On this Date in Bush History 12/16: Ignoring US Law

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Benjamin Franklin, 1755

2005: The NY Times reports that President Bush has authorized the “surveillance of Americans’ international phone calls and e-mails without obtaining warrants, as required by law”. U.S. law provides a system to get such warrants, using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA). This court, in fact, rarely turns down such requests. In addition, approval of a warrant can happen within hours in an emergency. Further, Congress, then with a Republican majority in both houses, has stated that if the current system is still not flexible enough, changes to the law can be considered to provide Mr. Bush with the additional surveillance powers he feels he needs. By doing so, seeking legal approval by Congress and using judicial oversight, President Bush would help maintain the balance of powers between the various branches of government. This balance is a fundamental principle that the founding fathers built into the Constitution.

Now here comes King George who believes that he is above all of this. He feels no need to respect the carefully designed system of government checks and balances. He feels no need to honor the Constitutional principles that the nation’s founding fathers fought to establish so many years ago. He believes that the decision to perform this spying on citizens can be made solely within the executive branch of the government, without agreement that there is a reasonable basis to do so from the judicial branch. The president, in giving himself this power, in this manner, just on his own say so, is also providing a basis for giving these powers to future presidents on their own say so. Such presidents, perhaps Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney, or an individual with desires leaning towards the dictatorial, would have far greater latitude to spy on citizens, should President Bush’s fiat stand. This expansion of presidential power puts the nation at risk by giving future presidents these same unsupervised surveillance rights more suited to a dictatorship than a democracy.

“Information is moving—you know, nightly news is one way, of course, but it’s also moving through the blogosphere and through the Internets.” President Bush, May 2nd 2007