For a while I’ve been debating with myself exactly how much Arlen Specter (R-PA) values his committee chair. Enough to give a little slack to a notoriously mendacious Administration witness, sure. He seems to have some residual sense of self-worth, but it never comes through when the chips are down. He won’t admit to toadying when he’s outside of the halls of Congress but get him near that gavel and goshdarnit Specter can’t help himself.
If Josh Marshall has it right Specter just contributed to the censure debate by declaring the FISA law itself to be unconstitutional. You can find interesting discussion here about why that’s actually the most credible of the myriad defenses on offer and why the Administration would rather not go there, so you have to give Specter some credit. Nonetheless declaring a crucial component of national security unconstitutional the kind of Rubicon that you can’t very easily un-cross. If you live in Pennsylvania consider taking a minute to call Specter’s office at (202-224-4254) and ask him to stop being a chump.
***Update***
I’m still hunting for a transcript, but reports from the field are mixed. Consider Specter’s chump status strictly provisional until I figure out exactly what happened. The NYT has this, which I consider moderately chumpish but not outside of the DC mainstream:
Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who has expressed reservations about the surveillance, said Mr. Feingold had failed to make a case for censure over what amounts to a dispute over the legal basis of the program.
“The president may be wrong,” Mr. Specter said, “but he has acted in good faith.”
By Specter’s new standard it’s ok to knowingly break the law as long as you act in good faith. Let’s say for example that I think that it would be a net benefit to the world if the mentally ill didn’t breed, and yet it’s illegal to forcibly sterilize them. By Specter’s reasoning I’m within my rights to go ahead and do it as long as I’m acting in good faith. Maybe I have to be president for Specter’s legal rationale to work, although that double standard makes Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist very angry:
I will have no part in the creation of a constitutional double-standard to benefit the President. He is not above the law. If an ordinary citizen committed these crimes, he would go to jail.
Half a point and a stale biscuit to whoever correctly guesses the context of Frist’s comments.
Also regarding ethics, Hilzoy at ObWings has an excellent piece up from a professional’s perspective.
The Other Steve
The other option was to declare he had an anti-censure missile.
ppGaz
Perhaps they can have the FISA judges thrown in jail for supporting terrorists?
I mean, if we are going to have kangaroo government, why stop at anything?
Pooh
Remember, this is the man who brought us the magic bullet theory. (Were you there?)
At least he’s off the fence and fully exposed as a shill.
Par R
I guess there will be some good to come out of the Feingold censure hijinks. For one thing it provides an opportunity for all the twisted, brainless fools, many of which are in evidence in the thread below, to blow off steam and hyperventilate; that probably will keep their heads from literally exploding.
According to all news accounts, Feingold stands virtually all alone on this issue (Boxer may have recanted her initial support), with Reid, Durbin and Schumer doing everything they can to forestall a vote on the Feingold initiative that the Republicans are pressing for; the Dems have thus far held off two votes. By some media accounts, Feingold is under mounting pressure to “back off” from his rather transparent attempt to get to the Left of Hillary and capture the moonbat vote and the even loonier lefty blogmasters.
My advice to those enamored of the Feingold measure: Keep on venting, huffing, puffing, snarling and, in general, acting like the silly little twits that we all know you really are.
Paul Wartenberg
The more I witness all of this the more I want a viable progressive party to show up yesterday.
Katherine
Well, it was weird. He first seemed to be going down that road. He then began reading from a court case from 1760 & a whole history lesson and talking about the need for judicial review–he was just all over the place. Then Durbin asked him two questions:
1) Did AUMF authorize this surveillance program?
Specter: “No.”
2) Did the commander in chief power authorize it?
Specter: “I don’t know. I don’t know what the program does.” Went on to imply that maybe if it was carefully designed enough it was legal, but without hearings he didn’t know.
It was really bizarre, he was just all over the place.
RonB
Well, Par R, if you weren’t such an idiot and that talking to guys like you and Brian is a waste of good oxygen, you’d notice that the huffing, puffing and snarling is coming from dickheads like you who want to start arguments with name calling and deader than dead talking points. No one hyperventilated down there except your ideological butt buddy Brian. Did you not get enough attention-wention in the last thready-weady?
Go back to Protein Wisdom. Sell crazy somewhere else.
Steve
Specter seems to be channeling Joe Klein.
I swear I did not make up that quote!
CaseyL
The ‘Thugs seem enthralled by the old pulp novel notion, “There are such things that Man is not meant to know.”
They’re already on record as opposing science in favor of Bible stories, sympathetic magic, and Lysenkosim. Because real science is too hard, and anyway it keeps telling them things they’d rather not know. So they tell themselves, and us, “There are such things that Man is not meant to know. So let’s not try to find out.”
And, pace Spector and Klein*, they’re also happy to keep themselves in the dark on policy issues. Is the NSA surveillance program illegal? Is Bush targeting any persons or groups he damned well pleases? Does the AUMF have the same value as a Constitutionally-mandated Declaration of War? Does the Constitution really give a President absolute, unchallengable power in absence of invasion or insurrection? “There are such things that Man is not meant to know. So let’s not investigate.”
