In the Dark, You see the Darndest Things.

The New York Times recently revealed that:

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

The ensuing flap has largely focused on the legality and extent of this program, and many people don't see why it's a big deal. After all, domestic spying isn't anything new. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has approved thousands of surveillances since its inception in 1979. If you have nothing to hide, why be worried, especially if it catches terrorists before they attack?

The difference. The NSA program is controlled completely within the executive branch, and the President says that this is constitutionally within his wartime powers:

Bush's constitutional argument, in the eyes of some legal scholars and previous White House advisers, relies on extraordinary claims of presidential war-making power. Bush said yesterday that the lawfulness of his directives was affirmed by the attorney general and White House counsel, a list that omitted the legislative and judicial branches of government. On occasion the Bush administration has explicitly rejected the authority of courts and Congress to impose boundaries on the power of the commander in chief, describing the president's war-making powers in legal briefs as "plenary" -- a term defined as "full," "complete," and "absolute."

Think about it. If the President can do anything he deems necessary to protect us, and no other government institution can hold him accountable or even know what he is doing, aren't the rest of us in the dark? Who will stop him if he makes a mistake? If this "absolute" power corrupts him, as conventional wisdom says it will, how will anybody know?

Funny things happen in the dark.

We make the strangest friends:

Last year the US gave half a billion dollars in aid to Uzbekistan, about a quarter of it military aid. Bush and Powell repeatedly hail Karimov as a friend and ally. Yet this regime has at least seven thousand prisoners of conscience; it is a one party state without freedom of speech, without freedom of media, without freedom of movement, without freedom of assembly, without freedom of religion. It practices, systematically, the most hideous tortures on thousands. Most of the population live in conditions precisely analogous with medieval serfdom.

We move quietly toward war without debate:

According to Ulfkotte's report, "western security sources" claim that during CIA Director Porter Goss' Dec. 12 visit to Ankara, he asked Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to provide support for a possibile 2006 air strike against Iranian nuclear and military facilities. More specifically, Goss is said to have asked Turkey to provide unfettered exchange of intelligence that could help with a mission.

DDP also reported that the governments of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman and Pakistan have been informed in recent weeks of Washington's military plans. The countries, apparently, were told that air strikes were a "possible option," but they were given no specific timeframe for the operations.

Set up secret prisons:

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

Buy covert propaganda:

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.

And we consider the oddest alternatives:

In an April 2004 White House meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush proposed bombing the Arab TV network Al Jazeera's international headquarters in Qatar. The report was based on a memo stamped "Top Secret" that had been leaked by a Cabinet official in Blair's government.

Don't get me wrong. All of this could be in the best interests of the US, but without debate in Congress or the press, how do we know? Can we trust this President to always do the right thing? How about the next one?

My personal belief is that regardless of whether the President derives his power to conduct secret surveillance from statutory law (FISA) or the constitution, that power must be checked externally by either the courts or the Congress. I don't mean simply being advised, but required to consent, so that the executive branch cannot act solely on its own.

The Framers of the Constitution were incredibly well educated men, beneficiaries of a Renaissance education that few today can match. They studied the writings of the ancient Greek democracies and Roman republic in the original language. They also knew first hand the capriciousness of life under the unchecked tyranny of the English king. In our Constitution they left us the tools to sustain the freedom that has made this a wonderful country.

I am dismayed by those who so easily disregard the Framer's hard earned wisdom, simply because we face a new peril. This isn't the first time our country has faced frightening new challenges, and we do best when we stick to our principles.

Benjamin Franklin said when asked what kind of government the Constitutional Convention had wrought, "a republic, if you can keep it."

Some things never change, do they?

If there's more, it's here.