Tom Daschle: Power We Didn't Grant (Bush knowingly violated the law)

[ProSense]

Power We Didn't Grant
By Tom Daschle
Friday, December 23, 2005; A21

In the face of mounting questions about news stories saying that President Bush approved a program to wiretap American citizens without getting warrants, the White House argues that Congress granted it authority for such surveillance in the 2001 legislation authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda. On Tuesday, Vice President Cheney said the president "was granted authority by the Congress to use all means necessary to take on the terrorists, and that's what we've done."

As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.

On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.


snip...

The Bush administration now argues those powers were inherently contained in the resolution adopted by Congress -- but at the time, the administration clearly felt they weren't or it wouldn't have tried to insert the additional language.


more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201101.html

[NoFederales]

1. Shazzam and Goll-uh-lee! The lies keep a-coming.......nt

NoFederales

[Roland99]

2. Is there any doubt this administration tried to subvert the Constitution??

They wanted a back-door way of bypassing Posse Comitatus!

[Robert Cooper]

3. recommended...more people need to see this...

...legislative history is one of the things SCOTUS looks at.

This is certainly not good news for the Chimp and Mr. Torture.

Thank you for speaking up, Mr. Daschle.

[ProSense]

4. Article: Without Civil Liberties Homeland Security Will Fail

Without Civil Liberties Homeland Security Will Fail

Source: University of Maryland, College Park Released: Fri 23-Dec-2005, 14:20 ET

Without Civil Liberties Homeland Security Will Fail
By Lee Strickland

When the government’s war on terror forgets our civil liberties, it does so at our peril, weakening our homeland security.

Consider the latest and unnecessary example: the directives allowing the National Security Agency to intercept the telephone and Internet communications of Americans without a court warrant. The day the news broke, the Senate blocked renewal of the USA Patriot Act – a law the president says is essential to our security. Its long-term status remains in question. There’s a pattern here.


snip...

This is not the first time since 9/11 that a disregard for civil liberties has generated congressional and citizen opposition to other security programs. CAPS II – a plan to enhance airline security by prescreening passengers’ records – was terminated because civil liberties concerns by the public and Congress were not satisfied. Admiral Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness Program – a Department of Defense initiative to create an extensive, coordinated database – suffered a similar fate.

The lesson is that logical security steps will fail if the public does not have faith that they will be run in a way that respects our core values and constitutional protections. The irony in this latest case is that the warrantless intercepts are truly unwarranted.

snip...

Instead we now have a very dangerous precedent. Something extreme is afoot that eats away at the Constitution’s fundamental precept of a balance of powers between the three branches of government.

When the executive branch asserts a unilateral authority to act without transparency, without oversight and without the opportunity for redress, the real threat to our society becomes apparent as it did in the 1960s and early ‘70s. This is as pernicious as anything Richard Nixon did.




Lee S. Strickland recently retired from the CIA after 30 years as an attorney, senior analyst and manger. He now directs the University of Maryland’s Center for Information Policy.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/516997/?sc=rsln