Eight years ago, a president entering his sixth year in office came under suspicion: had he conducted an adulterous affair with a young intern? For months thereafter, the media could talk of little else. It was the national topic of conversation for most of that year. The House eventually impeached the president, and the Senate tried him.
Now again, a president entering his sixth year in office has come under suspicion: has he deliberately and unjustifiably violated both the Constitution and federal statutes by conducting searches without a warrant? But this suspicion is not getting anything like the kind of media attention of the Monica Lewinsky story.
Why is that?
The presidential oath of office states: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Thus the core of his job is expressed in terms of defending, not our standard of living, nor even the general welfare, but our Constitution itself.
So why was Monica more deserving of attention? None of the possible “explanations” can stand as justifications.
1) The grounds for suspecting President Bush of violating both the letter and the spirit of his oath of office are not weaker than were the grounds for suspecting President Clinton of hanky-panky with an intern.
2) The possible wrong-doing by the current president would in no way be less important for Americans to confront than the wrong-doing of his predecessor; indeed, the present suspicion against the president is precisely the kind of thing that most worried our Founding Fathers.
3) The media may assume that the American people are less interested in protecting the Constitution than in sex scandals, but they haven’t bothered to test that proposition. And even if it were true, that would not justify the failure of the press to fulfill its duty as watchdog and protector of our democracy.
Grounds for Suspicion
The president has admitted to ordering wiretaps to be conducted without getting the court warrants required by the 4th Amendment to the Constitution and by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. To justify his actions, he and his people have made two claims: first, that they had the legal authority to do so; and second, that their actions were required for the sake of national security in a time of war.
It is hardly reassuring about the moral and intellectual integrity of this administration that the legal justifications offered thus far are regarded as almost laughably flimsy by the independent legal authorities who have commented on them.
First, they’ve claimed that the congressional authorization to fight the terrorists abroad, passed in the aftermath of 9/11, also authorized domestic surveillance. But the language of the enabling legislation supports no such claim, and the record of the debate at the time suggests that the Bush administration fully understood that such authorization would require additional provisions that Congress expressly declined to enact. In addition, why would President Bush have given his subsequent (false) public reassurance that his administration abides by the requirement to get warrants before conducting searches if he felt he’d been authorized by Congress to do otherwise?
Second, the Bush administration claims that the powers constitutionally given to the president as commander-in-chief permits him to do whatever he pleases in waging war, regardless of the law or of the prerogatives of the other branches of the government. Such a claim has been widely regarded by legal scholars as baseless as a reading of the Constitution, and as antithetical to the whole spirit of our constitutional system.
Still, there could be important national security reasons for a president to violate the law. And it’s possible that the American people –whether wisely or not—would be willing to allow the president to take illegal measures if they were required to defend the nation. But here, too, there are also reasons to doubt the presidential claims that his apparently illegal actions have been required by the demands of national security.
FISA created a court especially for the purpose of issuing such warrants, and it has issued many thousands of such warrants, while refusing only four. The law even makes provision for those situations in which urgency makes it impractical to go first to court: the executive has three whole days after emergency surveillance to come to the court for its actions to be scrutinized and validated.
So what legitimate national security reason there might be that would have prevented the president from both protecting the nation and obeying the law and the Constitution?
Andrew Bard Schmookler's website www.nonesoblind.org is devoted to understanding the roots of America's present moral crisis and the means by which the urgent challenge of this dangerous moment can be met. Dr. Schmookler is also the author of such books as The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution (SUNY Press) and Debating the Good Society: A Quest to Bridge America's Moral Divide (M.I.T. Press). He also conducts regular talk-radio conversations in both red and blue states.
Deliberate Naivete is sometimes worse than pure badness
Mr. Schmookler strikes me here as a person who vehemently pretendes to be a child. Tyranny starting? Needs to be stopped? Media serves the power? It is as if he is some kind of Rip Van Vinkle who had slept since 1999 and only woke up now.
