Bush To SCOTUS: "I Am Still King"

Surveillance Bill Meets Resistance in Senate

The damn bill should meet with resistance. Contrary to Dubya's view of the world, the Supreme Court sent a message with the Hamdan decision that should be resonating throughout the halls of the Capitol Building and the West Wing. The Bush gang's proposal is nothing less than an attempt to send a reverberating message back to the SCOTUS justices... "I am still king." At least that is the way it seems from here.

But congress better here the message from US... it's time to rein in this would-be king.

A Senate surveillance bill personally negotiated by President Bush and Vice President Cheney ran into immediate trouble this week, as Democrats and other critics attacked the proposal while key GOP leaders in the House endorsed a different bill on the same topic.

The Senate legislation, drafted during negotiations between the White House and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), would allow the administration to submit the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program to a secret intelligence court for review of its legality.

The proposal was billed as a rare and noteworthy compromise by the administration when unveiled last week. But the legislation quickly came under attack from Democrats and many national security experts, who said it would actually give the government greater powers to spy on Americans without court oversight.

A competing bill introduced by Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-N.M.) was endorsed this week by two key House GOP leaders: Peter Hoekstra (Mich.), the intelligence committee chairman, and F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (Wis.), head of the Judiciary Committee.

Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, canceled a markup session for his proposal that had been scheduled for yesterday. He announced instead plans instead for a full committee hearing Wednesday on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the 1978 statute at the center of the debate.

The developments add to the uncertainty surrounding the eavesdropping program, which allows the NSA to intercept telephone calls and e-mails between the United States and locations overseas without court approval if one of the parties is suspected of links to terrorism.

The program -- secretly ordered by Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but not revealed publicly until media reports in December -- has been the focus of fierce congressional debate. The Justice Department has spent much of its time fending off a flurry of legal challenges to the program in the courts, including a class-action lawsuit that was allowed to proceed yesterday by a federal judge in California.

Specter's proposal would, among other things, allow the transfer of all pending lawsuits to a secret FISA appeals court that could throw the cases out for "any reason." The bill would also allow -- but not require -- the administration to seek legal approval for the NSA program from another secret court that administers FISA.

Now for those that are actually rulers in their land, we have this article. Let us see how many of my readers can draw the obvious parallels between the Bush administration and the Amir of Bahrain.

Bahrain's King Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifa has ratified a controversial protest law that some rights groups suggest could be inconsistent with common international rights standards. The Amendments to Law 18/1973 criminalizes unauthorized protests, prohibits foreign nationals from demonstrating, and bans demonstrators from certain public places such as hospitals, airports, and near diplomatic offices and other international organizations.

Advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has expressed concern over the protest law, noting that the amendment is the first human-rights related legislation to be considered by Bahrain since the country was elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council. HRW suggested that the Amendment may run afoul of Article 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Bahrain has not yet ratified. ICCPR Article 21 states in full:

The right of peaceful assembly shall be recognized. No restrictions may be placed on the exercise of this right other than those imposed in conformity with the law and which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, public order, the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

The thing is that HRH Hamad was chastised by his father, HRH Issa (whom I met during my stint as a teacher in Bahrain) for his stiff, rigid views on national security and dealings with protesters. Hamad is a military man by training and his uncle, the prime minister, is the diplomat. But Hamad hates almost everything coming out of Iran, including the ideology that is stirring up his own subjects.

Chances Poor For Line-Item Veto Legislation

In his effort to once again countermand the past rulings of the Supreme Court, Dubya is pushing forward with the line-item veto legislation so that not only can he (and presumably future presidents) can not only create "signing statements" that exempt him from following the laws that are legally set forth by congress, but now he can just veto those parts of a law that he doesn;t like. While the line item veto might sound like a reasonable approach, the reality is that it undermines some of the checks and balances built into the process of passing a law. Indeed, if congress would get its act together and pass rules for each house that precluded the addition of unrelated amendments and earmarks to bills, then the line item veto would be altogether unnecessary. So, what we need is to push congress to create new rules on how a bill is passed, modified in the process (see my previous post on this, complete with graphics) as well as reforms on financing elections, accepting monies from lobbyists, PACS and corporations, and being honest... I'll wake up from this dream shortly.

