This Week in Tyranny
Sunday, May 25, 2008 at 08:40AM Attorney General Michael Mukasey continues to be a disgrace to his office and his country. In a commencement address to Boston College Law School he said (via):
He seems to believe the judicial system has no obligation to evaluate such messages, just that lawyers should get their marching orders and follow them. If those orders are to “push the limits of the law” or to operate with more “flexibility” (a hateful euphemism) then so be it. That is his vision of the Justice Department - the political environment sets the agenda and legal reasoning gets contorted to meet it.In short, the message sent to our national security lawyers in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks was clear; it was bipartisan; and it was all but unanimous. It was that the legal culture in our intelligence agencies, and in the Justice Department, was too risk-averse. It needed to be more aggressive, it needed to push to the limits of the law, to give policymakers and operators the most flexibility possible to confront the existential threat of international terrorism.
Well, it’s a holiday weekend; the McCain campaign dumped some pastors, tax returns and allowed some privileged souls to have a brief look at his medical records; and the Democratic primary is engulfed in controversy. This rare hat trick of distractions in an excellent opportunity to make some progress on FISA capitulation: “Republicans unveiled their latest compromise offer Thursday to rewrite electronic surveillance rules, saying they can make no more concessions to Democrats.” Details are sketchy but here is an ominous sign: “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), is now insisting on tight language in any rewrite of the FISA law to establish the statute as the ‘exclusive means’ for conducting domestic electronic surveillance.” This is in response to a just-released memo from the Justice Department that blandly asserts the FISA language of its being the “exclusive means” of authority for surveillance means…not exclusive. Lambert points out FISA has always been exclusive. Having a new law say it again is counterproductive - Pelosi et. al. just need to enforce the existing one. (Presumably this is the kind of flexibility our execrable Attorney General favors.)
Of course, for as bad as all this is, it could be worse. Carol Chodroff provides a look inside Guantánamo this week, and it is obvious that the entire system is set up to keep those prisoners hidden away forever. And don’t be fooled - the only way to believe we are stuck with it is if you suffer from a poverty of imagination or humanity.
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