The real goody in Krauthammer's column is connected with the following passages: "In 1972 the Supreme Court required the president to obtain warrants to eavesdrop on domestic groups but specifically declined to apply this requirement to snooping on foreign agents. Four appeals courts have since upheld presidential authority for such warrantless searches. Not surprisingly, the executive branch has agreed... [T]he distinguished liberal law professor Cass Sunstein finds it 'entirely plausible' (so long as the wiretapping is limited to those reasonably believed to be associated with al Qaeda). Sunstein maintains that 'surveillance, including wiretapping, is reasonably believed to be an incident of the use of force' that 'standardly occurs during war.' "  So who, pray tell, decides whether it's "reasonable" to believe that the people being wiretapped are "associated with al Qaeda"?  The President by himself?  That, of course, is what the entire goddamned fight has been about from the start, and that's the only reason why FISA was created in the first place.

As a followup, here's the whole passage from Sunstein ( http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/2005/12/presidential_wi.ht
ml ):

"The reason is that surveillance, including wiretapping, is reasonably believed to be an incident of the use of force. It standardly occurs during war. If the President's wiretapping has been limited to those reasonably believed to be associated with Al Qaeda and its affiliates -- as indeed he has said -- then the Attorney General's argument is entirely plausible. (The AUMF [Congress' 2001 Authorization of Military Force] would not permit wiretapping of those without any connection to nations, organizations, and persons associated with the September 11 attacks.)"

So, once again, who the hell decides whether the people being wiretapped actually have "any connection", rationally speaking, to nations, organizations, or persons associated with 9-11?  The President, entirely by himself?  This President?  It is to laugh. 

Krauthammer is circling the bowl with the rest of his little cabal of NeoCons, and gets more shrill as the realization becomes more obvious.  I hear his buddy Netanyahoo is in trouble - maybe he can turn his failed propagandist powers to helping his fellow likudniks get flushed there before he's completely flushed here.

Watching these flailing morons over the course of the next year till we bring articles of impeachment against Georgie-Porgie and Darth Cheney on January 21, 2007 is going to be fun.  And watching the fools and buffoons of the PNAC try to recreate their going-nowhere careers after 2008 is going to be maaaahvelous.

After all, the entire concept of rule by law is disposable according to these guys. Ultimately, The Bush Administration seems to be looking back to a James I/Charles I "divine right of kings" paradigm of Anglo-American constitutional polity, whether religious- or secular-based.

That was a gem...especially Yoo writing the SCOTUS opinion.  If that is the case God help us all.

Far fetched?  Maybe...or maybe not.  It all depends on the case the are making for the Constitution actually being a "quaint" document...

Krauthammer, along with compatriot Bill Kristol, are likely the two best columnists in the United States.

... with the exception of almost of every other columnist.

Well, until more Republicans get ethics Bush won't be impeached even if he machine-guns innocents on the White House lawn, but hope springs eternal...

Re: So who, pray tell, decides whether it's 'reasonable' to believe that the people being wiretapped are 'associated with al Qaeda'? The President by himself? That, of course, is what the entire goddamned fight has been about from the start, and that's the only reason why FISA was created in the first place. -------------
Has anyone asked Cass Sunstein who should decide? 

Ah do.

Look everyone knows that Quakers, tree-huggers and animal rights people pose a threat to the security of the United States. They are the same thing as al Qaeda.

George W. Bush

Re: Democrats need to win the war of ideas and not get distracted by their blinding hatred of the president.----------Excellent recommendation! I am somewhat dismayed with the notion of the 'war' of ideas because unique and brilliant ideas end up denuded.   

Krauthammer's reference to the prof who "wrote the book on electronic surveillance" is a quote of Andrew Sullivan. Sully can write, but he's hardly neutral or unbiased.

Brad,

A nice bit of business.  Not only did you show the speciousness of the Krauthammer's argument, but you also portend Neocon blowback from their "America First" agenda.  

What are they going to do in 2008 when their reign will be jeopardized?  Googling can be so addictive.    Does their version, Echelon, offer "Google Suggest"?  I enter "Osama" and whole conversations appear.  Who could give up that kind of power?  The Neocons are living proof of the old adage about the danger of too little intelligence in the foreign sector; think what they could do on the domestic front.  Be sure and send us a postcard from Gitmo.  

I thought they would go with the Big Dick, but your putting ink in the Krauthammer's pen makes me think they could argue themselves into it - knowing the Neocon's knack for spinning their own selves.

Has anybody here taken the time to read Kerr's analysis?  He concludes that while the NSA program was arguably constitutional (because the Fourth Amendment is nowhere close to as expansive as has been commonly assumed) but that it violated federal statutory law.

Krauthammer conveniently ignores the parts of Kerr's analysis that don't suit his position - that Bush's actions were barred by FISA and that the statute authorizing the use of force did not authorize the NSA wiretaps.  However, proponents of impeachment have not taken the Fourth Amendment jurisprudence seriously.  Rather than clearly violaitng the cosntitution, Bush was acting agressively to expand executive authority in a constitutional gray area. 

Democrats needs to separate out a number of intertwining issues.

