Molly Ivins has an excellent column on the subject of Bush’s warrantless searches of U.S. citizens entitled Undermining our country to save it. There is a lot of good stuff there, so I encourage you to just read the whole thing. But, comparing Bush to Nixon, she hit on something that occurred to me: Rumsfeld and Cheney are old hands from the Nixon administration. It’s not just the same issue, to a large extent, it’s the same people.

For those of you who have forgotten just what a stonewall paranoid Nixon was, the poor man used to stalk around the White House demanding that his political enemies be killed. Many still believe there was a certain Richard III grandeur to Nixon’s collapse because he was also a man of notable talents.

There is neither grandeur nor tragedy in watching this president, the Testy Kid, violate his oath to uphold the laws and Constitution.

The Testy Kid wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it because he is the president, and he considers that sufficient justification for whatever he wants. He even finds lawyers like John Yoo who tell him that whatever he wants to do is legal.

The creepy part is the overlap. Damned if they aren’t still here, after all these years, the old Nixon hands — Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the whole gang whose yearning for authoritarian government rose like a stink over the Nixon years. Imperial executive. Bring back those special White House guard uniforms. Cheney, like some malignancy that cannot be cured, back at the same old stand, pushing the same old agenda.

Of course, they tell us we have to be spied on for our own safety, so they can catch the terrorists who threaten us all.

Thirty-five years ago, they nabbed a film star named Jean Seberg and a bunch of people running a free breakfast program for poor kids in Chicago. This time, they’re onto the Quakers. We are not safer.

The New York Times has another article on Bush’s snooping on U.S. citizens without a warrant.

The Bush administration essentially says it had the authority to do this under the 1978 FISA law, but that it couldn’t seek the authority it needs without “tipping off our enemies concerning our intelligence limitations and capabilities.” In other words, they had the authority under a public law, but they couldn’t get the authority because it was a secret.

The article points out that there has not yet been an adequate explanation as to why the Bush administration did not simply go through the FISA court. The secret court had essentially rubber stamped all but a handful of warrants that had been applied for.
The best I can figure, these guys just hate saying anything under oath. Which leads me to the crux of my objection — aside from the fact that it simply appears unconstitutional from a plain reading of the Fourth Amendment. I just don’t trust George W. Bush or his administration. If there wasn’t an actual terror threat, and Bush thought he could gain political advantage by claiming there was a terror threat, I feel like he would do it. Our government was set up on the premise that we shouldn’t have to trust our elected officials. You always have at least one group of potentially dishonest elected officials looking over the shoulder of another group of potentially dishonest elected officials, with the structures of government balanced against each other so that neither of those potentially dishonest groups have much incentive to conspire with one another for too long. The genius of our Madisonian democracy is that it doesn’t require saints to occupy the positions of power. In fact, it presumes that flawed humans will occupy those posts.

So, Bush’s warrantless searches of U.S. citizens raises the question, “Who watches the watchman?”

I enjoyed this post by Tim F. over at Balloon Juice on the issue of Bush snooping on American citizens without a warrant. (I’ve heard it referred to as “snoopgate” — who knows if a “gate” designation will stick and what it will eventually be, but for now, that’s my shorthand.) He manages to predict doom for the White House *and* get a dig in on everyone’s favorite DINO, Joe Lieberman:

From the White House perspective this FISA story seems to have taken on that most dreaded kind of momentum, Joementum. (link not in the original). Joementum is that inexorable political quicksand where every effort to push back only embarrasses you further. Joementum is the classical tragedy in which the hero’s own character flaw seals his unhappy fate before the high-flying first act has closed. The White house saw this story coming for over a year, and yet their explanations range from wrong (“Congress had oversight,” “the 9/11 resolution allowed Bush to bypass legislation.”) to disingenuous (“FISA courts ruled in 2002 that it was ok“) to embarassingly trite (“Clinton did it“).

For the past couple of days, I’ve been reading about the President’s secret, warrantless wiretap searches of U.S. citizen. Obviously, I thought Mr. Bush crossed the line long ago with torture and secret prisons and trumped up allegations about the “grave and gathering threat” posed to the U.S. by Iraq. But, obviously, not everybody agrees. So, I thought I’d check with a conservative friend of mine. Surely, I thought, this “don’t tread on me” libertarian/conservative would be troubled by Bush’s latest. Nope, he told me. We’re at war. I keep being amazed at what people will swallow in the name of war.

I suggested to him that our difference in opinion might be due to my sense that the War on Terror(ists/ism) ™ is more of a metaphorical war, akin to the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs. He responded:

Tell that to the families of the 911 dead and the mad mullahs who preach that killing Americans is a one-way ticket to paradise. Fighting this enemy
metaphorically will be the end of the USA.

I responded:

I’m sure the families of those involved in drug related deaths and the families of those who died from poverty-related factors would be mad at me for not viewing the War on Drugs and the War on Povert as “real” wars either.

