Above the Law, and Proud of It

By now, you've all probably heard about the executive order Bush signed authorizing the NSA to spy on thousands of American citizens without a warrant. I don't have anything original to add to the discussion, but I do want to add my voice to the growing chorus and say that what Bush did was clearly illegal, immoral, and unjustifiable.

Yesterday, Bush declined to talk about the issue, citing the need to protect ongoing intelligence operations and to prevent such sensitive information from falling into the hands of that "enemy who lurks". But today Bush decided that his political fortunes mattered more than the safety of the nation he stressed only the day before, and used his weekly radio address to acknowledge and defend his actions:

Bush said that he authorized the program "using constitutional authority vested in me as commander-in-chief." He argued that the program is consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, and used "to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations."

What a bunch of crap. The president does not have the "constitutional authority" to ignore the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and therefore, his order to spy on Americans was not "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution". As for the part about the targets having "known links to al Qaeda, that's not what the sources for the original Times story said. But if it's true that every one of the thousands of American citizens whose communications were intercepted by the NSA have "known links to al Qaeda", then Bush is certainly doing a lousy job of making the nation safer, given these folks haven't been arrested, tried, and locked up.

Feingold is right — our country has a president who is subject to the law, not a king who is above it. There was a time when that was widely considered to be a good thing. And with Bush in the White House for another 3 years, it's essential.