President Flip-Flops as Dissent Grows
by TChris
Another Republican senator has publicly disagreed with the president's insistence that he's entitled to unreviewable power to spy on Americans. Lindsey Graham:
"I am adamant that the courts have some role when it comes to warrants. If you're going to follow an American citizen around for an extended period of time believing they're collaborating with the enemy, at some point in time, you need to get some judicial review, because mistakes can be made."
While the president maintains he has the authority to bypass courts when he orders the government to engage in domestic surveillance, he's no longer so adamant that the law doesn't need to be changed. His new, improved, flip-flopped position: Congress should retroactively approve everything he's done. Gosh, Mr. President, if you already had the legal authority to engage in domestic surveillance, why do you need retroactive congressional approval?
At least the president is consistent about one thing: he doesn't want Congress to investigate his abusive circumvention of FISA.
The White House is hoping that talks will lead to legislation to approve the program, much as Congress eventually approved Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War.
Bush, you're no Lincoln.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has given the administration two weeks to negotiate. If the White House does not demonstrate a good-faith effort, members say, the Democratic proposal for a full-scale inquiry will be back on the table at the panel's next meeting on March 7.
Democrats are taking the sensible position that they shouldn't retroactively approve the executive branch's conduct without knowing what the administration has done.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia and his party's senior member on the intelligence panel, said, "No member of the Senate can cast an informed vote on legislation authorizing, or, conversely, restricting, the N.S.A.'s warrantless surveillance program when they fundamentally do not know what they are authorizing or restricting."
We need an investigation, not a cover-up.
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