|
HOW WOULD THE COUNTRY KNOW HOW THE NSA PROGRAM WAS BEING USED?
As a hypothetical, if the NSA wiretap program has no oversight, no
real record, and almost no disclosure, what would have prevented the
current party in executive power from having eavesdropped on their
political opponents during the 2004 election, for instance? This is
not to even remotely suggest that this happened. But this extreme
illustration is used to raise the critical point that, with a
clandestine, unchecked program, there is really no way to know,
that, or anything in terms of its ultimate usage.
Which is why, of course, our founding
fathers set up the Constitution the way that they did. And that way
does not mean that in times of war, as Commander in Chief, the
executive branch gets to not only act quasi legislatively in the
absence of specific legislation, but gets to pick and choose which
laws of Congress already passed are valid, and which are
not, thereby rendering the entire separation of powers concept
null and void.
Without this concept, the idea of checks
and balances -- the Legislative Branch writes the laws, the
Executive Branch executes and enforces the laws, and the Judicial
Branch interprets the laws -- goes right out the window. As noted
in the link above, if the executive's branch's argument that FISA
could be discarded because it believed that it was a good idea to
discard it, than anything the executive branch believes is a good
idea could be done, regardless of what the law states, and
regardless of what law Congress actually passes. This would
merge
the Executive and legislative into one, whenever the Executive so
chooses, and in whatever capacity, while at the same excluding most
of Congress from the process. And if that exclusion was done in
secret (as the violation of FISA was), then there is no check upon
it. Or if that exclusion was done unilaterally and in contravention
of the will of Congress (as the violation of FISA was), then there
is also no check upon it. And if the exclusion grants the federal
government a power without a clear record of how it is used (as the
violation of FISA was,) then there is also no check upon it. Almost
every aspect of checks and balances has in effect been removed.
Such a system of checks and restrictions upon government power was
the fundamental reason our Constitution was set up in the first
place.
(This becomes even more problematic when
one considers that our Nation could be battling international
terrorism for quite some time to come, and renders the question as
to just what we are trying to accomplish, and what steps we should
take, even more
important. ) |