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MrJapan
PO1
Joined: 27 Sep 2004
Posts: 465
Location: Chiba, Japan
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 Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2005 5:33 pm Post subject: 'Bush didn't have the Authority' - Tom Daschle |
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RagLink l
| Quote: | Power We Didn't Grant
By Tom Daschle
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A21
In the face of mounting questions about news stories saying that President Bush approved a program to wiretap American citizens without getting warrants, the White House argues that Congress granted it authority for such surveillance in the 2001 legislation authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda. On Tuesday, Vice President Cheney said the president "was granted authority by the Congress to use all means necessary to take on the terrorists, and that's what we've done."
As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.
On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.
The shock and rage we all felt in the hours after the attack were still fresh. America was reeling from the first attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor. We suspected thousands had been killed, and many who worked in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not yet accounted for. Even so, a strong bipartisan majority could not agree to the administration's request for an unprecedented grant of
authority.
The Bush administration now argues those powers were inherently contained in the resolution adopted by Congress -- but at the time, the administration clearly felt they weren't or it wouldn't have tried to insert the additional language.
All Americans agree that keeping our nation safe from terrorists demands aggressive and innovative tactics. This unity was reflected in the near-unanimous support for the original resolution and the Patriot Act in those harrowing days after Sept. 11. But there are right and wrong ways to defeat terrorists, and that is a distinction this administration has never seemed to accept. Instead of employing tactics that preserve Americans' freedoms and inspire the faith and confidence of the American people, the White House seems to have chosen methods that can only breed fear and suspicion.
If the stories in the media over the past week are accurate, the president has exercised authority that I do not believe is granted to him in the Constitution, and that I know is not granted to him in the law that I helped negotiate with his counsel and that Congress approved in the days after Sept. 11. For that reason, the president should explain the specific legal justification for his authorization of these actions, Congress should fully investigate these actions and the president's justification for them, and the administration should cooperate fully with that investigation.
In the meantime, if the president believes the current legal architecture of our country is insufficient for the fight against terrorism, he should propose changes to our laws in the light of day.
That is how a great democracy operates. And that is how this great democracy will defeat terrorism.
The writer, a former Democratic senator from South Dakota, was Senate majority leader in 2001-02. He is now distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. |
I think he is missing a few presidents and dates from his moonbat barking... >.<
MJ
Last edited by MrJapan on Thu Dec 29, 2005 5:49 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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MrJapan
PO1
Joined: 27 Sep 2004
Posts: 465
Location: Chiba, Japan
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| Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2005 5:39 pm Post subject: |
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Sorry, just noticed the date.. prolly already been posted... Sorry if it has   |
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Schadow
Vice Admiral
Joined: 30 Sep 2004
Posts: 936
Location: Huntsville, Alabama
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| Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2005 7:15 pm Post subject: Re: 'Bush didn't have the Authority' - Tom Daschle |
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| MrJapan wrote: | | [Daschle:] All Americans agree that keeping our nation safe from terrorists demands aggressive and innovative tactics. |
Daschle's weasely diatribe could have been boiled down to that one truism.
Schadow
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Capt, 8th U.S. Army, Korea '53 - '54 |
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GM Strong
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 18 Sep 2004
Posts: 1579
Location: Penna
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| Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2005 8:28 pm Post subject: |
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The Puffster should shut up. Does he yet realize why the people of SD dumped him??
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8th Army Korea 68-69 |
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LewWaters
Admin
Joined: 18 May 2004
Posts: 4042
Location: Washington State
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| Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2005 8:41 pm Post subject: |
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Interesting discussion ongoing over on FreeRepublic about whether or not Bush had the authority. Seems the language of FISA itself just may have given all the authority he needed.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1548154/posts |
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kate
Admin
Joined: 14 May 2004
Posts: 1891
Location: Upstate, New York
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| Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2005 10:06 pm Post subject: |
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As IF anyone cared what Mr I am deeply saddened Daschle thinks.
Great FReeper link Lew. I love to read some of their threads, as they have a quite a number of lawyers as members.
As far as Daschle's "Power We Didn't Grant", there are plenty of rebuttals around.
Opinion Journal
| Quote: | AT LAW
FISA vs. the Constitution
Congress can't usurp the president's power to spy on America's enemies.
BY ROBERT F. TURNER
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
In the continuing saga of the surveillance "scandal," with some congressional Democrats denouncing President Bush as a lawbreaker and even suggesting that impeachment hearings may be in order, it is important to step back and put things in historical context. First of all, the Founding Fathers knew from experience that Congress could not keep secrets. In 1776, Benjamin Franklin and his four colleagues on the Committee of Secret Correspondence unanimously concluded that they could not tell the Continental Congress about covert assistance being provided by France to the American Revolution, because "we find by fatal experience that Congress consists of too many members to keep secrets."
When the Constitution was being ratified, John Jay--America's most experienced diplomat and George Washington's first choice to be secretary of state--wrote in Federalist No. 64 that there would be cases in which "the most useful intelligence" may be obtained if foreign sources could be "relieved from apprehensions of discovery," and noted there were many "who would rely on the secrecy of the president, but who would not confide in that of the Senate." He then praised the new Constitution for so distributing foreign-affairs powers that the president would be able "to manage the business of intelligence in such manner as prudence may suggest."
In 1790, when the first session of the First Congress appropriated money for foreign intercourse, the statute expressly required that the president "account specifically for all such expenditures of the said money as in his judgment may be made public, and also for the amount of such expenditures as he may think it advisable not to specify." They made no demand that President Washington share intelligence secrets with them. And in 1818, when a dispute arose over a reported diplomatic mission to South America, the legendary Henry Clay told his House colleagues that if the mission had been provided for from the president's contingent fund, it would not be "a proper subject for inquiry" by Congress.
For nearly 200 years it was understood by all three branches that intelligence collection--especially in wartime--was an exclusive presidential prerogative vested in the president by Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, John Marshall and many others recognized that the grant of "executive power" to the president included control over intelligence gathering.
It was not by chance that there was no provision for congressional oversight of intelligence matters in the National Security Act of 1947
more... |
emphasis mine
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LewWaters
Admin
Joined: 18 May 2004
Posts: 4042
Location: Washington State
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2005 4:47 am Post subject: |
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Let's face facts. Even Daschle knows he doesn't have a legal leg to stand on here. But, I believe their goal isn't to ever take this to court, but to make the public think Bush and the Republicans are bad and evil. That appears to be the ongoing game plan, turn the public's perception of the administration sour and get Liberals elected.
They don't have any ideas, not even bad ones, anymore. It's just demonize and count the votes. |
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dcornutt
PO3
Joined: 26 Aug 2004
Posts: 267
Location: Brooklyn, NY
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2005 6:17 am Post subject: |
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The purpose of FISA...was to recognize the presidents constitutional authority to "spy" without warrant OR oversight for "foreign intelligence" and national security reasons...while at the same time..protecting the civil/domestic/criminal division (read FBI, etc), and targest thereof.
It has never been the case..that ANY court..has suggested that the president does NOT have the right (even in times where we are NOT at war), to collect and prosecute foreign intel or national security itnerests...without a warrant or oversight .
Basically...the dems argument is....the president..doesn't have the authority to be the president. |
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