Bruce Fein: It's time to check the balance of power-Congress must rein in Bush's abusive actions

[babylonsister]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/29/ING0UR6C1D1.DTL&hw=Fein&sn=001&sc=1000

It's time to check the balance of power
Congress must rein in Bush's abusive actions

Bruce Fein

Sunday, July 29, 2007


Since 9/11, President Bush's repeated assaults on the Constitution and celebration of international lawlessness in confronting al Qaeda have needlessly made Americans less safe. The president, for example, has flouted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in intercepting the conversations and e-mails of American citizens on American soil on his say-so alone. He has claimed authority to break into and enter our homes, open our mail and commit torture in order to collect foreign intelligence.

He has insisted that the entire United States is a battlefield -- even pizza parlors -- where lethal military force may be employed to kill al Qaeda suspects with bombs or missiles. He has detained citizens and noncitizens alike as enemy combatants based on secret evidence. And he has insisted that he is constitutionally empowered to keep U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely.

Congress should restore the Constitution's checks and balances and protections against government abuses. Citizens would be safer. And international terrorism would be more effectively arrested by restoring cooperation with allies; by cultivating friendly democratic regimes abroad through democratic example; and by preventing injustices that serve as recruiting fodder for al Qaeda (for instance, Mahar Arar, the Syrian Canadian who was mistaken for a terrorist and tortured in Syria with U.S. and Canadian complicity).

The most frightening of Bush's abuses travels under the banner of "extraordinary rendition." In its name, Bush has kidnapped, secretly imprisoned, and tortured or treated inhumanely people he believes are implicated in international terrorism. The practice is what would be expected of dictators such as the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin or Iraq's Saddam Hussein. The detainees are held incommunicado without accusation or trial. No judge reviews the allegedly incriminating evidence. No law restricts interrogation methods or the conditions of confinement. And the innocent are left without recourse as "collateral damage" in Bush's war on global terrorism.

snip//

The United States has been spared new terrorism incidents on its own soil since Sept. 11, 2001, but not because of Bush's scorn for the rule of law. The criminal law featuring the trappings of due process has been repeatedly and successfully deployed to thwart embryonic terrorist conspiracies. And no convincing evidence has surfaced indicating that military commissions, kidnappings and imprisonments abroad, torture, or circumventions of the foreign surveillance act have been necessary to frustrate even one terrorist incident.

In sum, Bush's lawlessness has made all American less safe with no commensurate benefit. It is up to Congress to set the law right and make Americans safer.



Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer at Bruce Fein & Associates and chairman of the American Freedom Agenda, an organization devoted to restoring checks and balances and protections against government abuses. He is author of the forthcoming book, "Constitutional Peril: The Life And Death Struggle Of Our Constitution And Democracy."

[rodeodance]

1. ok folks, lets all send to our congresscritters Repugs and Dems----as a going

away vacation present!

[mahina]

2. Bruce Fein is also on the board of the uber right wing "grassroots institute" here,

and is the lawyer for the assHOLE who sued to end education at Kamehameha Schools for Hawaiian children, arguing that it was racist. All you have to do is go to the school and you see black kids, white kids, asian kids, all with Hawaiian ancestors, all welcomed.
I trust Bruce Fein as far as I can throw him.

[KT2000]

4. What was the outcome

of that case?
I didn't know anything about it until I got a call to participate in a poll about it some time ago.

[cascadiance]

5. Some times you have to go with "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"...

... and be careful where you step!

[mzmolly]

7. Perhaps he fears a Democrat with the same powers.

eom

[mahina]

3. Though I do agree on this point.

[Liberty Belle]

6. I've long said that it will take Republicans turning on Bush to oust him;

this is happening now at last. Besides Fein and the fired US attorney, Iglesias, finally speaking out, here are 2 more defectors:

War Crimes and the White House
The Dishonor in a Tortured New 'Interpretation' of the Geneva Conventions

By P.X. Kelley and Robert F. Turner
Washington Post (7/25/07) -- One of us was appointed commandant of the Marine Corps by President Ronald Reagan; the other served as a lawyer in the Reagan White House and has vigorously defended the constitutionality of warrantless National Security Agency wiretaps, presidential signing statements and many other controversial aspects of the war on terrorism. But we cannot in good conscience defend a decision that we believe has compromised our national honor and that may well promote the commission of war crimes by Americans and place at risk the welfare of captured American military forces for generations to come…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/25/AR2007072501881.html

[mzmolly]

8. That's exactly right.

I agree.