Bush Hits Back on NSA Critics
President Bush framed the NSA question perfectly when he asked “If I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress?” In that simple sentence, he called Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy and others to task for their whining about him breaking the law.
This argument really is about perspective: Congress’ perspective that they don’t like a strong Executive Branch and the public’s perspective that they want to be safe. PERIOD.
The public is saying that they want the President to protect them and they, rightly, believe that the Founding Fathers were smart enough to give the President expanded powers to fight wars.
Democrats like Pelosi, Kennedy, Kerry and Gore operate from the perspective that (a) anything President Bush does should be criminalized or (b) everything that they think might be controversial should be exploited for political advantage. Why else would Nancy Pelosi start complaining about the NSA wiretapping now after being briefed almost a dozen times on the issue? If she thought it was illegal before now, didn’t she have an affirmative duty to report it and bring impeachment charges against President Bush?
This issue is also a political loser for Democrats for a couple reasons. This simply re-inforces the notion that they’re weak on national security issues and that they’re totally willing to play politics with national security. Of those issues, I suspect that the American people will be less tolerant of Democrats playing of politics with something as serious as national security.
The American people understand that politicians will play politics with various issues of the day but they won’t tolerate the playing of politics with national security because they expect our legislative leaders to accept the lead of the President on national security issues. That doesn’t mean they can’t be critical of this or that detail of the overall plan. It simply means that they’re expected to not make wild charges about a program that’s clearly protecting them from terrorist attacks.
Unless and until the Democrats realize that, they’ll continue digging their national security ‘hole’ deeper and deeper. That’s quite a departure from the Democratic Party of FDR, Truman, JFK, Scoop Jackson and other Democrats who were certifiable hawks.
Cross-post at LetFreedomRing
January 24th, 2006 at 11:31 am
You must like being lied to. Bush stated several times, plain as day, that he wouldn’t engage in wiretapping without a warrant, when he was in fact doing it. Democrats who were informed of this practice on a limited basis said they weren’t being told enough to even judge what was going on and whether it was legal, and were forbidden to make their concerns known.
You also must like saying things about the law when you don’t know what the law is. It certainly is a lot less work for you, which must be nice.
January 24th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Why bother with things like facts when you have opinion? :-D
January 24th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
“You must like being lied to. Bush stated several times, plain as day, that he wouldn’t engage in wiretapping without a warrant, when he was in fact doing it.”
He gave that answer when beng asked about wiretapping that was covered by the Patriot Act. And he’s right in stating that they went to the proper courts for the various different warrants that are covered by the Patriot Act.
Let’s suppose, though, that they weren’t talking about warrant requirements of the Patriot Act. Let’s suppose that President Bush was just talking about warrants in general. Would I be upset that a president, whether it’s a Republican or Democrat, had lied about not getting warrants for highly classified, warrantless wiretaps? Absolutely not as long as that wiretapping was being done on international communications.
Let’s also pose another question. We know that part of FDR’s plan during WWII was intercepting international communications between the Nazis and Nazi agents here in the U.S. Did FDR break the law in not getting wiretaps on these communications? By what authority did he do these intercepts? After all, FISA didn’t exist way back then.
Might it have been legal because all wartime presidents had certain wartime powers granted through the Constitution? Is it reasonable to conclude that the President should have extra powers in wartime? If the answer is yes, then isn’t it reasonable to assume that the Founding Fathers wrote those broader powers into the Constitution for just such an instance? If that isn’t reasonable, then why have numerous courts ruled, most recently in the Hamdi case, that the President does have expanded powers in wartime?
January 24th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
Would I be upset that a president, whether it’s a Republican or Democrat, had lied about not getting warrants for highly classified, warrantless wiretaps?
He must have thought people would be concerned that he would be acting without any oversight, or he wouldn’t have lied to begin with. He would’ve simply stated that his grave duty to protect the American people requires that he spy on them.
Re: FDR: There was no statute constraining his actions; in fact, there was a declaration of war granting him broad powers over foreign and domestic spheres.
By contrast, there was no declaration of war here and a there was a statute constraining Bush. (reread Hamdi: the AUMF gives him no more and no less than what it says: the power to use military force in a specific conflict. The only way to read the AUMF as OK’ing wiretaps is to construe it as repealing FISA, which is completely untenable. Not only did the Congress expressly not declare war, they also expressly considered changing FISA and declined to do so)
The former was legal, the latter illegal.
January 24th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
Yep, this warrantless spying is about illegality for people who like to think things through, and who respect our Constitution and consider us a nation under law, not under a man.
But for all the citizens who enjoy thinking that one man [bypassing the oversight built into the Constitution] is going to do the best job of protecting America and protecting the very way of life we fight for, I say…..that is a very weak-kneed fearfilled position….sort of like hero worship by teenagers. Truth is, Bush, for whatever reasons, is breaking the law. As Alito said, “No one is above the law, not even the President.”
The informing of a few congressional branch persons who could not even speak back or investigate is not oversight.
January 25th, 2006 at 2:25 am
JPE, I respectfully disagree. Here’s why:
The Senate, in S.J. Res 23 did put this modifying phrase into the AUMF:
Whereas, the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States:
In other words, Congress admits that the CONSTITUTION gives presidents authority to “take action to deter & prevent acts of international terrorism.”
You’ll notice that it doesn’t have language that says a president’s Constitutional powers are limited to the use of military force. It simply says he can take “action” to deter and prevent further terrorist attacks.
And SIGINT is definitely a great way of preventing further terrorist attacks.