I Spy

For several years now I’ve been telling people asking me to sign petitions to “Impeach Bush!” to go away and leave me alone. “But he –lied-!”, they said.

Big deal, I replied. Politicians stretch reality every day of the week. It’s our job as citizens to sift the truth from the crap and vote, write letters, protest, whatever fits. But impeachment is something else.

Impeachment was set up in the Constitution to deal with federal officials who had broken an actual law, to force removal from office prior to criminal prosecution. Wandering into a stupid war in Iraq was, well, stupid, but certainly not impeachable.

Now we’ve got something to impeach someone over. Illegal spying inside the US of A.

It won’t happen, of course. To get an impeachment started you need different parties in Congress and the White House, as with Nixon and Clinton, or different factions, as with Andrew Johnson. A Republican Congress ain’t gonna throw Georgie out, pure and simple. But it can make his job even more uncomfortable and hopefully preserve a few civil liberties in the process.

There’s an old courthouse joke which goes: “If the law is on your side, pound on the law. If the facts are on your side, pound on the facts.”

“If neither is on your side, pound on the table.” The Bush administration is pounding on the table right now over the disclosure of illegal domestic spying because there ain’t no law or fact on its side.

Go here to read the administration's legal "defense" of its illegal spying.

Congress gave him the authority? That seems to be news to the Republican-run Congress, which is set to hold hearings on the matter.

He has the inherent authority to spy as commander-in-chief? That’s news to big fans of democracy all the way back to the Magna Carta. One of the fundamental points of democratic theory and practice is placing executive power under the law. Justice Robert Jackson reminded President Truman when he slapped down Truman’s seizure of the steel mills under presumed war powers. Heck, even George Will agrees, in his first column on this mess. Bush couldn’t and shouldn’t be “authorizing” spying he ain’t got the authority to authorize. You just can’t exercise power you ain’t got in the first place.

It’s "illegal spying," no matter what it’s otherwise called. So far the media’s giving him a wash on the terminology, calling “unauthorized domestic surveillance” at worst. Given the press’s general sissiness regarding Bush, I suppose it’s the best we can ask for. But the rest of us know better. It’s “illegal spying”. That’s the way to describe it to friends and family when the subject comes up. Eventually, the truth might stick.

Bush’s minions have ripped the New York Times for releasing the story right as the “Patriot” Act was being reviewed. Ah ha! they cry. More liberal media … whatever!

In fact, the Times should be commended for its timing. What better service can the media provide than to release news when the law governing what the news is all about is being reviewed? Bush, hardheaded to the bitter end, not only admits his crime, he says he’ll just keep on doing it, goading Congress to make him stop.

Poor timing? Just in time, one should say. Even more so, with the complementary news that the FBI is once again after the hairy legged tree hugger ‘terrorists’ out there.

Where is gonna go? It could go in any direction. Congress could hold hearings, wring its hands and do nothing. not wanting to embarrass a same party president in the White House.

Congress could set actually up real judicial review and actual congressional oversight, not whispers in the dark to a few select cronies. Yeah, right.

But there is hope. When Republican Senator John Sununu, R-NH, son of the famous same named rightwing nutcase, agrees, the situation’s dire. When Bob Barr and the ACLU are on the same side, you know the situation’s critical. When even George Will has to catch a breath, the situation’s at the breaking point.

The fact that it’s a Republican president involved makes the need for checks and balances even more apparent. For years, the GOP argued that Democratic political philosophy inherently led to greater government power and that placing the GOP was the only way to stop it.

Now we see that it’s not a philosophical issue at all. It's a matter of simple power. Those who have it want to use it, regardless of purported ideology. The Framers, wise men, set up a checks and balances to hold power in check. I suppose it’s only right and proper then that it’s the GOP, the gang which says it promotes constitutional ideals best above all others, which ends up proving the point.