Outlaw Party

by digby

It has been a while since I have weighed in on the particulars of the illegal NSA spying scandal, mostly because Glenn Greenwald has this story covered so thoroughly and so well (and I’m sure you are all reading him every day.) But today we are reminded just how pernicious this scandal is: the Bush Justice department has asserted their right to ignore any law that congress makes, and which a former president signed, under a theory of executive power so sweeping that it essentially declares that this nation is a constitutional, elected monarchy (the elected part being debatable since the president could theoretically assert his unfettered powers to cancel elections.)

Glenn writes:

There are numerous noteworthy items, but the most significant, by far, is that the DoJ made clear to Congress that even if Congress passes some sort of newly amended FISA of the type which Sen. DeWine introduced, and even if the President “agrees” to it and signs it into law, the President still has the power to violate that law if he wants to. Put another way, the Administration is telling the Congress — again — that they can go and pass all the laws they want which purport to liberalize or restrict the President’s powers, and it does not matter, because the President has and intends to preserve the power to do whatever he wants regardless of what those laws provide.

I was digging around in my archives the other day and came across this post from three years ago as the Iraq war began:

Julia points out this article in the Washington Post that clearly reveals the Bush administration’s only governing principles are loyalty to the President and strong arm tactics. Period.

As the United States wages war this week following a pair of ultimatums to the United Nations and Iraq, the airwaves and editorial pages of the world have been full of accusations that President Bush and his administration are guilty of coercive and harrying behavior. Even in typically friendly countries, Bush and the United States have been given such labels this week as “arrogant bully” (Britain), “bully boys” (Australia), “big bully” (Russia), “bully Bush” (Kenya), “arrogant” (Turkey) and “capricious” (Canada). Diplomats have accused the administration of “hardball” tactics, “jungle justice” and acting “like thugs.”

At home, where support for the war on Iraq is strong and growing, such complaints of strong-arm tactics by the Bush administration nonetheless have a certain resonance — even among Bush supporters. Though the issues are vastly different, Republican lawmakers and conservative interest groups report similar pressure on allies at home to conform to Bush’s policy wishes.

Although all administrations use political muscle on the opposition, GOP lawmakers and lobbyists say the tactics the Bush administration uses on friends and allies have been uniquely fierce and vindictive. Just as the administration used unbending tactics before the U.N. Security Council with normally allied countries such as Mexico, Germany and France, the Bush White House has calculated that it can overcome domestic adversaries if it tolerates no dissent from its friends.

In recent weeks, the White House has been pushing GOP governors to oust the leadership of the National Governors Association to make the bipartisan group endorse Bush’s views. Interest groups report pressure from the administration — sometimes on groups’ donors — to conform to Bush’s policy views and even to fire dissenters.

Often, companies and their K Street lobbyists endorse ideas they privately oppose or question, according to several longtime Republican lobbyists. The fear is that Bush will either freeze them out of key meetings or hold a grudge that might deprive them of help in other areas, the lobbyists said. When the Electronic Industries Alliance declined to back Bush’s dividend tax cut, the group was frozen out when the White House called its “friends” in the industry to discuss the tax cut, according to White House and business sources.

[…]

Conservative interest groups get similar pressure. When the free-market Club for Growth sent a public letter to the White House to protest White House intervention in GOP primaries for “liberal-leaning Republicans,” the group’s president, Stephen Moore, picked up the phone at a friend’s one evening to receive a screaming tirade from Rove, who had tracked him down. On another occasion when Moore objected to a Bush policy, Rove called Richard Gilder, the Club for Growth’s chairman and a major contributor, to protest.

“I think this monomaniacal call for loyalty is unhealthy,” Moore said. “It’s dangerous to declare anybody who crosses you an enemy for life. It’s shortsighted.” Leaders of three other conservative groups report that their objections to Bush policies have been followed by snubs and, in at least one case, phone calls suggesting the replacement of a critical scholar. “They want sycophants rather than allies,” said the head of one think tank.

Corporations are coming under increasing pressure not just to back Bush, but to hire his allies to represent them in meetings with Republicans. As part of the “K Street Project,” top GOP officials, lawmakers and lobbyists track the political affiliation and contributions of people seeking lobbying jobs.

In a private meeting last week, chief executives from several leading technology firms told Rep. Calvin M. Dooley (Calif.) and other moderate Democrats that they were under heavy pressure to back the Bush tax plan, even though many of them had reservations about it. “There is a perception among some business interests there could be retribution if you don’t play ball on almost every issue that comes up,” Dooley said.

Read the whole thing. (And the editor’s note at the beginning.) It is now out in the open. No excuses. Any real libertarian or conservative who continues to back these Mafiosi is complicit. These people are undemocratic and intolerant of dissent. They openly use threats to intimidate their allies and strike fear into their enemies. This is not business as usual. We are seeing more elements every day of a new and unique American form of totalitarianism.

There have been signs of this coming for the last 10 years. The propaganda machine, the intense partisanship, the trumped up impeachment … an unelected court deciding a presidential election and now an illegitimate and illegal war being pursued under a doctrine of preventive war in pursuit of American hegemony. And, we are operating under de facto one-party rule within which no dissent is tolerated.

