The Kabuki Theater In Congress: Reform Hidden Behind Masks & Untruths

Kabuki Congress: Hiding Behind Masks & Untruths

Imagine being stopped for speeding and having the local legislature raise the limit so you won't have to pay the fine. It sounds absurd, but it's just what is happening to the 28-year-old law that prohibits the president from spying on Americans without getting a warrant from a judge.

It's a familiar pattern. President Bush ignores the Constitution and the laws of the land, and the cowardly, rigidly partisan majority in Congress helps him out by rewriting the laws he's broken.

On March 2, 2006, Harper's Magazine sponsored a panel discussion on the Case for Impeachment of George W. Bush. It aired on C-SPAN and is viewable via the C-SPAN web site. There were several distinguished panelists that made a proper case for impeaching the president and his gang. The problem that one of them pointed out is that we might get stuck with Dennis Hastert in Bush's place.

In 2004, to take one particularly disturbing example, Congress learned that American troops were abusing, torturing and killing prisoners, and that the administration was illegally detaining hundreds of people at camps around the world. The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner, huffed and puffed about the abuse, but did nothing. And when the courts said the detention camps do fall under the laws of the land, compliant lawmakers simply changed them.

The "did nothing" part of this paragraph is the key. We are seeing NOTHING done despite ALL the scandals and constitutional problems we have seen since 9-11.

Now the response of Congress to Mr. Bush's domestic wiretapping scheme is following the same pattern, only worse.

At first, lawmakers expressed outrage at the warrantless domestic spying, and some Democrats and a few Republicans still want a full investigation. But the Republican leadership has already reverted to form. Senator Arlen Specter, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has held one investigative hearing, notable primarily for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's refusal to answer questions.

Specter held the hearing, Gonzalaez told lies and spun the public relations wheel, and then told us that he needed to clarify his statements, and deny the statements of others that reported there was more to this program of unconstitutional--allegedly--spying.

Mr. Specter then loyally produced a bill that actually grants legal cover, retroactively, to the one spying program Mr. Bush has acknowledged. It also covers any other illegal wiretapping we don't know about — including, it appears, entire "programs" that could cover hundreds, thousands or millions of unknowing people.

It is a cover-up with the endorsement of congress. It is a facade of providing government at the cost of our constitutional rights. It is a fiasco and a scandalous approach. Impeachment is the only satisfactory answer.

Mr. Specter's bill at least offers the veneer of judicial oversight from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. A far more noxious proposal being floated by Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, would entirely remove intelligence gathering related to terrorism from the law on spying, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Let's call this what it is: a shell game. The question is whether the Bush administration broke the law by allowing the National Security Agency to spy on Americans and others in the United States without obtaining the required warrant. The White House wants Americans to believe that the spying is restricted only to conversations between agents of Al Qaeda and people in the United States. But even if that were true, which it evidently is not, the administration has not offered the slightest evidence that it could not have efficiently monitored those Qaeda-related phone calls and e-mail messages while following the existing rules.

It would be hilarious if it were not so tragic. The Constitution is as much for sale as are our ports, highways and true security.

In other words, there is not a shred of proof that the illegal program produced information that could not have been obtained legally, had the administration wanted to bother to stay within the law.

The administration has assured the nation it had plenty of good reason, but there's no way for Congress to know, since it has been denied information on the details of the wiretap program. And Senator Pat Roberts, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, seems bent on making sure it stays that way. He has refused to permit a vote on whether to investigate the spying scandal.

I could come up with plenty of reasons for robbing a bank, but if I dared to rob a bank I would be held accountable under the law. Bush and his gang have clearly violated our law, committing both criminal and civil breaches, and are now being offered a "get out of jail free" card from congress. I vote we incarcerate everyone that votes for the "free ride" bill.

There were glimmers of hope on the House side. Representative Heather Wilson, the New Mexico Republican who heads one of the subcommittees supervising intelligence, called for a "painstaking" review of the necessity and legality of the spying operation. But the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Peter Hoekstra, is turning that into a pro forma review that would end with Congress rewriting the foreign-intelligence law the way Mr. Bush wants.

Pro forma should be understoof as "rubber stamp." The Republicans in the House and Senate have joined the conspiracy that is the Bush administration.