I just don’t think the religious fundamentalists have much power to hurt too many people directly. Their real power is to make us afraid enough to hurt ourselves.

I wouldn’t have mentioned that exchange here, except that when scanning the Indy Star headlines, I saw an article about
a Memorial held for those who died homeless and executions of men who killed 9 people in drug-related crimes. So, back to back, we have the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs. All of those people are just as dead as the folks who died in 9/11. I’m not trying to minimize any of this loss of life. But none of it is sufficient reason to give unchecked power to one man, no matter what office he was elected to. The world is a dangerous place. Forfeiting our liberties will not make us much safer. I think we have to stop acting out of fear and learn to live with some risk.

If our enemy was specific, such that it could actually be defeated, I’d be less concerned about wiretaps and whatnot. We could give the President extraordinary powers and be comfortable that, like Cincinnatus he would renounce those powers once the job was done. But when you’re fighting an improper noun like terrorism or poverty or drugs, you might make progress, but you’re never going to be finished. I don’t think our Republic can tolerate concentrated power in the hands of one branch of government for an indefinite period of time. Fortunately, Madison designed our government so that the ambition of the men in one branch of government would work against the ambition of the men in another branch. So, I think we’ll see the Congress assert its authority against the President. The results might be ugly. But they’re necessary.

Maybe I’m just missing the boat here, but the Intelligent Design coverage I’ve read this morning seems to suffer from an over-reliance on “balance” and to miss the point. To me, the question is whether Intelligent Design should be taught as science. I don’t believe that anyone has objected to it being taught in philosophy classes or comparative religion classes or whatever. The debate ends, in my mind, if Intelligent Design is not science. Science is a process with testable, falsifiable hypotheses. “God did it” is not such a hypothesis. That issue should, therefore, be placed front and center in any article about whether ID should be taught in science classes. Not a bunch of back and forth about what this guy or that guy believes to be true or whether public opinion desires “all sides” to be heard.

A South Bend Tribune article mentions the “is it science or not” question only very late in the article:

But, Shermer contends, intelligent design is just not science “because it offers nothing in the way of testable hypotheses,” he wrote in a Los Angeles Times editorial.

And it’s only mentioned in a “he said, she said” kind of way. The reporter does not tell us whether ID does, in fact, offer testable hypotheses or explain that science is a process, part of which is the testing of such hypotheses.

But at least the South Bend Tribune article mentions the issue. I don’t see anything in this Indy Star article that discusses the “is it science” question.

On the other hand, I realize that when it looks like everyone else is wrong, you’ve gotta consider, maybe it’s you. So maybe I’m missing the boat here. Has there been any serious objection to teaching Intelligent Design as something other than science? If not, then why isn’t the first question addressed the question of whether Intelligent Design follows the scientific method.

The Associated Press is reporting that documents obtained by the ACLU show that the FBI had plans to conduct surveillance and collect “general intelligence” during an April 2003 speech by animal-rights advocate Gary Yourofsky at the Indiana Memorial Union.

“It’s hard to see how surveillance of animal-rights groups makes us safer from terrorism, but it’s easy to see how it threatens our constitutional rights to free speech and privacy,” said Fran Quigley, executive director of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union, an ACLU affiliate.

The FBI officially denies having taken any such action. It’s unclear from the article whether it denies having drawn up the plans. The document is here (pdf). It is heavily redacted but says something like, “regarding general intelligence . . . upcoming ‘Vegan Community Project’ scheduled to occur 4/02/03 and hosted by recently appointed ‘official national lecturer’ for PETA, Gary Yourofsky. This gathering is to occur on the Bloomington, IN campus at Indiana University Memorial Union, Maple Room, from 7-10 p.m. A surveillance is planned . . . Occassional spot checks and surveillances are being conducted.”

The FBI says it has to act within Attorney General guidelines. Unfortunately that’s not much comfort these days given that the Attorney General has produced memos condoning torture and, apparently, telling George Bush that he is authorize to conduct warrantless wiretap searches of U.S. citizens.

The Washington Post has another article on Bush’s warrantless wiretaps of U.S. citizens. This one is about the resignation of FISA court judge, James Robertson. He has apparently resigned in protest of George Bush’s secret “authorization” of warrantless wiretap searches of American citizens. (I put “authorizes” in scare quotes because I contend that Bush has no such authority to convey.)

FISA is the “secret” court where the executive branch was supposed to go to obtain warrants for wiretaps that were sensitive national security issues. In an emergency, FISA could also retroactively approve wiretaps if the executive branch applied for such approval within 72 hours. I’m extremely uneasy with even the FISA court. But at least it’s something.

The article mentions that Robertson ruled against Bush and was regarded as “liberal.” But, I don’t know how liberal you can be when you’ve been selected by Justice Rehnquist to serve on the spy court. Apparently there is some concern that Bush has been using the FISA process to launder information obtained through the warrantless wiretaps.