Hey, Andy, do you remember what did your beloved adulterer do in that very year when as you said 'his popularity climbed to the roof'. He bombed Serbia. At that time media served another master and as obediently as now helped him to.. sell the war. Guess, what, lessons learned. The GOP took it to the advisement that Mr. Clinton and his cronies would do anything from unleashing war to betraying the country, all for the stain of that dress. So, it is not the media or the public to blame but the 'opposition'. If at least one media channel should be controlled fully by the opposition and it broadcasts 24 hours a day that we have the gov't of traitors and that we all should listen to Bugliosi, oh how fast would the media jump on the bandwagon.
But ... the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, or stupid Donkey that is.
Never ever look at what your adversary does; just think what you can do to him. Remember Ullisius Grant? But instead we have Bard Schmookler- Rip Van Vinkle pretending that he does not understand what is going on. Oh, my God, Rip, go back to sleep. You may wake up dead.
by
Mark Sashine (53 articles, 19 quicklinks, 250 diaries, 3574 comments)
on Tuesday, January 17, 2006 at 8:31:03 AM
You're on target here. Al Gore said there's no way the nation's in more peril now than the world wars and the Cold War, but all of those presidents protected Americans' civil rights. War is just a ruse for BushCo to grab illegitimate, absolute power. That's why they don't have an EXIT STRATEGY, they don't plan on EVER exiting. Then, they can claim extraordinary war powers forever. That's why they've demonized PEACE. War certainly has been good for "W." Americans should think about that instead of focusing on social issues that are outside the purvue of the Constitution.
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terri Kionka (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 83 comments)
on Tuesday, January 17, 2006 at 5:53:35 PM
Aptly name. Ulysses S. Grant, the greatest general in the history of America, had nothing in common with "W." He abhorred preemptive war and hated bloodshed. He always showed outstanding mercy for the rebels because they were, after all, our own countrymen and he felt a deep, abiding loyalty to a united country. That's a concept as foreign to Republicans as democracy. The media did not ever back up Clinton, they were complicit in crucifying him along with the Rethuglians. Clinton did nothing wrong. He should have just called a press conference and said, "Yes, I had a tryst with that woman, I want to assure the American people I have the authority to have a tryst with that woman, and I'm going to keep on having a tryst with that woman and no one can prove that I broke any law." No one could have proven that he broke the law, because he didn't. The Democrats could have given the American people a government of corrupt cronyism, if we'd only known that's what people wanted.
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terri Kionka (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 83 comments)
on Tuesday, January 17, 2006 at 6:03:13 PM
Doesn't all this spin make people sick? I could care less what Clinton did sexually while he was in office. For the most part he upheld our rights. Bush is nothing but a warmonger and because of his "choice" to lead us to war he has killed thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of people of different nationalities. Everything that Bush has done has been swept under the rug. Do Americans really care about a BJ when Bush is slaughtering so many people. How backward are we? Where is the outrage? Where is the media? They were all over Monica, but absolutely no mention that Laura Bush killed Douglass. I see a double standard in operation. Bush is picking apart the Constitution with the help of the so-called Attorney General. I am so sick of the past 5 years and what the idiot has done along with his crony hacks. I just hope we can recover.
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lickspittle (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 30 comments)
on Tuesday, January 17, 2006 at 9:32:54 PM
There is no comparison. Bill Clinton is as much a murderer as Bush, while having sex along the way. The difference is that Bush planned 911 and killed innocent Americans, murdered much more innocent people in Iraq than Clinton. And Bush has no intention of stopping the occupation of Iraq.
Bush should be impeached, and put on trial in Iraq. Lets see the Iraqi people support Bush.
It is clear they hate his guts, and his puppet appointed cronies who the people were forced to vote for, or get more bombs and phosphorus from US.
by
Dom Jermano (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 40 diaries, 930 comments)
on Wednesday, January 18, 2006 at 3:36:38 AM
5 comments
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