TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- When conservative political columnist George Will upbraids the Bush administration, it’s time to listen up.
In his column today, Will assails the president’s “monarchial doctrine” and “incoherently” reasoned arguments to support a widespread domestic surveillance program that clearly violates U.S. law.
Will briefly sketches how Bush’s claimed “inherent powers” as commander in chief to circumvent the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act would set an alarming precedent for future presidents, who could embrace an even more expansive view of that executive authority.
He then notes the irony in an administration famous for opposing “those who discover unstated meanings in the Constitution's text and do not strictly construe the language of statutes,” then finding authorization for the secret program hidden between the lines of both Congress’s post-Sept. 11 force resolution and Article II of the U.S. Constitution.
When George Will and I agree on something like this, there likely is a wide public consensus. Accordingly, it’s past time to listen up; it’s time for Congress to rein in this president’s dangerous ideas of executive authority.
Unfortunately, that may not occur, as the Senate today declined to exercise its “inherent power” of oversight responsibility over the executive branch and immediately investigate a prima facie violation of FISA.
According to the New York Times, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts (R – Kan.) said he believed there should not yet be a congressional review of the program because “such an investigation is currently unwarranted and would be detrimental to this highly classified program.”
Sen. Roberts obviously has it backward. It’s the eavesdropping that is unwarranted, not an investigation.
But the U.S. House still has an opportunity to speak up and the political cover to do so. As I commended her for on Feb. 8, Rep. Heather Wilson, Republican chairwoman of the House committee that oversees the National Security Agency, has called for a full congressional review of the spying program.
The House should follow Wilson’s courageous lead and exercise its constitutional duty to check the power of the executive branch.
But even as the Senate shirked its duties, a U.S. district court today ordered the Bush administration to either comply with a Freedom of Information Act request for documents detailing the scope of the NSA wiretap program or sufficiently spell out what exactly it is withholding.
It is unlikely the district court’s decision will be the final word on that specific matter or the general issue of domestic surveillance, but at least one branch is attempting to fulfill its solemn constitutional obligation to protect our republican form of government [Washington Post, NYTImes, The Guardian] is Executive Editor of TheSequitur.com. He is a law student at Florida State University.
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