Specter Proposing An End-Run Around The Constitution

Deal On Spy Program In Works: Bill Would Let Court Approve Wiretaps

WASHINGTON -- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a leading Republican critic of President Bush's domestic spying program, has drafted a bill that would exempt the once-secret surveillance program from a 1978 statute that requires warrants.

The draft bill, which will be aired today at a Judiciary Committee hearing, would require Bush to submit the classified details of the spying program to a special national security court for review. The court would decide whether the program violates the constitutional prohibitions on unreasonable searches.

The Pennsylvania lawmaker has not yet released his bill to the public, but the Globe obtained a draft copy that has been circulating among legal specialists who are set to testify about the spying program at today's hearing.

Specter's proposal appears to offer a face-saving solution to both sides, some specialists said. It avoids declaring whether the program until now has been illegal, but reasserts congressional authority over domestic surveillance going forward.

It may be a face-saving solution for the Bush administration and the congress critters, but it screws us out of the Fourth Amendment protections to further an agenda and program(s) that are fruitless, arbitrary, capricious and STUPID! Given that the federal bench is stacked with the likes of Scalia, Stevens, Thomas, Alito, Roberts and Borkites, there isn't one iota of possibility that fairness and constitutionality will remain intact. What Specter now proposes is asinine and a sell-out measure that screws the general public.

'This is a good-faith effort on the part of Senator Specter to reach a reasonable compromise,' said Pepperdine University law professor Douglas Kmiec, a former Reagan administration lawyer who will testify today. 'We could endlessly debate who is right under the existing law. . . . The wisdom of Specter's approach is to say 'OK, this is an interesting debate, but we've got a real problem to solve and here is my attempt at solving the problem.'

Only a committed Reaganite could see the benefit of screwing the Constitution in this manner... Perhaps Professor Kmiec should be committed to Gitmo for about six months and force-fed to see how long he would remain committed to the ultra-conservative ideology he has obviously endorsed.

But Specter's proposal drew fire from critics of the president's assertion that his wartime powers allow him to circumvent the 1978 law and spy on Americans without a warrant. The critics said Specter is proposing changing the law to accommodate Bush without making it clear that a president must obey the law.

Harold Koh, the dean of Yale Law School and another specialist who will testify today, said Specter's bill would 'make matters far worse by giving the Congress's blanket preauthorization to a large number of unreasonable searches and seizures,' without offering a full review of a program that until now he contended has been 'blatantly illegal.'

'To enact the draft legislation . . . would provide neither the congressional oversight nor the judicial review that this program needs to restore our confidence in our constitutional checks and balances,' Koh said.

Bravo! We hear from someone that has actually read the Constitution and understands that the social contract reserves rights to "We the people..."

The debate over changing the wiretapping law comes as 18 Democrats in the House of Representatives sent Bush a letter yesterday demanding that he appoint a special counsel empowered to independently investigate whether the program is illegal.

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, dismissed the request in his daily briefing yesterday, saying there is ''no basis" for a special counsel, repeating the administration's assertion that the program is legal.

Dismiss, distract, deny, spin, humiliate and lie... Standard approaches for this admiinistration.

In a phone interview, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino declined to comment on the details of Specter's bill. But she said the administration is committed to working with Congress on legislation 'that will further codify the president's authority but not undermine the program's capabilities.'

Dismiss, distract, deny, spin, humiliate and lie... Standard approaches for this admiinistration.

Specter's bill would require a special national security court to review the program. If the court finds that the program, as a whole, is gathering important information and does not violate the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches, the court can approve its use for 45-day increments.

We already have a court and a law that should have been followed... It's called FISA... Let us not create yet another law with conflicting parameters and permutations that allows AG Gonzalez more wiggle room to justify illegal actions. And let us remember that we cannot pass ex post facto laws.

The bill would create a bypass around the 1978 wiretapping law -- especially the mandate that the government must show a judge evidence to justify its decision to eavesdrop on each person it monitors.

But this new law should not bypass an impeachment proceeding against the Bush Gang for violating existing law. Facism is alive and well in the United States of America... and today it is embodied in the US Senate under the direction of Arlen Specter.