That is the administration that created this illegal spying program — an administration that had no compunction about strong-arming its own allies, issuing threats and insisting on blind fealty to the white house. It is mind-boggling that anyone would believe that an administration that behaves this way should be trusted to spy on Americans without a warrant. The fourth amendment was written with a future Karl Rove explicitly in mind.

Glenn quotes Madison in Federalist #47 in his post on this this morning. I’ll turn to #51:

… the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

The assumption here is that each branch of government would jealously guard its perogatives. In a one party government that answers to Karl Rove, that is not likely to happen. The discipline is finally breaking down, as the president becomes dramatically unpopular, the war drags on and 2008 ambitions assert themselves. But if we are to redeem our system, the Democrats must take power and they must hold Republicans accountable for what they’ve done. It cannot be otherwise, or the entire system is in jeopardy:

Asked if spying on the American people was as impeachable an offense as lying and having sex with an intern, Fein replied:

“I think the answer requires at least in part considering what the occupant of the presidency says in the aftermath of wrongdoing or rectification. On its face, if President Bush is totally unapologetic and says I continue to maintain that as a wartime President I can do anything I want – I don’t need to consult any other branches – that is an impeachable offense. It’s more dangerous that Clinton’s lying under oath because it jeopardizes our democratic dispensation and civil liberties for the ages. It would set a precedent that – would lie around like a loaded gun, able to be used indefinitely for any future occupant.” — Bruce Fein, Constitutional Scholar and former Deputy Attorney General in the Reagan Administration (Diane Rehm Show, 12/19/05)

The president continues to say that as a wartime president he can do anything he wants, openly and without any sense of shame. He has loaded that precedent and unless somebody puts a stop to it, it will lie there waiting for the next time a despotic president and his party want to use it.

The congress explicitly dealt with warrantless spying on Americans when it wrote the FISA law. It did this in response to abuses that were exposed in the aftermath of Watergate. But many of the people who were in the Nixon administration never accepted these limitations on executive power and simply waited until they took power again to reinstitute the practices. (Then, they needed to usurp the constitution because of the communist threat. Now it is terrorism. It’s always something.)

Peter Beinert, in an otherwise uncharacteristically politically savvy essay in last week’s TNR (on which I’ll comment later) wrote:

Was Bush’s surveillance program illegal? Absolutely. (As George Washington University’s Jonathan Turley notes, “It’s not a close question. Federal law is clear.”) Did Bush lie about it? You betcha. (“When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so,” Bush declared on April 20, 2004, while doing exactly the opposite.) But other presidents have lied, broken the law, and trampled civil liberties, too, especially during wartime. That doesn’t mean Congress shouldn’t investigate Bush’s surveillance program. It should probe mercilessly. But censuring Bush–right after the Republican Congress tried to impeach Bill Clinton–could make such efforts a normal part of partisan conflict, which they have not been throughout U.S. history. That’s a depressing prospect, no matter what your politics.

On the other hand, there is something highly unsatisfying about saying that, because the Republican Congress tried to impeach Bill Clinton for lying in a civil suit about sex, Democrats can’t censure George W. Bush for lying–and breaking the law–on an issue of national security. It’s a little like telling someone who has just been punched in the face that he can’t hit back because that would perpetuate the cycle of violence. Or, put another way, if Republicans really still think they were right to impeach Clinton–if they’d do it again–then there’s no reason for Democrats to abandon censure in the name of civility. After all, if you don’t punch back, and the other side keeps hitting you, your efforts to stop the cycle of violence have failed.

So Democrats should only eschew censure if, by so doing, they can make censure and impeachment what they historically have been: constitutional weapons wielded in only the rarest, gravest of circumstances. And that depends on the GOP. Prominent Republicans don’t talk much about Clinton’s impeachment today; it doesn’t quite square with their more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger fretting about Bush hatred. But I don’t know of a single major Republican politician or conservative pundit who has admitted the obvious: that impeaching Clinton was a farce and a disgrace, the likes of which we should pray never to see again.

They will never admit that. And these are the gravest of circumstances. There is nothing to be gained by Democrats abandoning anything in the name of civility Republicans will simply impeach the next Democratic president for double parking without so much as a second thought if they have the chance. They play the hardest of hardball and they do not see such minor setbacks as losing a few seats as any kind of repudiation. In fact, they see nothing as repudiation, not even Nixon’s disgrace. They waited patiently for 30 years for the opportunity to reinstitute the imperial presidency and were operating under it even before 9/11. (See: energy task force.)

The only thing that might make them repudiate Bill Clinton’s impeachment would be George W. Bush’s impeachment and I doubt that we will see either. But what we should see, and I dearly hope we will see, is a Democratic congress that puts the bright light of investigations on what this administration and its GOP allies have done — and if we should get a Democratic president in 2008, a justice department that seeks out and punishes those who broke these laws. I don’t think we should shut up for one minute about demanding accountability for what these people have done.

Back in 1974, I was in favor of pardoning Richard Nixon. I thought that it was wise to “bind up the country’s wounds.” I was wrong. The Republicans barely missed a beat and just went right on with the program. Whether George W. Bush can be charged with a crime, I don’t know. But I have no doubt that it would be good for the country, not bad, if the Republicans were held to account for their undemocratic actions once and for all. They’re impeaching, stealing eleactions and starting unnecessary wars now. What is it going to take before people realize that we are dealing with an outlaw political party?

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