Returning from a two week vacation to the Federal Court decision against the unwarranted domestic N.S.A. eavesdropping program is gratifying [see Glen Greenwald‘s Analysis]. The Administration has already gone into full spin mode – "liberal" judge, cowboy talk about terrorist cells, etc. The issue in the court’s decision is clear. No one is questioning the government’s surveillance program. We know there are terrorists out there. What we question is doing it without judicial oversight. If Bush is doing what he says he is doing, judicial review would not interfere with the program at all. However, giving a President, particularly this President, particularly with this Vice President, a blank check to listen to whomever they wish to listen to is unacceptable, as well as unconstitutional.
Like the Supreme Court’s Hamdan vs Rumsfield decision, the broad Presidential powers assumed by the Bush Administration have been decisively denied. Not only do the Administration’s actions abridge basic rights, they ignore the separation of powers that are the bedrock of our form of government. During World War II, Roosevelt assumed enormous power. We were glad he did. He never seemed to be trying to change our Constitution. Mr. Bush and his cohorts drummed up a war. They weren’t under assault by the likes of a Hitler or Imperial Japan. They went after a penny-ante blowhard and destabilized a country now plunged into an unresolvable Civil War.
So, it’s a nice welcome home to find that there are still a few parts of our system that work as they were intended…
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