DEMOCRATS CAVE ON CONSTITUTION
By REGINALD JOHNSON

When the Democrats won back control of Congress in November of last year, I was thrilled. Finally, I thought, this will turn things around. The horror of the previous six years is at long last, coming to an end.

The insane Iraq War would be brought to a halt, real negotiations would start with Iran, and the erosion of the Constitution would be stopped.

How silly. After 30 years of seeing how politicians behave and ultimately how self-serving most of them are, I really should have known better. The Democrats – with a few notable exceptions – have shown themselves to be a bunch of worthless poltroons, running for cover every time Bush or Cheney start hinting they’re soft on terror if they don’t back one of their mindless plans.
We’ve all seen how spineless the Democrats have been on failing to stop funding for the war in Iraq, or demanding a more rational policy towards Iran. Now the “party of the people” is putting on another pathetic display, this time at the expense of the Constitution.

You’ll recall that two years ago, The New York Times and USA Today broke stories about the administration engaging in illegal surveillance of Americans’ phone calls. President Bush, in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, had secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on American phone calls, in the name of stopping possible new terrorist acts.

The administration never obtained the required approval for the wiretapping from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reviews warrant requests for wiretapping done for national security needs.

As such, the activity was a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution which holds that people and their property are to be free from warrantless searches by the government. The eavesdropping also violated the Wiretap Act of 1996, which made such activity a felony.

The revelations should have been enough for an immediate move by Congress to impeach Bush, and trigger prosecutions of NSA officials and the heads of the phone companies, which had agreed to cooperate in the wiretapping program.

But that didn’t happen, and after the administration promised to stop the wiretapping, Congress let the matter stand until this past summer. In August, Congress began working on an update of the original Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which set up the special court for issuing warrants to spy only on foreign powers or their agents. The law was passed in 1978 following the revelations of warrantless wiretapping in the 1970s, when former President Nixon had ordered the FBI and NSA to eavesdrop on domestic critics and political opponents.

Ostensibly, Congress was simply going to tinker with the warrant process in light of new technological changes in phone systems, in which some foreign calls are now routed through fiber optic lines in the United States. Initially, the Democrats said they had a measure in place to make modest changes and leave it at that.

But the limited bill wasn’t enough for the administration. Showing no shame about the abuses of the past, the White House demanded broader powers to spy. They demanded a law essentially gutting FISA, eliminating the need to go before a judge and secure a warrant through a showing that the target was foreign-based and may be a threat to national security. With the proposed bill, all that was required was to have the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence (both political appointees), approve the wiretaps. The White House measure also dropped the requirement that the wiretapping be directed only at a foreign power or their agent. The new bill only offered loose wording to effect that the target be “reasonably believed to be located outside the United States.”

The new bill codified the illegal spying in previous years by Bush, opened the door to new abuses, and made a mockery of the Fourth Amendment.

But no mind. With Bush and DNI Mike McConnell talking darkly about new terrorist threats and hinting that Democrats would be labeled weak on terror if the bill wasn’t passed, the “opposition party” caved. Sixteen Democrats in the Senate and 41 in the House went along with the sham and the “The Protect America Act of 2007” was passed.

But it seems that a large number of American people are far more concerned about illegal spying and threats to their liberty than are members of Congress. People deluged offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others with calls and emails protesting the new law, and bloggers and some of the better pundits blasted the measure.

That surge of anger prompted Democratic leaders to promise a second look at the wiretap process, with an aim towards a constitutionally sound new bill. This month, congressional committees have been working on new bills, and it’s still not clear what will be settled on in the end. New measures contain provisions giving the FISA court renewed oversight powers, and reestablish the warrant process, which is good. But other provisions are a step backward. For one, a Senate version now being considered would give the telecommunication companies immunity for their participation in the illegal spying. The White House insisted on this provision, and President Bush has threatened to veto any bill that doesn’t provide for amnesty.
Democrats like U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, have gone along with this, despite the terrible precedent it would set for allowing companies to escape criminal liability. (‘The White House told me to do it,’ is not a defense).

Reports are surfacing now that Rockefeller and other Democrats have taken thousands of dollars in recent years from telecom firms. If these contributions have played a role in how wiretap legislation is being shaped --- and they may well have been --- it’s a disgrace.

Another feature of the new legislation is clearly a threat to civil liberties. Bills in the Senate and House call for allowing ‘blanket warrants’ as opposed to individual warrants. This would allow the government to spy on groups of people all at once, rather than one individual at a time. Under the existing FISA law, the government had to get one individual warrant at a time before wiretapping.

The proposed legislation, if passed, would allow the government vacuum up large amounts of information about Americans by phone tapping.

The blanket warrants are unconstitutional, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
There have been a few Democrats in Congress standing up for the Constitution, saying they will oppose the new wiretap bills. One is U.S. Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., long a staunch civil liberties advocate. Another is U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn, who said he will veto any bill that grants the phone companies amnesty.

Feingold and Dodd deserve credit for their stances. But what about other Democrats, as well as Republicans, who swear an oath to protect the Constitution?

It will take popular pressure, just as there was after the earlier wiretap bill was passed, to reverse course on these terrible measures. Write, email or call (hope it’s not tapped) your congress member and tell him/her that you don’t want broader spying powers given to the government, and if they don’t oppose these bills, they won’t get your vote in the next election.