But what Would-Be King George, his gang of thugs and the bastard congress critters do not realize is that the Constitution does not allow for the line-item veto approach:

ARTICLE I - Section 7. All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills.

Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a law. But in all such cases the votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the journal of each House respectively. If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a law.

Nothing in that section of the Constitution authorizes the congress to create a line-item veto process. In fact, the SCOTUS review that struck down the previous effort specifically spoke to the issues of constitutionality. It would require a constitutional amendment to pass this provision.

Has anyone noticed that Would-Be King George is amendment happy? He has pushed for an amendment against gay marriage, the flag burning amendment... and now the line item veto.

Senate Budget Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H., all but pronounced the White House's line-item veto proposal dead for the year, telling reporters Wednesday the Bush administration has not worked aggressively enough to round up the votes.

"I think people have gone back to the White House and said, 'Get us 60 votes and we'll take your position a little more seriously,'" Gregg said.

He also spoke openly about the likelihood of a post-election omnibus appropriations bill, a rare admission for a senior Republican. "We're headed in that direction, aren't we?" he said.

Discussions have been under way about taking up the House-passed line-item veto bill, approved in that chamber last month with 35 Democratic votes.

That bill is seen as having a better chance at passage than Gregg's more ambitious, multi-layered budget process overhaul bill, which he acknowledged has less of a chance than a stand-alone line-item veto measure.

"My problem is we haven't got the votes to pass it, obviously," Gregg said. His larger bill also has provisions aimed at controlling the growth of entitlement spending, which have provoked a strong reaction from Democrats.

Gregg accused Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and others of "demagoguery" for "waving the bloody shirt of Social Security" in order to drum up fears about his bill's impact on popular benefit programs.

Office of Management and Budget Director Rob Portman was omnipresent in the days leading up to the House line-item veto vote, and he has been calling senators on both sides of the aisle to try to win support for the measure.

But the White House has not engaged in the same kind of all-out effort it launched in the House, so as not to undercut negotiations between Gregg and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., over what form the legislation will take.

White House Shifts Tack on Tribunals: Bush to Propose Only Minor Changes

Would-Be King George and his gang of thugs are pushing for "minor changes" from the military justice system for use against the detainees at Gitmo and elsewhere. Those minor changes are efforts to circumvent the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, the right to full and vigorous legal representation, and the right of habeas corpus by way of probable cause hearings.

In other words, they want to take the already existing advantages of using the UCMJ and rules/procedures of military courts martial (see my previous post on this subject) and expand upon them even further. Can we see yet another grab for more presidential power and a circumvention of the rules set forth by the SCOTUS.

Top White House officials took a harder line yesterday on a new system to try terrorism suspects, telling Republican senators that President Bush will soon formally propose a tribunal structure with only minor changes from the military commissions that were ruled unconstitutional last month.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley met with Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) and Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), offering views on a new tribunal structure that they said could pass constitutional muster with a Supreme Court that rebuked the White House in June. The senators said Bush will give Congress a proposal soon.

But Senate Republican aides familiar with the discussion said that the White House position has hardened since a White House meeting earlier this month, when Hadley assured the same senators the White House could accept tribunals based largely on existing military law, known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That could place Bush on a collision course with the Senate, where a bipartisan group of lawmakers is preparing legislation that would hew closely to military law in outlining more rights for defendants than the administration wants to grant.

"They prefer starting with the commissions as currently structured, and adding a few changes," said a senior Senate Republican aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity because no proposal has been formalized. "Clearly, some [senators] believe that we have to take more from the UCMJ than the administration, at this time, wants."

