (North Dakota); Dianne Feinstein (California); Daniel Inouye (Hawai‘i); Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota); Mary Landrieu (Louisiana); Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas); Claire McCaskill (Missouri); Barbara Mikulski (Maryland); Bill Nelson (Florida); Ben Nelson (Nebraska); Mark Pryor (Arkansas); Ken Salazar (Colorado); Jim Webb (Virginia).
UPDATE II: Glenn Greenwald is in his element:
Examine virtually every Bush scandal and it increasingly bears the mark not merely of Democratic capitulation, but Democratic participation. In August of 2006, the Supreme Court finally asserted the first real limit on Bush's radical executive power theories in Hamdan, only for Congress, months later, to completely eviscerate those minimal limits -- and then go far beyond -- by enacting the grotesque Military Commissions Act with the support of substantial numbers of Democrats. What began as a covert and illegal Bush interrogation and detention program became the officially sanctioned, bipartisan policy of the United States.
Grave dangers are posed to our basic constitutional safeguards by the replacement of Sandra Day O'Connor with Sam Alito, whose elevation to the Supreme Court Congressional Democrats chose to permit. Vast abuses and criminality in surveillance remain undisclosed, uninvestigated and unimpeded because Congressional Democrats have stood meekly by while the administration refuses to disclose what it has been doing in how it spies on us. And we remain in Iraq, in direct defiance of the will of the vast majority of the country, because the Democratic Beltway establishment lacks both the courage and the desire to compel an end to that war.And now Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, with revealing symbolism, cancel their scheduled appearances this morning at Yearly Kos because George Bush ordered them to remain in Washington in order to re-write and expand FISA -- a law which he has repeatedly refused to allow to be revised for years and which he has openly and proudly violated. Congressional Democrats know virtually nothing about how the Bush administration has been eavesdropping on our conversations because the administration refused to tell them and they passively accepted this state of affairs.
The intense rush to amend this legislation means that most of them have no idea what they are actually enacting -- even less of an idea than they typically have. But what they know is that George Bush and Fox News and the Beltway establishment have told them that they would be irresponsible and weak and unserious if they failed to comply with George Bush's instructions, and hence, they comply. In the American political landscape, there have been profound changes in public opinion since September of 2001. But in the Beltway, among our political and media establishment, virtually nothing has changed....
There are many mythologies about what are the defining beliefs and motivations of bloggers and their readers and the attendees at Yearly Kos. One of the principal myths is that it is all driven by a familiar and easily defined ideological agenda and/or a partisan attachment to the Democratic Party. That is all false.
The common, defining political principle here -- what resonates far more powerfully than any other idea -- is a fervent and passionate belief in our country's constitutional framework, the core liberties it secures, and the checks and balances it offers as a safeguard against tyrannical power. Those who fail to defend that framework, or worse, those who are passively or actively complicit in its further erosion, are all equally culpable. With each day that passes, the radicalism and extremism originally spawned in secret by the Bush presidency becomes less and less his fault and more and more the fault of those who -- having discovered what they have been doing and having been given the power to stop it -- instead acquiesce to it and, worse, enable and endorse it.
UPDATE III: From today's NYT:
Democrats have expressed concerns that the administration is reaching for powers that go well beyond solving what officials have depicted as narrow technical issues in the current law.
“They have got us in a vise,” Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the Rules Committee, said as she left a Saturday afternoon meeting where senior Democrats were debating how to handle the issue in the final hours before recess.
I would love to see someone ask Rep. Slaughter precisely what she meant with this. A vise? Really? The President and his GOP allies are wildly unpopular with the American people. And yet someone, to democratic leaders in both the House and the Senate, he is an unstoppable force.
What is wrong with these people? When are they going to recognize that we elected them to lead, not to follow, and that the direction we expect them to lead is away from Bush, not towards him?
More:
House Republicans complained angrily that Democrats on Saturday had not immediately considered and approved the changes in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in the wake of Senate approval.
“If it is good enough for Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats, it should be good enough for House Democrats,” said Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the second-ranking Republican.Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the senior Republican on the Intelligence Committee, accused Democrats of dithering for months without giving “the intelligence community tools they need while we are at heightened risk.”
Again, this is complete nonsense. Is the House supposed to just ratify everything the Senate does without question? That seems to be what the #2 Republican in the House is saying. I doubt if that is actually what he thinks, of course, but that is clearly what he is saying.
And what is this "heightened risk" nonsense? Again, I'd like to ask everyone to remember the Cold War. We survived decades of heightened risk - heightened to levels far, FAR beyond those we live with today - without sacrificing our constitution. We debated, discussed, and disagreed over issues of foreign policy, national security, and intelligence gathering on a near-constant basis. But now, because of this new "heightened risk," we're just supposed to go along with whatever it is the president wants?
I can't help but ask: Will Reps Blunt and Hoekstra follow this same philosophy if and when a Democrat gets elected in 2008? Will, for example, a President Clinton get anything and everything she asks for from them? And if not, why not?
For the record, I'm opposed to this sort of congressional self-castration under both a Republican and Democratic presidential administration. I take my votes for the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the presidency all equally seriously, because I believe all four are elected to represent me in Washington. You would think this would be something members of both chambers wanted to encourage, but apparently not.
Will someone in DC please stand the fuck up and stop this nonsense?
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