Illegal Inheritance

I have been checking the NRO’s Corner since yesterday and I’ve been wondering why there hasn’t been any mention of Gonzales’ name or his testimony.

I’d say the new Administration is likely to cut them back a bit and call this “stopping them”. The surveillance will probably be just as ubiquitous, but there will be a meaningless legal fig leaf restored. If they don’t do this, they will be blamed for any further terrorist attacks, whereas Bush, even at this point, would probably profit from a terrorist attack. The best we could hope for is that its use will be fairly limited to actually fighting crime (it won’t be limited to terrorism), rather than monitoring political opponents, as I am sure is happening now. All this is assuming Hillary; if Obama and Edwards, though, I think the difference would be slight.

Up and running, and the new administration will do more of it. This is how these things usually develop. Until some crazy crusading journalist or low-level bureaucrat manages to create a big scandal out of it and then they’ll have to roll back. And the day after the roll-back is the first day of the new cycle.

If any administration believes they could justify the program to the public should it be exposed, they will continue it. If the program is producing results and no major abuses come to light they are likely to be able to justify the program. If any abuses come to light, persons directly involved in the abuse will be blamed and the program will be reviewed and modified, limited, or terminated.

I agree that b and d seem most likely. You’ll recall that throughout much of the late 1990s (post-Oklahoma City) a standard conservative complaint about the Clinton administration was that it was violating civil liberties under the guise of fighting terrorism.

The Bush administration was bolstered by 9/11, largely because it inspired a sense of national unity. But executive branches live in fear of the opposite – that something very bad will happen and that they will get blamed for not stopping it beforehand. Accumulating power, especially for surveillance and suspension of civil liberties, makes them feel that they at least control their destiny somewhat.

You think a Dem AG is going to be confirmed without making some commitments to investigate? You think a Dem AG will lie to Waxman about what he or she finds once taking office?

b or d, regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican wins. Along with some changes to the program so that, when it comes to light again, there’s a way to sow confusion over whether it’s really the same program continued, or a new, similar-looking one. Also, whoever wins will have a more sophisticated legal argument prepared regarding its validity.

f will happen only if the current administration can be proven (in the court of public opinion) to be using the program to monitor members or allies of the new administration.

Y’all are warming the cockles of my libertarian heart. I mean, in as much as it’s heart-warming to find that lots of people agree with me about my soul-crushing, pessimistic predictions of an increasingly unfree future.

I suspect that the programs will be scaled back in a largely cosmetic manner and allowed to continue (and that they will slowly but steadily expand from their pruned-back level).

The answer to your question, as now nearly everyone before me has said, is (b) or (d). There’s no reason to believe that a Democrat would ever give back state power once a Republican has taken it. (Or vice versa, of course.)

The video you link to from TPM is just brutal.

Does anybody seriously believe the Bush administration won’t destroy as much of the executive infrastructure as it can, if it becomes clear that they will be handing power over to Democrats?

Somewhere between (d) and (e).

Am I too cynical? I think a Democrat will promise to dismantle the program and will change some things about it, and give it a new name. Maybe there will be an actual attempt to set up real, meaningful, independent oversight, which would be a vast improvement.

But organizations don’t like giving up tools or power, and there’s just not much incentive for a president to insist on this particular thing, unless they are a passionate civil libertarian.

I think every serious Democratic candidate is the sort who would probably accept whatever recommendation comes from the FBI bureaucracy after some review, which will essentially mean admitting things were done poorly under that bad president, but in the future the FBI needs, for the good of the country (and under the wise leadership of the current president) to keep listening to bad people if they really want to.

You can destroy the opposition party for a generation… or you can keep a bunch of dubious secret programs…

Huh, I don’t see it like that at all. If you actively and publicly object to a surveillance program (any surveillance program – legal, illegal, whatever), you immediately become extremely vulnerable to obvious kind of criticism by your fearmongering opponent. And if there’s a terrorist attack – you’re a political corps. It’s much easier to defend surveillance than object to it, unless you have a revelation of some gross abuse, and even then it’s not a slam-dunk.

