People are throwing the word "impeachment" around, but that's simply not realistic given the supermajorty requirements, etc.

Matthew, once again you are on the wrong side of an issue. This president has violated the Bill of Rights, has violated the FISA law, and is swearing that he will continue to do both. If we don't impeach him, we might as well amend the Constitution to eliminate the impeachment option. And, minus that option, we have a dictatorship. To make it even worse, if that is possible, this president is nominating to the Supreme Court justices who believe the president has unlimited powers. Screaming that the sky is falling isn't a wrong headed idea when the sky is falling, and it is now.

Apparently you believe that no Republican members of Congress will go along with impeachment - that they are not that patriotic, preferring a Republican dictator to a patriotic president of either party. I am hoping you are wrong.

Are we watching the demolition of the constitution in slow motion or fast motion?
Will we do anything more than just analyze what we're watching?

Under the circumstances, I think congress has no choice but to repeal the use of force resolution and replace it with something much narrower. People are throwing the word "impeachment" around, but that's simply not realistic given the supermajorty requirements, etc. But amending the resolution should be possible

   The point here  that is wise is to avoid wishful thinking taking priority over realistic politics.  Sure, I'd love to see W Bush impeached and locked up, but, as Yglesias says, it's not gonna happen, even if (in the unlikely event) Democrats fight to win in 2006 and retake both Houses of Congress instead of "blowing it".

Now, the first thing Democrats at the grassroots/astroturf roots need to do is to pressure the Democrats to really fight to win.
Mehno, at Huffington Post (I'll append the URL in a follow-up post) has shown an example of the Democrats' failure to go for a vulnerable seat with a winnable candidate in NY State.  There are other signs of the Democrats, as they did in 2000 and 2004, 'getting with the program and justifying the lying' even while putting up a show of being more than a craven pseudo-opposition.

But bracketing the above concern as a caveat, the notion of a resolution narrowing Bush's authorization to use force would be a good and, in the sense I describe below, politically realistic approach.  First, not only impeachment but also this resolution has a snowball's chance of passing in a House where over 40 Democrats joined with a Repuglican phalanx with fewer defections to approve a really awful version of the reupping of the Patriot Act.  Rather, Democrats fighting to win would put this resolution that Matt proposes forward for a vote in both Houses and observe who votes which way when it is voted down.  Then,
they would make it a part of the national platform of the Democratic Party in 2006, and campaign on it in all the swing districts.  It might not only gain votes, but the Democrats would have a concrete program item of significance for a Democratic Congress, joining raising the minimum wage (which would be defeated) and others.  I am not sure whether the president would have the power to veto this alteration in the 'use of force' authorization, thus requiring the two-thirds supermajority.

    The notion of the RW caring nothing about gross invasions of civil liberties and statism, while whining about the EPA, is nothing new.  It is like their selective application of "states rights" (but not to Reagan's threatening a cutoff of highway funds as a way of armtwisting Alaska to give up its legalization of up to two oz of marijuana, or more recent controversies over medical marijuana and gay marriage, or state/local affirmative action policies, or the State of Va having its ban on strip mining overturned by the courts on the grounds of the interstate commerce clause, etc etc) and of "judicial activism" (the RW of the court more likely to strike down Congressional laws as unConstitutional, even from a Repuglican Congress!, and their happy deployment of the 11th Amendment doctrine of Hans v Louisiana) -- just a talking point that sounds so much better than 'more guns and less butter'.

Apparently you believe that no Republican members of Congress will go along with impeachment - that they are not that patriotic, preferring a Republican dictator to a patriotic president of either party. I am hoping you are wrong.

Well, you can hope that, but in all likelihood you'll be disappointed regardless.  GOP lawmakers are perfectly aware of how long their respective leashes are (some, like McCain's, are pretty long because he helps the GOP brand more than he ever hurts its crappy policies) when it comes to giving their own constituents and/or 2008 presidential primary voters the impression that they're honest brokers... but they know that going so far as impeachment will mean that they will have bitter primaries for reelection, funding will dry up, and the unofficial perks of their offices will disappear.  All Dems have to worry about is what level of viciousness they will inevitably endure for daring to cross the Bushies; Republicans have much, much more to lose.  It's like the old saying about not missing if one would assassinate a king (yes, I know this was on The Wire, but there's an older version of it as well).

So I guess what I'm saying is that no, they're not that patriotic.  Neither are the Dems, for the most part, because there's almost no foundation of principle left upon which we can stand.  The GOP knows this much better than we do-- and they've basically jackhammered the remains-- which is why they're so much better at realistically calculating risks & benefits of pseudo-courageous political acts.  The fact is, we're in trouble.

But more to the point, ex post facto briefings aren't a check on Presidential power.

HUH?????

How are they not?  I mean, how is an ex post facto briefing somehow less of a check than, say, a ex post facto court case?

BTW, this line of Bush's was awesome: "to suggest there's unchecked power is not listening to what I'm telling you".  The only thing better would be if Bush had broken out Chris Tucker's line from Rush Hour in reply to Baker: "Do you speaka any English? DO-YOU-UNDERSTAND-THE-WORDS-THAT-ARE-COMING-OUT-OF-MY-MOUTH?&quot
;

"Under the circumstances, I think congress has no choice but to repeal the use of force resolution and replace it with something much narrower."

In one sense, it doesn't matter how much you narrow the resolution.  The administration unreasonably claims the Constitution alone gives him authority to be above the law in the area of national security.

