Wanted: Morally Incorruptable Politician for Presidential Position

Historians will one day look back on the Bush warrantless wiretapping program as one of our country's great constitutional transgressions and the they will shake their heads. Future politicians will look back at it as established precedent. In much the same way the current administration used Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the civil war as justification for suspending it once again, future Presidents will use what's happening now (telecom Immunity and Expanded FISA powers) to do things that were once unthinkable.

What Congress, and to a large extent the American people fail to recognize, is that the"Trust Me" style government of this Administration which has rendered Congress impotent and the Judicial Branch irrelevant is as dangerous a proposition as we have ever faced. We are allowing the establishment, by precedent and law, of the kind of "Supreme Leader" concentration of power that no one person should have.

Imagine if you will, what this would allow a morally craven President Clinton to do. In the 1990's she and her husband had no problem trolling FBI files for dirt in their political opponents. That was an outrage, but it doesn't even begin to compare with what she'd be able to do as President should the Senate version of the FISA Bill become Law (the House still has a crack at it). Under the new FISA bill she'll be able to route all communications (and I mean ALL communications-Phone/Cell calls, Text messages, websites visited, emails sent, banking transactions) to the same secret NSA room used in conducting Bush's Terrorist Surveillance Program. There she (her Administration) would be able to examine, in person or by proxy, absolutely anything she wanted to, knowing she was no longer legally required to go to any court or to report her Administration's activities to any body of Congress.

What future Presidents do in the name of a perpetual war on terror will never see the light of day or the inside of any courtroom. The Senate's bill has given tomorrow's Presidents the ability to write their own warrants (never reviewed by a judge) and to refuse submissions of any detailed information to the even the FISA court. The FISA court will only be able to very generally review the "process" (the description of which will come from whatever Administration happens to be in power ) and not the "product" or "propriety" of any individual data mining effort.

What do we all know about ABSOLUTE power? Yes, I know I'm being pedantic, but, as history has shown, absolute power inevitably really does corrupt absolutely. After the House of Representatives (which takes up final passage tomorrow) caves, and I'm sure it will, we will have given (in writing) one person , the President, the ability to exercise unchecked power. No more checks and balances when it comes to domestic and foreign surveillance, just the unsettling reality that we must trust that all future Presidents will be the kind of moral exemplars worthy of sainthood. That doesn't sound like many politicians past or present that come to mind.

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