Letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee
A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Donna J. Wade
Senators on the Intelligence Committee:
You must investigate the President's admittedly illegal wiretapping of American citizens because of its violation of our rights under the 4th Amendment to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. It is your constitutional responsibility to act as a check on the power of a “unitary” executive who believes that he may violate any law he chooses during a time of war (even though it’s a conflict he orchestrated) under his powers as Commander in Chief of our military.
In his blatant disregard for the FISA court, which has only turned down a handful of requests for warrants out of thousands of requests, and includes ample provisions for exigent circumstances, the President is giving his one-fingered victory salute to the laws our representatives passed to protect us from such intrusions. President Bush and his enablers are laying claim to the unprecedented, unfettered powers that our founding fathers warned against as the biggest threat to our republic.
If ever we needed real checks and balances it is now. So find the spine to do the jobs we pay you to do, or quit and go home. We the People are getting damn tired of your acquiescence to the Bush administration's power-grab. Failure to fulfill your oversight responsibilities at this critical moment in history is, in my opinion, as treasonous as outing a covert CIA/WMD operative for political retribution.
I pray you're so much better than that. Democracy depends on it. If you cannot live up to your oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, then really, please go home. Take your tax-payer funded retirement packages, including the excellent health care benefits that I and about 45 million other Americans can only dream about, and just go home.
That'll make room for the rare candidates who still have a spark of patriotic idealism burning in their hearts. People who could, with encouragement, find their inner Tom Paine, or Martin Luther King, and articulate a refreshingly realistic assessment of where we are as a nation and a hopeful plan for how to work together as a nation to change course. Those candidates may be tough to find, but with 50 or so million of us looking for them, I'm certain we'll find them.
I'll take a rookie who gets “the vision thing” over capitulating, complacent old-timers any day. So forget about nuance. Stop with the "middle of the road" mantra. Where I come from, the only thing being in the middle of the road will get you is run over from both directions. If you don’t want to be electoral road-kill, pick a side & fight.
We the People are looking for any sign that our elected representatives regard our Constitution as more than an obsolete piece of paper. We expect you to act in OUR best interest, which means you must fulfill every one of your constitutionally-mandated oversight responsibilities. You are supposed to be our watchdogs, our advocates, our eyes and ears in the capitol. But these days what we hear from those once-revered halls simply doesn't ring true to what we experience for ourselves.
Somebody doesn't "get it." Given recent poll results, the American public thinks that somebody is you. Stop listening to each other drone on incessantly and start listening to US.
We want you to stop trying to change the rules to suit a political or theological agenda. We certainly don't want you passing retroactive laws to miraculously make the President's blatant violation of current ones suddenly legal, as though you were Jesus changing water into wine. You already torched us with the “loaves and the fishes” budget, acting like the US Treasury is your personal ATM so you can shower more abundant tax cuts and subsidies on your deep-pocketed corporate and individual contributors, leaving the middle class and the working poor to foot the bill. You should be ashamed, very ashamed.
I find it ironic that the same people in both houses of Congress who screamed for Bill Clinton's head on a platter for lying about an extramarital affair have now become the chief apologists/spin-masters to explain away this administration’s many deceptions.
If truly it was a matter of principle that Mr. Clinton be impeached to demonstrate that not even the President is above our nation’s duly enacted laws, then the current president must be held to that standard. I didn't see those paragons of virtue in Congress hustling to re-write perjury laws to retroactively exempt testimony about extramarital affairs in order to save Clinton's hide. His lies pale in comparison to President Bush’s “disassembling.” Clinton lied about something personal, something that should have been no one else’s business, and did not involve his public duties. They certainly didn’t result in thousands of people being “detained,” whisked into the black hole of “extraordinary rendition” (or otherwise tortured/maimed/killed), nor in the violation of the individual liberties of our own citizens.
There have been media reports of eavesdropping on a group of Quakers, and on a bunch of old people in Florida. I'd be very curious to know what red flags they sent up to justify that surveillance. Then, again, that may be why the administration is afraid of involving the FISA court – it might have blocked their access to what I'm sure was a treasure trove of intelligence on Al Qaeda and other Middle Eastern extremists.
We the People believe you a making a mockery of your positions of public trust. We rarely believe you any more, wondering who placed the top bid to put those words in your mouths. Hearing the word "honorable" associated with the names of all but a handful of you makes a great many of us howl with laughter. There is nothing honorable about playing lapdog to political bullies and their propagandists of either party.
This issue should transcend party. Since 2001, the Chief Executive of the United States has repeatedly authorized spying on Americans of all stripes without judicial review, and he even admits it’s a violation of existing federal statute. In the judicial system for most of us, about the only way your everyday admitted felon gets away without jail time is to either a) give up a “bigger fish” in the corruption/crime; or b) be found not-guilty by reason of mental defect (and sent to a hospital for the criminally insane instead of prison).
With regard to a), the biggest fish in this swamp IS the one who admitted breaking the law, and for brevity’s sake, I will refrain from arguing point b).
We expect you to fully and publicly investigate this matter, with ALL witnesses under oath, with only the most super-sensitive classified national security documents and testimony reviewed in closed session. We want to know who the government spied on, when, and why. If you cannot agree to hold public hearings, then at least appoint a special prosecutor to investigate so that evidence may be presented in secret to a grand jury for possible further adjudication.
If you truly believe that no one is above the law, you must investigate why the President knowingly and willfully violated the FISA statute, and hold him accountable.
It’s the right thing to do, and you damn well know it.
Otherwise, “Senate Intelligence Committee” will become simply another oxymoron, joining the ranks of “honest politician.”
