Notes and Jottings

Do not be fooled. This election is not about the sexual misdeeds of a Congressman, or even about a hideous and unnecessary war. It is not about national security. In the long sweep of American and world history, this election is about the same issue that Americans believed they confronted in 1776: whether or not we shall live in a state defined by unchecked tyrannical power.

What am I talking about? Bush Junior’s attempt to rewrite laws enacted by Congress, completely, through the use of signing statements.

In the law Bush signed Wednesday, Congress stated no one but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on Homeland Security department activities that affect privacy, including complaints.

But Bush, in a signing statement attached to the agency’s 2007 spending bill, said he will interpret that section “in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch.”

Or how about this…

Bush’s signing statement Wednesday challenges several other provisions in the Homeland Security spending bill.

Bush, for example, said he’d disregard a requirement that the director of the
Federal Emergency Management Agency must have at least five years experience and “demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management and homeland security.”

His rationale was that it “rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge to fill the office.”

Another attempt to ignore or alter the law, as enacted by Congress. Shouldn’t US citizens be up in arms about this? What happened to the separation between administration, legislation and judiciary? The Legislature creates the laws, the Administration carries them out, the Judiciary rules on legality/illegality, right? Have I missed something?

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/09/faulty_data_and.html

Most people probably know Schneier as a respected member of the cryptography community, and writer of some famous cryptographic books. He also writes very interesting and throughtful articles in Cryptogram and on his blog about real-life security mechanisms and failures. Here are some thoughts from him:

Maher Arar is a Syrian-born Canadian citizen. On September 26, 2002, he tried to fly from Switzerland to Toronto. Changing planes in New York, he was detained by the U.S. authorities, and eventually shipped to Syria where he was tortured. He’s 100% innocent.

Judicial oversight is a security mechanism. It prevents the police from incarcerating the wrong person. The point of habeas corpus is that the police need to present their evidence in front of a neutral third party, and not indefinitely detain or torture people just because they believe they’re guilty. We are all less secure if we water down these security measures.

Glenn Greenwald: http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/george-bushs-vast-new-powers-of.html

… the Republicans are the party of torture, indefinite and unreviewable detention powers, and limitless presidential power, even over U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. By contrast, Democrats have opposed these tyrannical, un-American and truly dangerous measures. Even if Democrats didn’t oppose them as vociferously as they could have and should have, this is still a meaningful and, at this point, critically important contrast.

I know at least one Republican supporter in the US personally, and I appeal to him and any other Republican supporters to bear this in mind before voting for your “party of choice” in the November elections.

“Taken together, the bill’s provisions rewrite American law to evade the fundamental principles of separation of powers, due process, habeas corpus, fair trials, and the rule of law, principles that, together, prohibit state-sanctioned violence. If there is any fixed point in the historical understandings of constitutional freedom that help to define us as a people, it is that no one may be picked up and locked up by the American state in secret or at an unknown location, or without opportunity to petition an independent court for inspection of the lawfulness of the lockup and of the treatment handed out by the state to the person locked up, under legal standards from time to time defined by Congress. This core principle should apply with full force to all detentions by the American state, regardless of the citizenship of detainees.”

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/09/28/critics/index.html

The Senate is well on its way towards ratifying HR 6166, with all the nasty parts I mentioned before. The only options left appear to be a filibuster (unlikely), or that the law gets knocked down as unconstitutional by the SCOTUS.

We must start treating our moral authority as a precious national asset that does not limit our power but magnifies our influence. That seems obvious, but this Administration still doesn’t get it. Right now – today — they are trying to rush a bill through Congress that will fundamentally undermine our moral authority, put our troops at greater risk, and make our country less safe.

Let me be clear about something—something that it seems few people are willing to say. This bill permits torture. It gives the President the discretion to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions. No matter how much well-intended United States Senators would like to believe otherwise, it gives an Administration that lobbied for torture just what it wanted.

The only guarantee we have that these provisions really will prohibit torture is the word of the President. But we have seen in Iraq the consequences of simply accepting the word of this Administration. No, we cannot just accept the word of this Administration that they will not engage in torture given that everything they’ve already done and said on this most basic question has already put our troops at greater risk and undermined the very moral authority needed to win the war on terror.

Senator John Kerry

Update: Here’s a good summary of the problems surrounding the bill. At this point (1905 UTC+1), it looks like filibuster is not an option, and the bill is almost certain to pass. It’s a dark dark day for the US.

To expand on my post the other day, the House of Congress should currently be debating HR 6166, Military Commissions Act of 2006. This does away with the right of habeas corpus. This means that it may be possible (unless the law is struck down as unconstitutional) that the US Administration could hold a person indefinitely without charge. Currently this is being done in Guantanamo, but this puts it on a pseudo-legal footing. Is this the first step towards a totalitarian state?

If it passes the House (which it looks like it will), then there’s still the Senate - but odds are slim that the Democrats can halt passage of the bill.

Rep. Louise Slaughter posted an update before she went to debate the issue. It’s a shame that more people don’t see the huge danger (bipartisan danger, even) that this bill poses to US democracy.

It’s shameful for Democrats, who haven’t put as much effort as they should into stopping it, but it’s even more shameful for the Republicans, who show yet again that they are the “rubber stamp” party, willing to pass any legislation passed in front of them.

If Republicans keep control of both Houses after the November elections, it will not just be distasteful, it will be a disaster for everybody! Including a brief mention that control by the Republicans is quite likely to be followed by a strike on Iran.

It looks like the social conservatives won. The general information from exit polls suggested that moral values were most important to users, followed by the economy. Not quite “it’s the economy, stupid,” after all! And it really wasn’t the “war on terror” which won it either.

I consider myself a social liberal of some sort or form, which I guess means that I don’t think that government should be a regulator of every part of daily life. Of course, one then has to hope that people will in general do the right thing. But there are many ideas of what “the right thing” is, and it doesn’t always seem right that the government should be the arbitrers of that divide, sometimes; for example, single-sex marriage in the US. It’s not like it’s hurting anybody, I really don’t mind either way, but I wouldn’t want to force my views on people. That does seem to be the way the US is going, for better or worse (I’m sure some people would say better).

At the end of the day, I’m not sure how different international events will be over the next four years. But at home, it may cause large changes. The fact alone that four Chief Justices may retire over the next four years alone is going to be huge.

On the international front, I hope that the neoconservatives and Bush have learned their lesson with Iraq. I fear otherwise.