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.
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