Call Comey

by digby

I wrote sometime back that we had reached a point with this administration that we were entirely dependent upon the integrity of a few members of the legal community to save the country. I know that sounds hyperbolic, but I think it may literally be true.

I’m not usually a big friend of tough prosecutors. I hate the drug war and I think they play fast and loose when trying to take down a target by squeezing people who are only peripherally involved. There is always tension between civil libertarians and the government and that is as it should be. It’s that balance that allows us to live in a (mostly) civilized society.

When a government becomes corrupt and power mad one normally depends upon the political opposition and the press to sound the alarm — and to some extent that has happened. But due to a corporate media that pumps non-stop sensation into people’s heads 24 hours a day, the signal to noise ratio is seriously out of whack, even when something very important happens. Only terrorist attacks and catastrophic natural disasters can break through the static. As Peter Daou writes today, the sheer number of scandals makes it almost impossible for the press and the public to see any of them clearly.

And even if something begins to break through, we know from the Plame scandal and others that the administration exerts an iron grip on the media almost as painful as the one with which it chokes dissenters in its own party. After all, when Scooter Libby called Tim Russert to complain about Chris Matthews’ coverage, bureau chief Russert didn’t simply say that Matthews had a right to his opinion or that NBC always provided a forum for the administration to rebut any claims and leave it at that. No, he reported Libby’s complaints to the president of NBC, Matthews’ bosses. I think that pretty much tells the tale of the Washington press corps in a nutshell. I wouldn’t count on them to help us out of this mess.

In addition, our two party tradition provides for very little real power to be invested in an oppostion party on its own — the rules have been devised for bipartisan compromise. When you have a very disciplined majority (even if only with a slight numerical advantage) the minority party can be virtually shut out of government, as in a parliamentary system. We have little experience with this kind of government and without the open floor debate and partisan press that exists in other systems, this makes for very lopsided power structure.

The structural political imbalance, the media cacophany and the overwhelming numbers of crises and scandals both large and small have virtually paralyzed this country’s ability to deal with the very serious constitutional crisis that is developing over the president’s assertion of unlimited executive and warmaking powers. I think the law is our only backstop on this. It’s appearing more and more that we are going to have to ask certain lawyers, cops and judges who understand that their duty to their country is bigger than their duty to this president to step up. And that brings me to James Comey.

All evidence suggests that I would not agree with James Comey’s politics, but I can’t be sure since he has scrupulously guarded his poltical leanings. I very much doubt that this law and order prosecutor sees the world through my ACLU lens. However, like many of the growing numbers of law enforcement officers who have grown alarmed by this administration’s lawless governance, he is by all accounts a straight arrow. He was the number two man in the Justice Department when all the recent affronts to the constitution (torture, spying, the death of habeus corpus, indefinite detention, presidential infallibility) were delivered and from what we know he objected vociferously. It is, therefore, no surprise that this non-political career civil servant is no longer in government.

It is vital that he testify in a future hearing on the illegal NSA spying hearings. I do not know what he will say, and he may even defend the program on some level. But there is a reason why Comey refused to sign off on reauthorizing this program, forcing Gonzales to go to the hospital and try to strong arm a man who just had surgery to sign off on it instead. In his testimony earlier this week, Gonzales implied that it may have been a problem with another program. How very interesting.

We need to know just what in the hell was going on during the period between the time the program was instituted and the time Comey and others refused to reauthorize it. Why was it suspended? We need to know if there were other illegal spying programs. Comey is the man who can answer those questions.

Apparently, Comey believes that the administration may invoke executive privilege. Considering what poor little Brownie said this morning, I suspect that all former administration officials are told that if called before congress the president will likely invoke executive privilege. He is after all, infallible. But at the very least the committee should force the administration to invoke it. Let’s get all the cards on the table.

I have no idea if there are other illegal programs out there or if this program has been used for domestic spying. But it’s clear that something about all this stinks to high heaven and the Democrats know it. The smart money says that they’ve created a full-on datamining capability along the lines of Total Information Awareness and they are using it on US Citizens for god knows what purpose. Maybe Americans don’t mind being subject to constant monitoring by the government. And maybe they really are so afraid of terrorists that they are willing to officially end our 230 year experiment in liberty by codifying an elected dictatorship rather than a carefully balanced representative government. But before we flush the constitution down the toilet, let’s give democracy one last hurrah, shall we? Let’s find out if these actions are legal and constitutional (and if the people of this country really are the bedwetting cowards the Republicans take them for.)

Firedoglake is collecting comments on this matter in the hopes that the powers that be on the Judiciary Committee will understand that the grassroots are engaged and knowledgeable on this issue and will back up any Democratic Senator who pushes for more testimony, specifically the testimony of James Comey. Either leave a comment here or go over to FDL and add your voice to the chorus if you agree.

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