The Bush administration offered starkly mixed signals last week, first releasing a Defense Department memo pledging that detainee treatment would abide by the Geneva Conventions, then sending lawyers from the Justice and Defense departments to testify before the House and Senate that certain parts of the conventions remain problematic and that Congress need only ratify the original commission plan to meet the Supreme Court's requirements for a legislative blessing.

The Senate Armed Services Committee concluded three days of hearings with testimony from the military's most senior lawyers, or judge advocates general, who said the existing rules for courts-martial should be the starting point for new legislation. Former top military lawyers said the Supreme Court's ruling stated that the commissions as originally drafted would be unconstitutional, even if formalized through legislation, because they would not secure defendants' rights to representation and evidence guaranteed by the Geneva Conventions.

But many Republicans -- and some Democrats -- believe court-martial rules would afford too much protection to terrorism suspects, allowing them to use the tribunals to access classified information, communicate with terrorist leaders, and delay a verdict and sentencing indefinitely. Some lawmakers -- with the approval of administration officials -- suggested that the UCMJ would hamstring soldiers on the battlefield, who would have to consider rules of evidence and defendants' rights as they hunted down terrorists.

Conservative Anger Grows Over Bush's Foreign Policy

But it seems that Would-Be King George is not only ticking off those of us with a reasonable expectation of governmental adherence to the rule of law (most importantly the US Constitution), but also those who have heretofor been his supporters. There are a lot of similarities between our Would-Be King George and George III who we cast out in our Revolutionary War. I wonder if Dubya also has a penchant for hugging and talking to trees as is it rumored that George III did?

At a moment when his conservative coalition is already under strain over domestic policy, President Bush is facing a new and swiftly building backlash on the right over his handling of foreign affairs.

Conservative intellectuals and commentators who once lauded Bush for what they saw as a willingness to aggressively confront threats and advance U.S. interests said in interviews that they perceive timidity and confusion about long-standing problems including Iran and North Korea, as well as urgent new ones such as the latest crisis between Israel and Hezbollah.

"It is Topic A of every single conversation," said Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank that has had strong influence in staffing the administration and shaping its ideas. "I don't have a friend in the administration, on Capitol Hill or any part of the conservative foreign policy establishment who is not beside themselves with fury at the administration."

Conservatives complain that the United States is hunkered down in Iraq without enough troops or a strategy to crush the insurgency. They see autocrats in Egypt and Russia cracking down on dissenters with scant comment from Washington, North Korea firing missiles without consequence, and Iran playing for time to develop nuclear weapons while the Bush administration engages in fruitless diplomacy with European allies. They believe that a perception that the administration is weak and without options is emboldening Syria and Iran and the Hezbollah radicals they help sponsor in Lebanon.

Most of the most scathing critiques of the administration from erstwhile supporters are being expressed within think tanks and in journals and op-ed pages followed by a foreign policy elite in Washington and New York.

But the Bush White House has always paid special attention to the conversation in these conservative circles. Many of the administration's signature ideas -- regime change in Iraq, and special emphasis on military "preemption" and democracy building around the globe -- first percolated within this intellectual community. In addition, these voices can be a leading indicator of how other conservatives from talk radio to Congress will react to policies.

As the White House listens to what one official called the "chattering classes," it hears a level of disdain from its own side of the ideological spectrum that would have been unthinkable a year ago. It is an odd irony for a president who has inflamed liberals and many allies around the world for what they see as an overly confrontational, go-it-alone approach. The discontent on the right could also color the 2008 presidential debate.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who is considering a bid for president, called the administration's latest moves abroad a form of appeasement. "We have accepted the lawyer-diplomatic fantasy that talking while North Korea builds bombs and missiles and talking while the Iranians build bombs and missiles is progress," he said in an interview. "Is the next stage for Condi to go dancing with Kim Jong Il?" he asked, referring to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the North Korean leader.

It seems to me that our Would-Be King George is reaching way over his limits.