Snowing the Public

In the middle of the warmest winter in ages for many places, there's a snowstorm steadily emanating from D.C. Even here in sunny Southern California, where I'm wearing shorts and tees, I can feel the blast of chilly air accompanied by huge white flakes-- not the pretty kind, where no two are ever alike, but the kind of storm intended to obscure my vision.

Unfortunately for the snow machine in the White House, it's not working all that well, at least not on me. First off are this week's hearings on the NSA wiretaps, currently starring the Attorney General. Gonzales is one of those (along with John Yoo) who informed Smirk et al that the Geneva Conventions could be safely ignored and our gummint could do practically whatever it wanted with its detainees. That was back when he was White House Counsel; now he oversees the Department of Justice. Theoretically, he's the nation's top lawyer/cop, but during the hearings thus far, he's been trying to dodge questions so that our elected representatives will throw up their hands and allow Smirk to continue sidestepping the Constitution. I find it interesting that for a "president" who admires such strict Constitutional constructionists as Scumlia, Uncle Clarence, and presumably Roberts and Scalito, and acts as if though the Constitution should be enshrined and never malleable to any extent, Smirk has no problem calling laws such as FISA, which is a hell of lot more recent than the venerable Constitution, an outdated law.

I don't have much faith in the Judiciary Committee, or any of the Senatorial committees these days, especially not after the Alito debacle. Glenn Greenwald over at Unclaimed Territory agrees, in this post, "Questioning the Attorney General." Do click on the links to his ten questions. They're thoughtful and should be asked by our Congressfolks before they throw up their hands and proclaim they can't do anything.

There's a lot of things that bug me about the whole spying thing. First is the fact that anyone, theoretically, can be spied upon. Given the unsavory history of spying in this country (Exhibit A is of course, J. Edgar Hoover), I'm willing to bet that such attempts to gather information now are and can be abused. The gummint doesn't need to know what I'm surfing for on the net; it doesn't need to know who calls me and why; and it doesn't need to know what books I check out from the library or purchase from a bookstore. Yet with the Patriot Act and FISA and now warrantless spying by the NSA, I'd bet you somewhere, either now or in the future, there'll be a file or a cache with some or all of that information in it.

The second thing that bothers me is that if Smirk is allowed to get away with this, it essentially means that the so-called Unitary Executive Theory (this is from Wikipedia, which currently has the warning that "the neutrality of this article is disputed." Still, I find it a good place to start to begin to understand what it's all about) comes fully into play, and both Congress and the Supreme Court become totally irrelevant. Congress' function is to pass laws, and the Court's function is to rule on them. Indeed, the Court affirmed this in the famous Marbury v. Madison (1803) decision. This case formalized judicial review, and placed the Court on an equal footing with Congress and the Executive branch in reality, just as it already had been in theory in the Constitution. It also established the Court as the final place where the buck stopped when it came to Constitutional questions and issues.

The Unitary Executive Theory argues against Marbury v. Madison, in that the President should have the opportunity and right to interpret the Constitution as well. That also includes the right to ignore completely or conveniently discount portions of existing laws. The most noted and controversial example of this is Smirk's use of "signing statements," especially when he signed the McCain Detainee Amendment (another sad event: the fact that we even had to submit and approve such an amendment, and the fact that it took a Republican to do it. Where are the Democrats???). By invoking the Executive Branch's right to legal interpretation, Smirk was essentially saying that he reserved the right to allow torture. By allowing him to get away with this, we're essentially handing over unchecked power to a sole individual.

Part of the current bunch's argument in favor of that is that we are at "war" (even though it was a war of choice, rather than of necessity-- no one put a gun to our head and said, "Invade Iraq or else."), and the President's powers should be as unfettered as possible. But given that the so-called "war on terror" is an open-ended war, do we really want a leader with such unchecked power? If we allow our President to do whatever he wants, who will operate the brakes? Indeed, will there be any brakes? If we follow tradition and law, it is conceivable our next President (or the next one) will be a Democrat. Would those currently in power want that?

What's scary about this is that while I think (and feel) that allowing this to happen would be unconstitutional, Alito hasn't disavowed support for this theory; I'm pretty sure Scumlia and Uncle Clarence would have no problem with it either. If enough Justices saw no barriers to allowing such power to be assumed, all the parallels some people like to draw between the current gang in D.C. and Imperial Rome become that much more accurate.

Back to Gonzales; if Congress doesn't get off its butt now and pierce the veil of all the snowjobs the administration is trying to pull, then we can expect more and more limitations on privacy. I'm not taken in by the administration's claims that spying is okay; unfortunately, not that many people seem to be taking it as seriously as they should.

(This isn't to say that it's only Smirk that's weakening the foundations of our nation; back in November, habeas corpus was under fire from Congress; our esteemed *cough* lawmakers wanted to suspend this ancient right to appeal for those currently incarcerated at Guantanamo. But of course, that leads us down a slippery slope-- if you suspend habeas corpus for one group, what's to stop it from being suspended again? Here's a piece written by a lawyer defending one of the Guantanamo detainees (WaPo; registration required), and an excellent analysis of "Why Habeas Review Matters," by ReddHedd over at firedoglake.)

Another area where the gummint is trying to pull the wool over our eyes regards the lead-up to our current debacle in Iraq. It hasn't been confirmed as having actually been followed through on, but apparently Smirk and his poodle ally Blair discussed fabricating an excuse to lure Saddam Hussein into war by using a U-2 in U.N colors to enter Iraqi airspace, hoping that Saddam would attack the plane. The pretext would then be established for war to break out. Yet our gummint wants us to believe that Iraq had WMD. No, no, Iraq was an immediate threat. Waitaminit-- Iraq was responsible for 9/11... yeah, that's the ticket! Oh, hell, the man tried to kill my daddy! He's part of an axis of evil! He's...

Sorry, Smirk, Scowl, and gang: I don't buy it.

Postscript: Today is the one-year anniversary of this blog. Even though I haven't kept up with it much since November, it's cool that I've gotten this far. Hopefully this blog will be around come 2007 for the second anniversary!