10 Questions

by digby

As we absorb our latest loss — it sucks being in the minority, you hardly ever win — we need to keep our eye on the ball and remember that we have hearings coming up on the illegal NSA wiretaps. Glenn Greenwald has been the go-to guy in this and he’s compiled ten questions that he’d like the Judiciary Committee to ask Alberto Gonzales. Glenn says:

I believe the paramount objective with these hearings is to force out into the open the theories of Presidential power which the Administration has embraced in order to justify its transgressions of FISA — not just as applied to eavesdropping but with respect to all decisions broadly relating to the question of how this country will respond to the threat of terrorism. Thus, the questions posed to Attorney General Gonzales should absolutely not be confined strictly to the question of the NSA eavesdropping program, but must explore how the Administration’s theories of its own power apply generally.

The Committee, with its questioning, must make clear to the public that this scandal is not about whether we should be eavesdropping on Al Qaeda, because everyone agrees that we should and must do that. That is why we have a law — FISA — which specifically authorizes eavesdropping on terrorists. Nobody opposes eavesdropping. The scandal is about — and these hearings must therefore emphasize — the scope of the President’s claimed powers, and specifically his claimed power to act without what the Administration calls “interference” from the Congress or the courts, even including — literally — engaging in actions which are expressly prohibited by the criminal law.

Read the entire post and look at the questions. Glenn is looking for feedback on this. He received some major media attention this past week from Knight Ridder, the NY Times and The Washington Post for his outstanding catch of the administration’s 2002 objection to loosening the FISA laws. He is in a position now to advance this another step.

Update: TalkLeft has a post up that says Russ Feingold is openly accusing Gonzales of lying in his confirmation hearings. It sure looks like he did.

Sen. Feingold: And I also would like you to answer this: does the president, in your opinion, have the authority acting as commander in chief to authorize warrantless searches of Americans’ homes and wiretaps of their conversations in violation of the criminal and foreign intelligence surveillance statutes of this country?

MR. GONZALES: Senator, the August 30th memo has been withdrawn. It has been rejected, including that section regarding the commander in chief authority to ignore the criminal statutes. So it’s been rejected by the executive branch. I categorically reject it. And in addition to that, as I’ve said repeatedly today, this administration does not engage in torture and will not condone torture. And so, what you really are — what we’re really discussing is a hypothetical situation that —

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