Our View - Tuesday
What a tangled web
Excuses for secrecy keep getting weaker
What do you do when critics call the legality of your secret spying program into question? If you’re the Bush administration, you defend it, by becoming ever more secretive and by claiming to be above the law. The legal basis for the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which was launched soon after 9/11 to capture conversations of potential terrorists, has always been shaky. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 outlawed warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, and in 2005 it was revealed that the Terrorist Surveillance Program did just that.
Though supposedly altered so as to operate within the law, the surveillance program continues to be defended on alarming and seemingly contradictory grounds — that its legality depends on operational details too secret to be revealed, and that legality isn’t an issue, anyway, since President Bush’s powers as commander in chief cannot be so bound by law.
These two circular lines of defense were on display last week, when the Bush administration flouted the twice-extended deadline to turn over to a Senate committee subpoenaed documents relating to the Terrorist Surveillance Program’s origins and legal justification. A letter from Vice President Dick Cheney’s counsel catalogued relevant documents, but stopped short of promising to turn them over, claiming that they could be withheld under Bush’s executive privilege.
We see the justifications of executive privilege as little more than weak excuses. Earlier this month, this same logic of secrecy, which plays on people’s fears, helped excuse a further weakening of the law as Congress, in the Protect America Act, effectively gutted FISA protections against warrantless surveillance. Instead of making a small, needed fix to FISA, the Protect America Act greatly broadened the government’s power to snoop. Legal scholars say FISA has been rendered toothless, since the act waives oversight for surveillance “directed at” persons “reasonably believed” to be outside the country.
Now that Congress has promised to revise this temporary measure, Bush and Cheney’s continued excuses are all the more intolerable, obstructing Congress’ ability to examine the genesis of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., in response, has threatened to cite the administration for contempt, but worries, rightly, that the courts would only mean further delays.
Justice Department lawyer Bruce Fein has suggested some long-term alternatives to guard against such abuses of power: a special three-judge executive-privilege court or legislative-executive committees in the House and Senate. But it’s hard at this point to take any Bush administration proposal at face value, given this White House’s reluctance to yield on matters of secrecy or executive branch powers and privileges.
If it’s for ‘the children,’ it must be good
Turning “the children” into pawns in order to prevail in policy disputes is a cheap and tawdry but apparently effective tactic, given the frequency with which it’s employed. And the “pro-children” chorus is at it again, in response to a Bush administration policy change that would make it harder for states to expand a children’s health insurance program well beyond the low-income folks it was designed to cover.
The government-subsidized State Children’s Health Insurance Program was created in 1997 to provide insurance for lowincome children. But various states have expanded the definition of who qualifies, making it available to middle class people who already have private health insurance.
The government has already allowed states to offer the program to families above the official poverty level of $20,650 for a family of four. Most states now offer it to those who earn twice that. Some states are at 250 percent ($51,625), and New York wants to offer it to families at quadruple the poverty level, up to $82,600.
At such levels, the government program starts to look better to potential beneficiaries than private health insurance. Thus, the “free” (i.e., taxpayer-funded) insurance starts to crowd out private insurance. Some legislators apparently want the government to crowd out private insurance as a prelude to replacing it with a government program that covers everybody.
The Bush administration would make states that want to offer the program to families at more than 200 percent of the poverty level wait until 95 percent of those at or below the 200 percent figure are covered before they expand it. And that seems reasonable to us.
But that has interest groups and states eager to expand a program — with “free” federal money — howling on behalf of the children. Enough, already.
Intoxicated with power
Thirty state attorneys general — wearing the hats of consumer advocates, rather than the state’s chief law enforcers — have joined a campaign against alcoholic energy drinks such as Sparks from Miller Brewing and Tilt from Anheuser-Busch.
The officials claim young adults are being fooled into believing the caffeine and other additives in these beverages mean people can consume more without getting drunk. And we assume that means they’ll soon be condemning mixing vodka and Red Bull, a staple in nightclubs for years, as well as old stand-bys such as rum and Coke or “Irish coffee.”
Humans have spent centuries trying different cocktails of heart-racing chemicals and eye-drooping booze. The alcohol always wins out in the end, and most sensible people figure that out. And those who want to keep fooling themselves aren’t going to be influenced by the misguided meddling of some elected officials posing as their parents.
