The Demorats in the U.S. House today have brokered a "compromise" with Republicans on a new version of the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act. In this new version, the telecom companies that very plainly violated the law at the behest of the Bush administration will have immunity from prosecution if they can prove that they were, in fact, acting at the behest of the Bush administration.
What a joke! As Glenn Greenwald says, "When you read it, it's actually hard to believe that the Congress is about to make this into our law. Then again, this is the same Congress that abolished habeas corpus with the Military Commissions Act, and legalized George Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program with the "Protect America Act," so it shouldn't be hard to believe at all."
This is getting ridiculous. We can't keep making excuses to justify the Congress's pitiful lack of backbone. I recently listened to a speech given by Al Gore in January of 2006, when the details of the warrantless spying program were just coming to light. Someone ought to march into the House chamber and read this excerpt to them before they go to vote:
The executive branch time and again has co-opted Congress' role. And too often Congress has been a willing accomplice in the surrender of its own power.
Look, for example, at the congressional role in overseeing this massive, four-year eavesdropping campaign that, on its face, seemed so clearly to violate the Bill of Rights.
The president says he informed Congress. What he really means is that he talked with the chairman and ranking member of the House and Senate intelligence committees and, sometimes, the leaders of the House and Senate.
This small group, in turn, claims they were not given the full facts, though at least one of the committee leaders handwrote a letter of concern to the vice president.
And, though I sympathize with the awkward position, the difficult position in which these men and women were placed, I cannot disagree with the Liberty Coalition when it says that Democrats as well as Republicans in the Congress must share the blame for not taking sufficient action to protest and seek to prevent what they consider a grossly unconstitutional program.
Many did. Moreover, in the Congress as a whole, both House and Senate, the enhanced role of money in the re-election process, coupled with the sharply diminished role for reasoned deliberation and debate, has produced an atmosphere conducive to pervasive institutionalized corruption that some have fallen vulnerable to.
The Abramoff scandal is but the tip of a giant iceberg threatening the integrity of our legislative branch of government.
And it is the pitiful state of our legislative state which primarily explains the failure of our vaunted checks and balances to prevent the dangerous overreach by the executive branch now threatening a radical transformation of the American system.
I call upon members of Congress in both parties to uphold your oath of office and defend the Constitution. Stop going along to get along. Start acting like the independent and co-equal branch of American government that you are supposed to be under the Constitution of our country.
I hope the folks at Daily Kos and TPM are taking notes. Any Democrat who votes for this bill ought to have a well-funded opponent in the primary next time they're up for election. We must demand better from our elected officials.
On a side note, what a disaster it is that Gore wasn't our President over the past eight years instead of this unmitigated disaster of an administration. For more of Gore's views on matters like this, I highly recommend his book The Assault on Reason which should be required reading for all voters.
Update: I am sorely disappointed to find that Barack Obama has endorsed this terrible bill. I expect better from a constitutional law professor and from someone promising to bring "change." I'm not sure what sort of change he has planned, but I was kind of hoping for the kind that restores the rule of law to the Executive Branch of our government.
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