But in another sense, narrowing the use of force resolution would amount to a relatively important Congressional censure of administration behavior.

Thank you, HoppyCalifornia, for clarifying this.
Yes, if we do nothing, there will be nothing we can do.  To say we can do nothing is to say we are already at the point where a dictatorship is a fait accompli.  
Congress, by doing nothing, is a party to the dictatorship!

Yeah, as someone already said, we need to be clear about this: the President's position appears to be that even if Congress explicitly forbade this program, he would still have the authority to do it under Article II.  At least that's how I read his statements and this memo from the Office of Legal Counsel ("[No] statute, however, can place any limits on the President's determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing, and nature of the response.") (written, of course, by enabler-general John Yoo).

Whether he would actually reauthorize this program if Congress tried to shut it down is another matter, of course, and he might well decide not to as a political matter.

We only have rights at the discretion of the Administration.  Why is that a problem?  I'm sure they wouldn't abuse the power.

Under the circumstances, I think congress has no choice but to repeal the use of force resolution and replace it with something much narrower.

But given that the administration is relying on a "plainly unreasonable reading" of the force resolution, what good would changing the resolution do?  What is Congress supposed to do, add a proviso that "You're only allowed to construe this as meaning what it actually says, and nothing more.  We really mean it this time!"

And just thinking strategically, I imagine the spin on changing the resolution would be: "Congress is fixing the flawed force resolution that gave the president authority to spy on Americans without FISA approval."  Changing the resolution only reinforces the notion that the president's plainly nonsensical "reading" of the resolution has merit.

I agree that it's important to be "realistic" -- but the reality, it seems to me, is that it's not the resolution that needs fixing; it's the administration's disregard for the law.

Give the administration credit, they are great at 'gaming the system'. 'Total victory' is just around the corner.

"(yes, I know this was on The Wire, but there's an older version of it as well)"

The expression you are looking for is "If you say you are going to take Vienna, take Vienna" and I believe it's from napoleon.

I think there's another version that's about The King, but I forget what it is...

<i> the right really doesn't grasp what's going on here</i>

This is exactly what they have been striving for since before 1972.

Read <i>All the President's Men.</i> Read <i>The Final Days.</i> Buchanan was telling Nixon to just <u>burn</u> the tapes and tell the prosecutors, the Senate, and the SCOTUS to go to hell, that he didn't answer to anyone, he was the President.

Which in their minds, is equal to Proconsul, or Tribune, or even Imperator.  

 Now they don't even feel they have to pretend to obey and respect the laws of the land.

Only time will show if they've made the right call. 

I think that you're right that ultimately only the judiciary can rein this stuff in, and that it isn't really about the resolution, but about the interpretation of executive authority.  I don't read them as saying that the authorization on 9/14/01 is the source of their authority - in many cases, I think they think the can do this because these are all simply issues that fall within the executive mandate, and aren't issues where oversight from other branches is appropriate.

While a resolution like MY proposes, then, would be largely symbolic, some symbols can have concrete effects.  I think that moves by Congress to check the executive power grab and assert their oversight role would be a blow to the White House, because it would have reverberations with the public.  A move like this would be something like a vote of no confidence, and I think that people would sit up and take notice.  Crucially, I think the courts would sit up and take notice.  And that might mean more trouble for the Administration earlier in the process - they've had some successes at the appelate level, even when it seems clear that the SCOTUS will ultimately knock them down.  And, as the Padilla case illustrates, they play that game cleverly.  If the legislative branch ratchets up the pressure, though, I could see their games getting shut down from the district court level all the way up.

I think your summation that this is evidence that those on the right "really doesen't grasp what's going on here." is far too charitable. What the response most of the right has taken towards this revelation, one of persecuting the whistleblowers rather than being upset about the information confirms is that for many conservatives, partisanship comes before principle and in addition to the cavalier attitude most on the right have on justice, for all their limited govt. rhetoric, most conservatives are little more than crude authoritarians who don't like paying taxes.

Impeachment definitely won't be a possibility if the Democrats don't even try.

If the Democrats say the i-word enough, however, it may start to seem a heck of a lot more realistic. I guess Matt hasn't noticed, but the Republicans do this all the time. Repeat stuff (no matter how off the wall) till people believe it. It actually works.

But saying impeachment is impossible--as Matt is doing--only ensures that it remains impossible.

It would have been an excellent question if he hadn't used the word "unchecked," which was foolishly argumentative, inviting Bush to disagree and thereby allowing him to avoid answering the question, which was otherwise well phrased in a neutral way.  You only get one shot in these situations and you've got to get it right.  (The reporters should do murder boards before press conferences.)  Of course there was no follow-up asking, how are checks really checks if they're all self-imposed and subject to your interpretation?

Yes, it is the demolition of the Constitution. But the key point is that it's a Republican finishing a job that Democrats have spent the better part of a century doing the hard work on. So I suppose you DO have some cause for frustration... You do all the planting, and somebody else gets to reap the harvest.

Let's face it, if you hadn't put so much work into establishing the principle that the Constitution doesn't mean what it *says*, and that it delivers to the government powers it doesn't list, or even explicitly denies, a President who made such claims about his power would be instantly recognized for a tyrant. But you've laid the groundwork for any  usurpation of power to be accepted by the public, and the courts, too. 

You can rest assured heads will roll at the NYT after leaking this story.  Don't be surprised if they roll in a literal sense.  And, to be honest, rightly so.