That’s why the Democrats typically don’t really object to Bush’s surveillance programs per se, they only – and very carefully – object to their illegality, and offer to change the law to make sure they are legal as practiced.

And that’s what they are most likely to keep doing.

Rilkefan, the unconstitutionality is relevant only if the current administration hasn’t done a good enough job at muddying that issue. I’m not sure they haven’t.

The worthlessness, on the other hand, is completely irrelevant, as you can see from the continuation, by both parties, of the insanity of the war on drugs. See also the 45-year embargo of Cuba, which I’m sure will work any day now. Politicians continue programs and policies they oppose all the time out of fear of the political consequences of ending them.

If a terrorist attack happens, the worthlessness of the program is not going to prevent Republicans from claiming that it would have prevented the attack if only those wimpy Democrats had had the stomach to keep it going. Neither is the unconstitutionality, for that matter.

I’m with many previous commenters in suspecting that (a) is the likeliest option. Paranoid secrecy has been the hallmark of this presidency from the beginning. An early directive removed the records of his father’s term from scrutiny.

The whole point of White House staffers using Republican Party email accounts rather than official services was to allow their communications to remain hidden. Also note that Rove’s records appear to have been specially scrubbed.

Nothing would gratify me more than seeing the whole crew in the dock, whether here or in The Hague. It reminds me of an old line I heard Garrison Keillor repeat on the radio, something like “I was devastated to learn of his death. For years, the only thing that kept me alive was the hope of seeing him hanged.”

All these options presume business as usual (i.e. elections every 4 years, person who gets most votes wins, etc.).
However, some Republicans appear to be worried about a more sinister outcome .
Money quote from Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan:

bq. “the Democrats have not brought a halt to Bush’s follies or the war, because they expect his unpopular policies to provide them with a landslide victory in next year’s election.” (However) “the problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that Cheney and Rove and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts, or it assumes that they are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his fling.”

I second the remarks of Marc at 12:16 P.M. There is absolutely no evidence that any of the current democratic candidates is as corrupt (or has the propensity to become as corrupt once elected) as the current president and his despicable handlers and henchmen.

Option D, no matter who is elected. (Maybe different if Kucinich or Paul were elected, but ignoring avian swine-inspired elections, Option D.)
“Their ‘big brother’ program tapping the phonelines of ordinary Americans based on the suspicions of government bureaucrats was a travesty. We have shut it down, and are prosecuting those who abused it. In other news, our new, completely legal ‘panopticon’ program will protect the American people from terrorists, criminals, and excess water retention by monitoring those trained FBI agents indicate are potential terrorists and criminals via monitoring phone calls and bathrooms, and through a new national ID card with a chip that detects sodium in the diet.”

It doesn’t matter who the president is – it is just the nature of government, and the availability of modern technology. Most of Bush’s programs are simply expansions of Clinton-administration programs, which in turn expanded Bush Sr. and Reagan-era programs. J. Edgar Hoover steadily increased illegal FBI monitoring of private citizens under every President from Coolidge through Nixon. Do you think his programs just evaporated on his death?

What hole were you hiding in in the late 1990’s? After Waco, Ruby Ridge, the whole marvelous mess that was HRC’s finances, and so forth—there’s no Dem candidate that’s as corrupt as GWB?

Two of those are not examples of corruption but examples of overzealous law enforcement. The other one certainly SEEMED like a very small instance of corruption, the way it was covered in the press, but did not actually amount to anything, and did not occur in the White House anyway. Thanks for chiming in.

J. Edgar Hoover steadily increased illegal FBI monitoring of private citizens under every President from Coolidge through Nixon. Do you think his programs just evaporated on his death?

