Spy Away

As expected, the House joined the Eunuchs in the Senate to pass the latest travesty on our Civil Rights, House Passes Changes in Eavesdropping Program, reporting:

Under pressure from President Bush, the House gave final approval Saturday to changes in a terrorism surveillance program, despite serious objections from many Democrats about the scope of the executive branch’s new eavesdropping power.

* * * *

The House Democratic leadership had severe reservations about the proposal and an overwhelming majority of Democrats opposed it. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the measure “does violence to the Constitution of the United States.”

But with the Senate already in recess, Democrats confronted the choice of allowing the administration’s bill to reach the floor and be approved mainly by Republicans or letting it die.

If it had stalled, that would have left Democratic lawmakers, long anxious about appearing weak on national security issues, facing an August spent fending off charges from Republicans that they had left Americans exposed to threats.

Oh yes, we're really safe now. Congress can surely rest easy now on it's month long vacation. As the Post said, House Approves Wiretap Measure:

The 227 to 183 House vote capped a high-pressure campaign by the White House to change the nation's wiretap law, in which the administration capitalized on Democrats' fears of being branded weak on terrorism and on a general congressional desire to act on the measure before an August recess.

I feel like we are living with a Know Nothing Administration ("I don't recall," "I don't know about that"), conjoined with a Do Nothing Congress (we couldn't pass any other version, so we couldn't do anything else but cave in).

Jack Balkin expresses my level of anger at the cowardly congress, Balkinization:

The passage of the new FISA bill by the Senate and now the House demonstrates that the Democrats stand neither for defending civil liberties nor for checking executive power.

They stand for nothing at all.

Conversely, the new bill shows that the Republican Party can get the Democrats to surrender almost any civil liberty-- indeed, to give the President just as much unchecked power as he might obtain under a Republican controlled Congress-- simply by playing the fear card repeatedly and without shame. And this the Republicans did with gusto in the past few days, with one Senator even suggesting that America would immediately be attacked if the President was not given everything he wanted, no matter how unnecessary the demands, and no matter what alternatives were available.

I sometimes feel Casandra-like in expressing what I see are the clear repercussions of these actions. Balkin similarly describes where we are headed:

Behind the current events is a more troubling trend. . . . [W]e are in a gradual transition from a National Security State to a National Surveillance State. We pointed out that although the Republicans got first crack at constructing many features of this emerging state, it would be a bipartisan effort. The only issue will be what kind of national surveillance state we would have, and whether government would put in place the appropriate checks and balances to protect civil liberties, prevent the multiplication of secret laws and secret methods of enforcement, and restrain an increasingly ambitious executive.

So far the answers to this question have not been reassuring. Whether controlled by Republicans or Democrats, Congress seems willing to bestow more and more unaccountable power to the President of the United States. The Democratic Party, which has long prided itself on its support for civil liberties, seems altogether to have lost its soul, and the Republican Party, which long contained a strong element of libertarianism and respect for individual freedom-- particularly in economic matters-- has given up any claims to providing a counterweight to a deluded and incompetent President.

The Republican Party of the future appears to be Rudy Giuliani's party-- waving the bloody shirt of 9/11 and making increasingly extreme assertions about the need for concentrating unaccountable power in the executive. This is the Party of Fear. The Democratic Party of the future appears to be a pale reflection of the same, which, afraid of being thought weak, proves itself to be so by repeatedly surrendering our constitutional liberties in the name of a hyped-up and potentially endless state of emergency. This is the Party Without a Spine.

Between the Party of Fear and the Party Without a Spine, there does not seem to be much opportunity to keep the National Surveillance State benign. Nor does there seem to be any political check on the development of an increasingly authoritarian Presidency, which controls the levers of secrecy, surveillance, and military force.

Do not be mistaken: We are not hurtling toward the Gulag or anything that we have seen before. It will be nothing so dramatic as that. Rather, we are slowly inching, through each act of fear mongering and fecklessness, pandering and political compromise, toward a world in which Americans have increasingly little say over how they are actually governed, and increasingly little control over how the government collects information on them to regulate and control them. Slowly, secretly and imperceptibly, the mechanisms of government surveillance are being freed from methods of political control and accountability; and the liberties of ordinary citizens are being surgically removed under a potent anesthesia concocted from propaganda, fear, ignorance and apathy.

And one final note: PA's own Son of Santorum, Bob Casey, was one of 16 Senate Democrats who voted in favor approving unfettered spying on Americans, see Casey Gives Bush More Power to Wiretap. Shame on you (and me, for supporting you)!!

Tags: Civil Liberties, Law, FISA, News, Politics