Republican Senators join call for FISA investigation

Amid threats of political retaliation from vice president Dick Cheney, Republican senators Chuck Hagel, Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe joined Senate Democrats in calling for investigations into the illegal electronic surveillance authorized by president Bush. Hagel, Snowe and Democrats Ron Wyden, Carl Levin and Dianne Feinstein all signed a letter requesting Senate intelligence committee hearings on the surveillance, while Specter, who chairs the Senate judiciary committee, reiterated his promise to hold hearings on the matter next month. Senate majority leader Bill Frist remained noncommittal pending his efforts to scuttle the hearings.

Cutting short a trip to east Asia in favor of damage control, Cheney lashed out at critics of the administration’s continuing descent into lawlessness, claiming that attempts to prevent the administration from undermining American values will handcuff the administration’s efforts to preserve and defend American values. He suggested the executive has no obligation to Congress or the law in times of stress, and that Democratic critics of White House policies would face political reprisals for attempting to hold the administration accountable to Congress and the Constitution (no word on the fate of Republicans such as Hagel, Specter, Snowe and others).

Meanwhile, White House press secretary Scott McClellan dismissed documentary evidence from senator Jay Rockefeller and a statement from former Senate minority leader Tom Daschle to the effect that they were not provided sufficient information to make judgements about the legitimacy of the NSA intercepts, and that they expressed deep concerns about the program. “They were,” said McClellan, “briefed and informed.”

In short, the administration claimed they have virtually unlimited powers, and lied early and often and at length about the extent to which senators were briefed on the program.

We noted yesterday that the Bush administration is the first since FISA became law in 1979 to have applications for warrants rejected, and that the court orders they requested were modified at a considerably higher rate than in previous administrations. The FISA court still granted all but four of some 5,600 applications (as of December 2004) since Bush took office, but the administration withdrew another three and had more than 160 modified by the court. During the previous 22 years, the court never refused an application and only rarely modified requests.

The obvious outstanding question remains why the administration felt compelled to bypass what has traditionally been a guaranteed route to warrants, with provisions for retroactivity in emergencies. The obvious answer is that they feared rejection by the land’s most lenient court.

Negative reactions to the news about the NSA intercepts are very far from limited to Democrats and liberals: former Republican Congressman Bob Barr very nearly went postal on current Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher when the two discussed the subject on Wolf Blitzer’s show (via Atrios):

… this is absolutely a bizarre conversation where you have a member of Congress saying that it’s okay for the president of the United States to ignore U.S. law, to ignore the Constitution, simply because we are in an undeclared war.

The fact of the matter is the law prohibits — specifically prohibits — what apparently was done in this case, and for a member of Congress to say, oh, that doesn’t matter, I’m proud that the president violated the law is absolutely astounding, Wolf.

ROHRABACHER: Not only proud, we can be grateful to this president. You know, I’ll have to tell you, if it was up to Mr. Schumer, Senator Schumer, they probably would have blown up the Brooklyn Bridge. The bottom line is this: in wartime we expect our leaders, yes, to exercise more authority.

Now, I have led the fight to making sure there were sunset provisions in the Patriot Act, for example. So after the war, we go back to recognizing the limits of government. But we want to put the full authority that we have and our technology to use immediately to try to thwart terrorists who are going to — how about have a nuclear weapon in our cities?

BARR: And the Constitution be damned, Dana?

Yes, Bob, the Constitution be damned.

Specter is seriously peeved with attorney general Alberto Gonzales, who has pinballed between two contradictory explanations of the administration’s flight from oversight.

Specter on Tuesday challenged Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ defense of the spying operation. Gonzales had said Monday that the administration hadn’t sought to change existing law to permit such spying because it feared Congress wouldn’t approve. But he also said that Congress’ 2001 resolution authorizing force to prevent another terrorist attack gave the president implicit authority to order the plan.

“If he didn’t think he could get Congress to act, why does he think Congress intended to give those broad powers in the force resolution,” Specter said.

Good question. Clearly, one of those answers isn’t operative. And equally clearly, both answers acknowledge that the surveillance was not authorized by any existing statute.

As we also noted yesterday, Democratic Congressman John Conyers has introduced legislation calling for the censure of Bush and Cheney and the establishment of a select committee to investigate possible grounds for impeachment. This will no doubt come as a relief to Washington Post pollster Richard Morin, who has been bound by tradition not to conduct a survey on voter sentiment about the possibility of impeachment because, he says, the subject has not been addressed in Congress. Well now it has, and we expect Morin will catapult into action.

And here we all are. The Bush administration have consistently lied to the public and continues to do so with this issue. We have, courtesy primarily of our attorney general and vice president, become a nation of kidnappers and torturers. We have no idea what additional secrets the administration are hiding, from the the nature of the corruption driving Cheney’s energy task force to who knows what unconstitutional and atrocious activities we’ve yet to discover; there seem to be, in accordance with Cheney’s theory of unlimited executive power, no boundaries. The Christmas lull approaches, and we can all use the time to commune with our various gods in search of an appropriate punishment for a president and his associates who are in the not at all innocent process of surrendering whatever’s left of our national character.