(1)  The underlying policy issues raised by NSA wiretaps, which are hard to fully address given we don't know what the Bush administration was doing.  There may be a reasonable argument that FISA should have been amended to permit a wider search of international electronic communications in counter-terrorism operations.  Can a limited expansion be permitted that could be cabined to legitimate counter-terrorism operations? 

(Contrast this to the absurd section of the Patriot Act that permits monitoring of library books, which has already been abused to hound "subversives" with no ties to Islamist terror).

(2) Bush's secret violation of FISA.  The most egregious part of Bush's conduct is not that he ignored FISA by authorizing wiretaps in the wake of 9/11 - that was understandable.  It was that he continued the program for years without any effort to modify the law to address what were beliefved to be its deficiencies.  It shows a profound disrepect for the rule of law and separation of powers, and Bush should be forced to pay a political price for this.

(3) The Bush administration's consitutitonal theory of unlimited executive authority in "time of war."   Because the war on terror has no discernible end point, it results in a permanent aggrandizement of executive power. So far the federal judiciary has done a good job of beating this theory back.  However, were the Bush administration to triumph on this point, there would be a real, not theoretical serious erosion of constitutional protections against executive tyranny.  We have good reason to passionately resist this theory whenever it surfaces.  

I think deLong's parody of Krauthammer misses critical nuances in this discussion. The NSA wiretaps are not the equivalent of baldly violating the two-term limit on the presidency.  I think it would behoove Democrats to identify the real threats from the Bush administration constitutional theories rather than risk the danger of overhyping any individual scandal.

The Republicans have never worried about what the public at large thinks. They worry about what their partisans think. And then they try (with astounding success because of their tenacity) to convince the rest of the country to believe what their partisans believe. The idea that the Clinton impeachment was a disaster for the Republicans is completely false. They may not have succeeded in getting him out of office, but they so tainted his image that Gore never had a chance. Maybe people are forgetting just how much of a backlash there was against Clinton's behavior in the 2000 election--but I certainly remember it, particularly among the crucial swing-vote independents.

The Democrats keep waiting to be led by the people--but since the Republicans are actually leading the people, the Democrats end up following the Republicans or kicking against the Republican-set trend. It's really frustrating to watch.

If Democrats win back Congress and then proceed immediately to trying to bring impeachment charges, it will be as big a mistake as the whole Clinton impeachment nonsense was for Republicans.

How was the impeachment of Clinton a mistake for Republicans?  It took Clinton's time, his thoughts, his efforts away from his goals, and it weakened his presidency seriously.  They also get to say, OVER and OVER that he was impeached. 

Gore stayed away from him during his campaigning.  Who knows?  If Gore and an UNIMPEACHED Clinton had gone hand-in-hand, maybe Gore would have won by an even bigger margin and the Supremes would have been left to actually do the work they are supposed to do instead of annointing a false president.

Just think:  No war with Iraq, no 2,200+ dead, no 15,000+ wounded.  Maybe not even a successful 911, (or only one building down rather than 2 + the pentagon)  No "War on Terror" --just Osama tracked down and killed in Tora-Bora as a lesson to extremists everywhere.  Our deficit getting lower rather than higher.  Programs for the needy; maybe even a universal health care package; and more--

Yep, I'd say that Clinton's impeachment was a win-win for the Republicans (those who are its FINANCIAL, as opposed to its VOTING base, because the latter is being joyfully screwed out of their futures with every breath he draws as prez).

Why do you say it was a mistake for them?  I totally agree with the label, "nonsense," but I don't think they took any hits for it, and they gained enormously from it.

How was the impeachment of Clinton a mistake for Republicans? It took Clinton's time, his thoughts, his efforts away from his goals, and it weakened his presidency seriously. They also get to say, OVER and OVER that he was impeached.




You make some good points. It's probably overstating the case to say that it was a disaster for Republicans. The biggest gain for Republicans was, as you say, that it distracted Clinton from getting things done, which, from the Republican point of view, is a good thing. But it was still probably a net negative politically. At the height of the impeachment controversy, in 1998, the Republicans LOST seats in Congress. The explanation common at the time was that they had overreached and the country did not support impeachment.




Furthermore, it's unclear whether Clinton's problems had much of an effect on Gore's candidacy in 2000. On the one hand, it's true Gore didn't want Clinton to campaign for him. But that tends to happen whenever a VP runs to succeed a president. I don't think Reagan campaigned for Bush senior. Eisenhower did not campaign for Nixon. On the other hand, the decision to not have Clinton campaign was Gore's alone. And it probably had as much to do with his need to be independent and out of Clinton's shadow than it did about Clinton's reputation. Clinton at the end of his terms still had 60+% approval ratings.




At the end of the day, it's hard to escape the fact that Gore, like Kerry, was just not a very good candidate. He squandered a whole host of advantages, from a booming economy, stable international situation, popular incumbent, not to mention a singularly unimpressive opponent. I still shake my head every time I think about it. How could he have possibly lost?

Mine is a POLITICAL argument. I am not arguing that what the Administration did is correct or legal. It isn't. My argument is that it will not in the end hurt them politically for the reasons I stated above. Democrats should protest the hell out of these abuses. But at the same time, they should be hammering the Administration even harder where they are neglecting security. In a time of perceived peril, it is MUCH more important politically to establish trust on security issues than it is to defend civil liberties.