Is President Bush Right?
Filed under: Conservatism, Courts, Homeland Security, National Politics
As I stated yesterday, one of the things that has been of great concern to me lately is the disclosure that President Bush appears to have circumvented the law by using the NSA to monitor the communications of US citizens who are supposedly in contact with terrorists (or people affiliated somehow with terrorists). While I know that many people believe that this is necessary in order to protect the country against terror, there are a few problems with the President’s actions.
Several of the President’s defenders have made the case that the NSA is only monitoring the communications of those who are somehow affiliated with known terrorists or terrorist groups. That’s great. How do we know this? No, I am not calling George Bush a liar. I am merely stating that we have a constitutional system that demands review by an impartial judge before the executive branch can execute a search (or a wiretap or monitoring wireless communications). The NSA is prohibited from monitoring domestic communication without a warrant. That is why we have the FISA court.
President Bush claims that he informed the chief judge of the FISA court (at the time) as well as certain senior members of Congress. So what? He could have gotten a warrant. In addition, while the Congress was debating what became the Patriot Act, he could have inserted language in the bill that would have allowed for similar action under particular circumstances (while still protecting an individual’s constitutional rights).
George Will, in his last column, addressed this issue:
Particularly in time of war or the threat of it, government needs concentrated decisiveness — a capacity for swift and nimble action that legislatures normally cannot manage. But the inescapable corollary of this need is the danger of arbitrary power.
To many the concept of liberty is just that, an abstract concept. To me it is far more. That is why I am just as concerned about your rights as I am my own. I don’t want the government to monitor my communications without a judge reviewing their application for warrant first. Who defines what groups may be spied upon? The Society of Friends (Quakers)? Why not since they are opposed to the war (all wars actually). It may be laughable to some, but one day we could live in a country where the executive deems the American Conservative Union or even the Republican Party as a terrorist group (or a group affiliated with terrorists). Who will stop them?
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Pat Buchanon said that the administration is tapping into all telephone and internet communications in an area code and listening with computers for patterns that identify possible terrorist affiliation. One end of the communication must be overseas. This casts such a wide net that mostly innocent citizens are being tapped. The president knew that this would never pass any court so he kept it secret. So, he disobeyed the law knowingly, but for national security reasons.