Letters to the Editor
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Who We Are Now
It is not so difficult to imagine what would have been the response of Americans in, say, the early 70's to the threat of terrorism. I think they would have said, "we are a free people and we are proud of that. If you are so foolish as to attack us, we will hunt you and your sponsors down and destroy you utterly. You will be dead and we will still be free".
Now we say, "Oh Mr. President, please protect us. We will do anything, give up anything (that does not materially impact our standard of living)- just keep those evil guys away from us".
Fortunately, the empire is going broke.
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Well, Glenn
We want our country back.
And from your latest post, it's clear that no one in a position of power in this country has any interest in restoring this nation to The People, and that in fact, they will fight to the bitter end, regardless of party, to maintain the status quo -- a status quo which is nothing less than the expansion of an alien Autocracy.
We have got one huge and growing problem with a bi-partisan political class in DC that simply cannot fathom the rather simple ideas of the Constitution of the United States, cannot for the life of them take appropriate action to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and that believes it must yield to the demands of the executive in all foreign matters -- or perish.
No wonder the idea of an ongoing series of General Strikes is now being broached far more widely than ever before as a possible corrective. Something's got to be done, and fast.
Or it will be -- if it isn't already -- too late.
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@ Ondolette
Glenn, could you explain please...
...why this isn't prohibited by Article I?
No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
This is the second time for this stuff, there was a retroactive immunity clause in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 as well. What does ex post facto mean if it doesn't mean this kind of law?
IANAL, but: I think the general consensus is that it's unconstitutional to make a previously legal act illegal retrospectively. It's grounded in the notion that it's unfair to expect people to know that in the future, their acts might be illegal.
The same considerations apply to laws making previous actions legal, in terms of people acting on the basis of expectations; should people be allowed to violate the law now if it's going to be legal eventually; kind of unfair to prosecute, but that's the way it is; the law is the law. You might want to give retroactive immunity (or pardons) out of decency when the law changes in a permissive manner (but see many cases where the law changes due to evolved understandings of Constitutional law where the new Constitutional protections are not extended retroactively, in the interest of finality of settlements and judgements).
That said, the most manifest unfairness is to imprison people for acts that they thought -- nay, knew -- were legal, and that is what the ex post facto clause reaches.
Cheers,
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Question.....
If a law suit is brought against the telecommunications industry, say AT&T, before congress reconvenes and grants them retroactive immunity from prosecution, can the law suit proceed because it was brought before immunity was granted? With the makeup of the courts, we all know how this will end anyway.
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Tiberius inadvertently gets it right
Bad laws...
are a fact of life and this one was way over due for a change. It's yet to be determined if the admin broke the law, regardless of Glenn's fervent need to bring down Bush.
-- tiberius
The fact that no one knows what the Executive Branch has been doing is exactly the problem. Our system of government is predicated on transparency and oversight/balance by the different branches.
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Mike McConnell in his zeal gained some powerful enemies
Dianne Feinstein was certainly knocked off her feet by her constituencies negative response to her FISA vote. She felt compelled to publish her reasons in this short publication released on August 3rd.
“I spoke with Admiral Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, at length this evening. He believes the United States is vulnerable, and that we need to move quickly to change the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The intelligence community is deeply concerned that chatter among suspected terrorist networks is up. I am concerned as well. We are living in a period of heightened vulnerability, and must give the intelligence community the tools they need to protect America.
This legislation is a temporary fix. It is not permanent and it expires in six months. It immediately addresses critical gaps in our intelligence-collection efforts – while preserving a role for FISA court review.
I voted for both bills because one needed 60 votes to pass. It is vital that we act now. We cannot leave the nation unprotected in this post-9/11 period.”
Feinstein put her trust in Mike McConnell, someone she had known for a long time and thought was a straight shooter. Flatly and plainly she got screwed, and Mike McConnell will play to a lot of deaf ears in six months when this law sunsets. AT&T however, will likely get a pass since it is both a PAC and campaign contributor.
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What if the telco's spilled the beans...
Perhaps the congress could negotiate a settlement with the Telco's to give them immunity if they fess up to all that the Bush Admin convinced them to do, sharing all documents and testifying to the content of private conversations with administration officials. If they were to disclose ALL, wouldn't it be worth giving them immunity for their past participation?
Then the congress could write a bill to immunize these companies and in the same bill undo the redefinition of "electronic surveillance" that was included in this last bill that was passed in such a rush. The bill could also explicitly NOT immunize the administration for its crimes and in the process would collect all the evidence needed to prosecute them.
Just a thought anyway.
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A grass roots response
This letter is being presented to my local Democratic Party organization this evening. My hope is that they will vote to approve it, and to agree to send copies to our county and state organizations as well. We shall see....
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August 23, 2007
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
United States House of Representatives
235 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-0508The Honorable Harry Reid
United States Senate
528 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-2803Dear fellow Democrats:
When the Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq was introduced in Congress in October 2002, many Democrats voted for it. This was understandable, given the President's misrepresentation of the intelligence concerning Saddam Hussein's intentions. Nevertheless, many of us in the Democratic Party rank and file warned at the time that it was both strategically unwise for the United States, and politically unwise for the Democratic Party to give the President such unrestrained power. Events have now proven this judgment to be correct.
In the five years since the passage of the AUMF, we have seen the President weaken our armed forces in a misguided military adventure in Iraq while at the same time authorizing an unprecedented and unlawful program of surveillance on American citizens at home. We have seen the articles of the Geneva convention to which we are signatory flouted in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay; we have seen people snatched off the streets of allied countries and held in secret prisons at undisclosed locations. To our everlasting shame, we have also seen the torture of prisoners become an explicit policy of the United States Government.
When given the opportunity to confront these practices, which are both foreign to the American spirit, and deeply damaging to the Constitution, the Congress responded by passing the Military Commissions Act, and the recent revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The result has been to give the President's illegal and unconstitutional acts the cover of law, and to create the greatest constitutional crisis in our country since the secession of the Confederate States.
No free country can remain free for long which relies on a foreign policy of unilateral military force, and on a domestic policy which spies upon its own people and places limitations on habeas corpus whenever it is convenient for the government to do so. In our judgment, the Democrats in Congress who voted for this legislation have made a grave mistake, and the Democratic leadership of the House and Senate which did relatively little to block its passage have done the country a terrible disservice. They must undo what they have done.
We call on you, Senator Reid, you, Speaker Pelosi, and on the rest of the Democratic leadership of the Congress to repeal the offensive and unconstitutional provisions of these laws. History will not be kind to those who stood by and allowed such an assault on the separation of powers and on our civil liberties to pass unopposed. Unless something is done to recover for the people what the Congress has so unwisely surrendered, neither will we.
Sincerely,