Reading: Hentoff asks, Will Specter sell out again?

Silly question. Of course he will.

From the Capitol Hill Bestiary, I quote this entry on the habits of the Plumed Specter Cave Warbler:

The Plumed Specter Cave Warbler is noted for its elaborate display rituals, in which it positions itself conspicuously in front of the media, spreads its plumage and warbles its signature cry "I'm going to get to the bottom of this!", after which it darts back into its cave.

Nat Hentoff predicts another sighting is near:

The often independent Senate Judiciary Committee chair Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) is now—surprisingly—the White House's major accomplice in trying to find the president and his felonious colleagues a way out of this acute inconvenience, especially with midterm elections looming.

Arlen Specter has negotiated with the White House what he calls a "compromise" bill that would "modernize" the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that the president has repeatedly violated.

Jim Dempsey of Washington's Center for Democracy and Technology—an expert civil liberties source of mine for decades—cites, among other connivances in Specter's legislation:

"A new Section 9 [to FISA] that would vastly expand the scope of warrantless surveillance that never has to be submitted to a court." As Jim Dempsey explains it to me, the government would be able to say to the FISA Court: "There are so many people we can't name whom we want to put under surveillance that we need one warrant to cover them all"—rather than the specific individual warrants under present law.

This would amount to—as Shayana Kadidal, a key litigator for the New York—based Center for Constitutional Rights, says—"whole programs of warrantless surveillance." Kadidal adds:

"Senator Specter's proposal" would enable "the President to target anyone believed 'to have communication with or be associated' with any organization 'believed' to be preparing for terrorism—or any persons associated with them. That description includes more or less every attorney I work with at the Center for Constitutional Rights, according to the government's claims about our clients."

But to please the president much further, Kadilal points out on the University of Pittsburgh law school's Jurist website:

"For good measure, Section 801 of the bill would also eliminate the criminal liability of the President and all his minions who ordered or participated in warrantless surveillance if they could convince a court that the surveillance fell within the inherent Presidential Constitutional Power that the administration claims justifies the NSA program."

But this insistence on commander-in-chief Bush's "inherent Presidential Constitutional Power" has been used by the administration to justify the abuse, and worse, of our suspected terrorist prisoners in violation of our War Crimes Act and the Geneva Conventions. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the president does not have this "inherent" power to act unilaterally and violate our laws and international treaties.

Specter's sellout is puzzling since he has stated more than once his conviction that Bush has indeed violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—as Judge Taylor unambiguously decided.

Given that Specter's behavior in this case fits a long pattern of sputtering accommodation to the worst constitutional excesses of the Bush administration, it's not immediately clear to me why Hentoff is being so generous; his sellout is, unfortunately, neither "surprising" nor "puzzling."

The rest of Hentoff's article builds the case that Bush is asking for--and expecting--nothing short of an extra-constitutional Get Out of Jail Free card, and teases some interesting back-story on the federal judge whose integrity triggered this latest problem for Bush. Read it.

Hentoff's piece is in the Readings list on the sidebar.