It’s not even like we don’t know what they’re afraid of finding out. We know what they’re afraid of finding out. They’re afraid of finding out that Bush committed criminal, impeachable offenses by any stretch of the phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” (esp. coming a few bare years after they stretched it themselves to include “lying about a blow job”).
They’re afraid, so they want to dwell in ignorance.
After all, as Miles Vorkosigan once said, “The truth is indeed unknowable if you refuse to see it when it’s sitting there in front of you.”
*If Klein’s a Democrat, I’m a claimant to the Czarist Throne of all the Russias.
MAX HATS
What the hell is wrong with the democratic party? A president deciding himself beyond the reach of law isn’t even worth a mention? I have trouble praising Feingold, because his actions should be simply expected, rather than exceptional. Heroism is just another relative quantity, I suppose. It’s a sad time all around.
anonymous
Plame is from PA too and there is little doubt he is a big backer in Congress. The follow throught with the secret prison leaks and NSA leaks from CIA and Plame are probably a direct result of their association.
Anyway Spectre was in a movie if I remember right and they were the bad guys…………
EL
The one I liked even better was:
“We’ll never know the whole truth, I suppose,” said Venier.
“You can be told the whole truth all day long, but if you won’t believe it, then no, I don’t suppose you will ever know it.”
Sadly, too many simply refuse to believe what they don’t want to know.
pb
Riddle me this…
Let’s say that Specter is right, and for some reason the President has the inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to totally ignore FISA, and avoid Congressional oversight…
Now, if that is the case, then how would Specter’s proposed legislation solve anything? Wouldn’t the President *still* have the Constitutional authority to ignore Congress?
Now, in fact, it’s pretty obvious to me at least that he doesn’t have that authority under the Constitution. But if we need to have a court ruling on this, then so be it. Just get it done quickly, because this is silly.
Steve
Greenwald addressed that very issue in a blog post where he pointed out that, in addition to the constitutional requirements that a law be passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the President, we have somehow acquiesced in the creation of a new requirement that the President must also agree to be bound by the law. He correctly pointed out, as you did as well, that in such a situation the remedy is certainly not more legislation.
Greenwald has also blogged about the multiple occasions where Congress practically begged the President to tell them if anything in FISA needed to be updated or modernized. How pathetic is it that after the President repeatedly rejected such invitations, Congress is now saying “no, no, please accept these amendments to FISA that legalize your conduct! We know you don’t want them, but take them anyway!”
searp
I heard the first part of Specter. I read his response as: “I largely agree with you, but because the Prez intended no harm (as if we know) it really doesn’t rise to the level of censure”
The argument that FISA is unconstitutional has been dismantled many times. If this ever gets to a court, FISA will be found to be constitional in whole, and Bush’s actions will be found to be in violation. Simple as that. Keeping this in the political sphere seems to do no good at all, too many frightened congresspeople.
Feingold did the right thing, but nothing will come of it.
Par R
A comment from, and dedicated to, it’s author RonB, the ultimate retard in language comprehension: “Are you on anti-psychotic medication? You’re weird.”
yet another jeff
*sigh* Dammit. Strange days are here. Once again I find myself in complete agreement with MAX HATS.
Krista
I know. If Clinton had pulled that, they would have not just impeached him, they would have tried to throw him in jail. Bush pulls it, and he gets a scolding?
p.lukasiak
Half a point and a stale biscuit to whoever correctly guesses the context of Frist’s comments.
duh, could it be during Clinton’s impeachment trial?
***************
Specter is trying to be slick. His “solution” is to send the whole question of whether Bush committed a crime to the FISA courts, which would be asked to rule on the legality of Bush’s domestic spying program.
Now, anyone with half a clue knows that the FISA courts will say that the program was illegal—they’ve already done so indirectly. Which means that Arlen is playing a different game here —- see, once the FISA court rules, the decision can then be appealled — all the way up to the Supreme Court. Does anyone trust Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito, and Kennedy to uphold the constitution? We already know that three of these scumbags decided to appoint Bush president in 2000 — and the other two are there because they will support Bush’s fascist approach to government.
That’s what Arlen is all about….
Steve
If the spying program ever finds its way to the Supreme Court, I may make a lot of money by wagering that Scalia will not take the administration’s side.
LITBMueller
While Specter was giving his initial speech on the floor, I fired off an email to his office (I’m a Philly guy) ever-so-gently reminding him that, as a graduate of Yale Law, he should try to remember that the President does not get to decide whether a law is Constitutional, and therefore worth folllowing – the courts do.
No, I don’t expect a reply. ;)
M.A.
He almost definitely won’t. I don’t like Scalia but he has not been willing to give the Bush administration a blank check on the GWoT ™. Of course, every time the Supreme Court tells him he can’t do something, Bush just has Congress change the law.
Anyway, it’s pretty obvious that the reason Bush/Cheney didn’t refer this issue to the courts is that they know they would lose at every level. Even on SCOTUS, they’d get Alito, possibly Roberts, possibly Thomas on their side and that’s about it.
Steve
Shhh! You are spoiling my gig.