Dear A-Letter Reader:
When I first read an alleged quotation from President Bush a week ago I doubted its accuracy. It was a shocker. Surely, I thought, this is a malicious distortion from someone who probably got some gossip third hand. No president would ever say, or even think, such a thing, I mused.
The exact quotation, by the editor of a publication called Capitol Hill Blue , was alleged to have occurred in the White House Oval Office attended by congressional leaders discussing the extension of the PATRIOT Act, in trouble because of its lack of constitutional safeguards. Many provisions of the Act, rushed through Congress only weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, have caused so much concern that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have joined forces with prominent conservatives like ex-US Rep. Bob Barr and the American Conservative Union to oppose renewal in the harsh form Bush has demanded.
According to Capitol Hill Blue , Republican leaders told Bush that his unyielding push to renew the worst provisions of the Act without safeguards might fail (as, thankfully, they did in the US Senate last week) and could further alienate conservatives: "I don't give a goddamn," Bush is reported to have said. "I'm the president and the commander-in-chief. Do it my way."
"Mr. President," an aide in the meeting supposedly said; "There is a valid case that some of the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution."
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back. "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"
Aside from the fact that I doubt that the President "screamed" at all, and that he, a born-again evangelical Christian, would say "goddamn" to a group -- until last Friday, I assumed he respected the Constitution, even though to me he always has seemed enormously ignorant about that sacred document and its meaning. (While he is not a lawyer, there really is no excuse for such ignorance in one who occupies his exalted position).
Now comes the stunning revelation, which he admitted last Saturday, that the President personally and repeatedly since 9-11 has secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on telephone calls and read e-mails of people within the United States without obtaining judicial warrants as specifically required by law. That law grew out of the scandalous abuse by the FBI of Americans' civil liberties in the 1970s, curtailing domestic spying by US intelligence agencies and providing a system under which federal police agencies can covertly obtain warrants to eavesdrop on suspected spies (and terrorists too) in the US. This is the law that Bush has brushed aside.
As one US Senator noted, a president, this one or any other, has no power to disregard laws that he doesn't like or finds inconvenient. If he does, then the rule of law has ended in America. If Watergate established nothing else, it affirmed that a president is subject to the law, just as are all Americans. Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., the only senator to vote against the PATRIOT Act when it passed in 2001, reminded Mr. Bush that he is president, not a king.
The president sought to justify his unconstitutional, possibly even criminal, action on the grounds that as commander in chief in the "war on terrorism" he has a duty to defend America against another 9-11. Thus he thinks he can simply waive a law he believes stands in the way of this goal. But this is a president who also claims many extraordinary powers; to hold persons captive in prison for years without charges or access to counsel, without allowing their families to know where they are; a president who condones torture in contravention of US and international law; a president who allows the Pentagon to create massive personal data bases on millions of innocent Americans; a president who advocates letting the military spy on citizens, who allows the FBI to grab bank and financial records in secret. One must wonder how many other Americans illegally have been eavesdropped on, for whatever reason the president feels justified.
The Fourth Amendment was written out of a revulsion against warrants that let British soldiers search anywhere they chose. It specifically requires government to demonstrate to a judge, and the judge specifically to find, the existence of probable cause of criminal activity on the part of the person whose property the government wishes to search. The Fourth Amendment commands that only a judge can authorize a search warrant. Certainly the President has no power to waive the Fourth Amendment or any other part of the US Constitution.
Perhaps, as The Los Angeles Times suggests, these astounding events may be "the tipping point in the American public's attitude, one that will cause the administration to reverse its encroachment on rights in the name of security."
We hope the US Congress and the courts will assert their powers against this presidential usurpation, and do so immediately, especially since the president defiantly has said he will continue to violate the law -- and the Constitution. The charges in the impeachments of both Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were based on far less than is involved here.
For myself, as a conservative and as a former Member of Congress who swore to uphold the Constitution, I believe George W. Bush needs to be taught that the Constitution is a lot more than just "a piece of paper" -- that it's words are the embodiment and the central protection of our hard won liberties and freedoms -- and that no president can ever be allowed to ignore it at will.
That's the way that it looks from here.
BOB BAUMAN, Editor
* COMMENT Links:
* U.S. Constitution, Art. II Sec. 2, Powers of the President.
LINK:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/
constitution.articleii.html#section2
* Bush on the Constitution: 'It's just a goddamned piece of paper'
LINK:
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/
article_7779.shtml
* Bush defends eavesdropping, blasts senators on Patriot Act. LINK:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/12/19/
MNG9JGAFEV10.DTL
* Sen. Feingold's remarks on ending debate on PATRIOT Act.
LINK:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1216-29.htm
* Bigger Brother, Los Angeles Times editorial. LINK:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/
la-ed-security18dec18,0,5190326.story