Al's Opinions

You may think, from the title to this opinion, that I have discovered some new and important feature of government. It is not new. What I am going to discuss was well-known to the 17th and 18th century political theorists who provided the thinking behind our federal constitution.

Let be introduce the subject by relating a frequent e-mail argument I have had with my conservative friends H and R and my "moderate" friend S. In particular H has been eager to justify the use of an interrogation technique called "water boarding." He writes that the technique has extracted useful information from several terrorist suspects and implies that the information has been used to foil plans by Al Qaeda to stage another attack on the United States. This attack would have been, I presume, as disastrous at the destruction of tall buildings by flying commercial airplanes into them.

H cites this beneficial result from the use of water boarding and asks whether S and I would condone giving the President the power to authorize its use in future interrogations. S and I have pointed out that we are skeptical that the technique yields reliable information. A torture victim is apt to say anything to please his tormentor. The information provided may or may not be true. H asserts without proof that the technique has indeed yielded useful information.

In recent e-letters to the group (H, R, S, and myself) I have stated the existence of an uncertainty principle that requires us to find a balance between complete security and complete freedom. If we want complete security, we then must permit the President (i.e., the government) to use any and all torture methods in interrogations. We must also give the President the authority to conduct warrantless wire taps to listen in on private conversation to find terrorists who otherwise would escape detection.

I argue that to give the President that much power would enable him to spy on and frame any political opponent. An unscrupulous or ambitious President would be able to establish himself and his cronies in power with no limits on what they could do. Our liberties would vanish. In order to prevent the emergence of a fascist state, we have to place limits on the President. The price of maintaining our liberties is the likelihood of other terrorist attacks that will not be detected in time to stop them. We are governed by other imperfect humans, not by Thomas Jefferson's angels. The imperfection, the corruption, the dishonesty of some public officials requires that we limit the things they can do. The result is that we live in freedom but not in safety. That is the uncertainty principle of governance.

This is not a new idea. What surprises me is that my conservative friends are willing to trust "big government" to torture suspects and listen to private phone conversations and not use the power to discredit political opponents but are not willing to trust the same government to run a program to provide affordable health care for everyone.

Labels: Al Qaeda, balance between liberty and security, Conservatism, warrantless wire taps

The President has made the point that Democrats are weak on defense against terror by pointing out the failure of the House to accede to the Senate's version of the bill to extend the authorization to listen in on certain conversations without obtaining court warrants. According to my friend H, that was pretty much the way FOX news handled the story. He writes that CNN, NBC, CBS, and ABC didn't give the story much air time at all. They are, therefore, biased against the President.

I wrote to my friend that I had seen a rather thorough account of the matter on PBS. According to my information, there were two versions of the bill. One, passed earlier by the House, did not provide immunity to telecommunication firms that had cooperated with the government in carrying out the warrantless wire taps. The Senate had that bill and also another one. The other one did include the immunity. Republicans in the Senate and the President wanted the bill that provided the immunity. The House refused to go along with the Senate version of the bill. Some lengthy negotiation would be needed to reach a compromise. In the mean time, both Houses agreed to extend the existing law for another three weeks while they argued and ironed out the differences between the two bills. The President and the Senate Republicans demanded either the Senate version or nothing. They were not interested in an extension. As a result, the President got nothing.

Actually, nothing was probably what he wanted. With nothing he could go to the public and point out that those damned Democrats had refused to enact a bill that would enable our fearless intelligence agencies to continue listening in on conversations that might provide leads to another terrorist plot. The Democrats are not to be trusted on defense. Vote Republican this fall.

To me it seems clear that if the President were convinced that he really, really needed this law to enable the warrantless wire taps to continue and that the nation would be in danger without it, he would have happily agreed to another extension of the existing law.

Labels: Democrats soft on national defense, FISA court, warrantless wire taps

It is reported that John Conyers is just three Representatives away from opening impeachment hearings. I hope he gets the three that he needs.

Speaker Pelosi is opposed to impeachment. She has two good reasons:

1. If Bush were impeached and convicted and removed from office, along with Vice President Cheney, she would become President. She doesn't want impeachment to look like a power grab.
2. The push to impeach President Clinton was led by the odious Tom DeLay. He wanted Clinton removed simply because he hated him and because Clinton was a member of the other Party. Ms Pelosi does not want to be remembered as the Democratic equivalent of Tom DeLay.

Perhaps the constitutional amendment that makes the Speaker of the House third in line to succeed the President has had the unintended consequence of protecting the President from impeachment. At the time that President Nixon was impeached, the Democratic Speaker insisted that Nixon's choice for Vice President, Gerald Ford, should become the new President even though Ford had not been elected to the office of Vice President.

Because of Pelosi's reluctance to have the House hold hearings on impeachment and because there aren't 67 votes in the Senate to convict, some Democrats and Republicans are discouraging talk of impeachment. At best it would be an empty gesture if the House voted to impeach and the Senate voted to acquit, just as in the case of President Clinton. As a substitute, Senator Feingold urges a vote of censure against the President. Again, this would be an empty gesture. Mr. Bush wouldn't resign or even change his behavior. However, Congress would be on record as expressing disapproval of his unconstitutional acts and threats of unconstitutional acts, such as warrantless wire taps on American citizens and threatening not to prosecute witnesses cited for contempt of Congress - and to pardon any who are prosecuted and convicted and sentenced.

Actually, Mr. Bush has taught us some useful things about our constitution. He has ignored precedents he doesn't like, followed precedents he does like, and has stretched the meaning of the words of the document to justify his high-handed ignoration of Congress. He has shown how weak the "Power of the Purse" is in trying to correct a wrong-headed policy. He has shown us that our elected Representatives and Senators are much more interested in getting themselves reelected than in acting on behalf of the best interests of the nation. We should not revile him, but celebrate him as a great teacher.

Labels: Bush the Teacher, Conyers, Feingold, impeachment, Pelosi, Power of the Purse, Tom DeLay, warrantless wire taps

This morning it occurred to me to write a little essay about the question, "Can the war in Iraq be won?" My simple answer is, "Yes, but it will take at least ten years and a much larger army than the one we now have." End of subject; there's nothing more to be said about it. So, what to write about?

Last night I watched the PBS program "Bill Moyers' Journal." Bill had Bruce Fein and John Nichols discussing the proposition that President Bush and Vice President Cheney should be impeached. I had previously thought that impeachment of those two now would be like locking the barn door after the horse was stolen. Mr. Fein, in particular, presented a compelling case in favor of impeachment.

His argument is that the Bush administration has committed several offenses against the federal constitution: warrantless wire taps, denial of habeas corpus for the prisoners at Guantanamo, lying to Congress, refusal to allow administration members to testify to Congress, and so on. It is very important to Mr. Fein that these unconstitutional and illegal practices should not become precedents for future presidents to use. He asked, do we want a President Hillary Clinton, a President Rudy Giuliani, a President McCain, a President Edwards, or any other ambitious politician from having these powers? If not, we should now take action to censure the current President for doing these things. We must have the House draw up and pass a bill of impeachment in which these crimes are itemized. We will thus make it clear that future Presidents are forbidden to act as unaccountable monarchs rather than elected and accountable presidents.

I must say that his argument convinced me. Although the horse is gone, we can recover the saddle, the reins, and the buggy. Future Presidents must be made to understand that the Presidency is not unaccountable and must respect and cooperate with the Congress.

Now, where do I go to sign a petition for impeachment?

Labels: Bruce Fein, impeachment, John Nichols, lying to Congress, precedent for future presidents, warrantless wire taps