No, I think they were substantially reduced when congress passed FISA. Which took a lot of effort, primarily from democrats. Look, if the point is, these things need to be addressed now, and we can’t necessarily trust someone like HRC to dismantle the programs a few years down the road, I think that’s correct.

But, after the past six years, anyone who thinks the Democrats and Republicans are equally dangerous on this front: I’d like to be living in the country you’re living in. It’s not just the nature of government, it’s the nature of the particular government we have elected. This is the kind of lazy, ignorant complacency that got us where we are now.

Of course it will be B or D. This isn’t guaranteed, of course, but it would be ridiculously naive to think otherwise.

And of course, Clinton wasn’t even in office at the time of Ruby Ridge, but some how he always gets blamed . . .

“the House Intelligence Committee investigation into the bribery of Duke Cunningham”

Pretty big difference between the executive quietly shutting down an illegal program of its discredited predecessor and a House committee loath to publicly embarrass several of its sitting Republican members.

And of course the program could be trivially brought into legality with no change in “effectiveness” by simply using the FISA court.

What about my statements makes me a hypocrite? I don’t trust the government; it was intrusive and powerhungry and abusive under LBJ, under Nixon, under Clinton, under Bush….and I see no reason to think it will change under any plausible President in 2009

barry,

Ok, comparing non-war-related policies from Clinton to those from Bush II, I’ll bite. (If you include war-related, you need to compare to LBJ.)

Both practiced extraordinary rendition.
Both increased the harshness of the War on (some) Drugs.
Both used warrantless wiretaps.
Both used supposed-to-be-private info to discredit political enemies. (FBI files, Valerie Wilson)
Both attempted to use the regulatory process to reward friends and punish enemies. (Power plant maintenance/upgrade issue, Klamath Dam issue).

I’ll leave it at this: you are clearly not involved in the gun-related civil rights issues.

List of some illegal anti-gun actions by the Clinton administration

There are another couple of options, both involving continuing the CURRENT program, while disavowing the prior program which was so clearly illegal that dozens of people from DOJ were apparently willing to resign over it. That disavowal could include prosecutions, but wouldn’t have to.

Now I’m certainly not ADVOCATING this option – I’m STRONGLY in favor of your option f – but I do tend to think it’s the most likely (probably without the prosecutions).

There’s also option M (for Milhous):

The illegal wiretaps are used by Karl Rove and Republican sympathizers in the NSA to discredit the Democratic nominee, Edmund Muskie style.

Then (since we’re presuming that they fail) I guess (f) would have to follow.

Except Bush will have pardoned the higher-ups, so a bunch of low level right wing spooks end up rotting in jail for a while, converting to fundyism, and getting talk shows (or whatever the Web 3.0 equivalent is) upon release.

(I can imagine a democratic president trying to revise FISA. But that’s not the same as endorsing Yoo’s theories.)

SamChevre, you left off a few things – a couple of wars, deliberately botching a couple of warslots and lots of torture, and attempts to aggregate power to the executive which were literally unthinkable during the Clinton years.

And you can shove the National Review where the sun don’t shine – they couldn’t tell the truth to save their souls. Heck, they’re still printing Iraq war supporters, which at this late stage is proof positive that they stone cold liars.

I think you are all missing the point that the illegal programs could easily be brought under legal control. The objection is not to the wire taps, it is to performing wire taps without legal authority to do so.

An incomming Democratic President might well prefer to let the matter rest, the wire taps are far from the most eggregious criminal act the administration has committed. If they were to go after anything it would be the torture. But I don’t think that Bush/Cheney will give them that choice.

I expect that Bush will attempt to pardon most of the criminal behavior. The act of issuing a pardon will itself generate the political imperative to find something to prosecute them for. The Bushies are sloppy and incompetent, I don’t think that they have the remotest chance of granting a pardon that covers all their crimes.

In particular a pardon cannot cover future crimes, the constitution uses the past tense, the President has no authority to pardon ongoing or future crimes. The ongoing wiretap programs will thus fall outside the scope of the pardon.