The Estimable Ed Brayton has some coverage of the Intelligent Design court decision coming out of the Dover case. He provides a mirror of the court decision here (pdf). Ed had been very diligent in his coverage of the Intelligent Design issue over at In the Agora but has (I believe) stopped writing for that group blog. However, he continues his coverage of the issue at his own blog, Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Specifically on today’s decision, he has:
Best Possible Outcome in Dover and Judge Jones’ conclusion.

As many folks may recall, the Dover case had to do with the Dover, PA school board’s requirement that science classes make students read a disclaimer about evolution stating that it contained “inexplicable gaps” and referring them to consideration of Intelligent Design theories. I’ll quote from Ed’s quote of Judge Johnson’s thundering conclusion:

The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board’s ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.

Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions. The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

The Board’s decision to mandate intelligent design in science classes resulted in all 8 members up for election being swept out in last November’s elections. As of this past November, Indiana’s Republicans wanted to introduce intelligent design legislation. According to Representative Hinkle, evolution isn’t science.

The Indy Star has an article on the recent revelations that President Bush has authorized spying on United States citizens without even the rubber-stamp oversight of the FISA court. The editorial, entitled Give us assurances on homeland spying, contains a tepid objection to President Bush’s use of the National Security apparatus on citizens domestically without supervision.

While I’m glad the Star will at least entertain the notion that their ought to be a check to Presidential power, I’m troubled by a couple of self-evident truths espoused in the editorial.

President Bush is correct to assert that these are extraordinary times requiring extraordinary measures to protect American citizens. . . . Constitutional scholars and historians will debate which prerogatives the president has in a wartime climate without a formally declared war. Certainly, they are far-reaching.

First, these are not extraordinary times. I think there is a self-centered tendency of humans to convince themselves that the times they live in are somehow different. To the contrary, I think these are extremely ordinary times. History is full of somebody done somebody wrong songs, whether the wrong in question is Osama Bin Laden’s murder of 3,000 U.S. citizens or the United States’ war against Iraq and subsequent death of 2,000 soldiers and 30,000 Iraqi citizens. If I might posit a self-evident truth, certainly the Founders were not ignorant of a nation’s executive’s desire to impose his will on his subjects during times of war. If the authority to spy on one’s citizens without approval of the Congress were something the Founders had in mind, I do not believe they would have overlooked writing it into the Constitution. The Founders were smugglers who had just overthrown their own executive. They wrote protections into the Bill of Rights to limit the authority of the government. The Second Amendment right to bear arms. The Third Amendment prohibition against quartering troops in citizens’ homes. The Fourth Amendment prohibition against warrantless searches and seizures. I doubt they just “forgot” to mention that the executive had the authority to conduct warrantless searches if we had entered into a war of choice in a foreign country or if some brigands knock down a few buildings.

Suffice it to say I do not share the Star’s certainty that the President has powers that are anywhere near this far reaching even in a “war-time climate”. Secret prisons. Torture. Military tribunals. Now, warrantless searches of U.S. citizens. It’s time for Congress to assert the authority of its branch of government and come down on the President in a big way. They gave him some leeway. He’s been abusing it. It’s time to reel him in.

The AP h has a story, following up on a New York Times story that George Bush has directed the National Security Agency to spy on citizens domestically.

The official said that, since October 2001, the program has been renewed more than three dozen times. Each time, the White House counsel and the attorney general certified the lawfulness of the program, the official said. Bush then signed the authorizations.

During the reviews, government officials have also provided a fresh assessment of the terrorist threat, showing that there is a catastrophic risk to the country or government, the official said.

We’ve heard about catastrophic risks to the country before. If you recall, Iraq was said to pose such a risk. Buying yellowcake from Niger to make nuclear weapons as President Bush said in his State of the Union address. But then, once it became utterly clear that Iraq was nothing more than a toothless dictatorship that posed no threat to us, suddenly we weren’t invading because of the threat — no, no, suddenly we were purveyors of democracy; helping the people of Iraq out of the goodness of our hearts at a cost of half a billion dollars, 2,000 American soldiers’ lives, 30,000 Iraqi lives (at least), and counting. You’ll also recall the ongoing effort by the Bush administration to conflate Iraq with terrorism. I bring this up as a reminder that we can’t trust George Bush or his administration to be straight with us about whether a threat actually exists or not. So, where I might at least pause a second to consider whether a trustworthy President could legitimately authorize domestic spying, there is simply no basis for giving Bush the benefit of the doubt.

We can now add NSA spying on U.S. citizens to our list of anti-democratic practices such as torture; incarcerating people without charges or access to courts and a lawyer; and incarcerating people without providing anybody any notice that they’ve been captured. It’s as if they’re determined to burn down our democratic village to save it.