Presidents come and go, but their abuses of power are rarely forgotten.
For example, the world will not likely soon forget that President Roosevelt interned Japanese-Americans during World War II. Likewise, Americans should never forget that President Truman abused his presidential authority by seizing the steel industry, or that President Lincoln did away with habeas corpus during the Civil War. More recently, President Nixon fell to the Watergate scandal, while Iran-Contra lingers over the Reagan presidency.
President Bush will likely be remembered for Sept. 11, 2001, and then for either keeping America safe post-Sept. 11 or for improperly using the tragedy of Sept. 11 to strengthen the federal government in ways Americans might never know about or dream possible. Of course, President Bush might be remembered for both.
Next week, after reaching a compromise with the White House, the United States Senate is scheduled to vote to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act. One of the contested issues in the compromise is the standard the government must meet to issue a subpoena for the personal records of Americans — specifically, business records, telephone records, library records, bank records and e-mail records. The compromise also focused on the type of judicial review a subpoena recipient would be entitled to and whether or not a subpoena recipient could disclose that he or she has received a subpoena.
Sen. Russ Feingold, who might just be remembered for casting the lone vote against the Patriot Act in 2001, was not very happy with the agreement.
"Not only was this a take-it-or-leave-it deal from the White House, but now the majority leader and perhaps other senators are apparently afraid of what happens if the Senate actually does its work on this issue," Mr. Feingold said last week on the Senate floor. "The illusion of judicial review is almost worse than no judicial review at all. In America, we cannot sanction kangaroo courts where the deck is stacked against one party before the case is even filed."
In the compromise — if you can call it that — the Senate leaders agreed to scrap language from their own bill, which Mr. Feingold voted for, that required the government to show that the records they are subpoenaing either (1) pertain to a terrorist or spy; (2) pertain to an individual in contact with or known to a suspected terrorist or spy; or (3) are relevant to the activities of a terrorist or spy.
Now, the Senate will likely instead approve a lower standard that only requires the government to show that the records it seeks are relevant to an authorized intelligence investigation.
The difference between the White House language and the language Mr. Feingold endorses might not seem like a lot. But when the president, in the name of fighting terrorism, asks Americans to open their bank records, library records, business records and phone and e-mail records to the government, the government should at least be required to have some reason to think that the subject of its investigation is either a terrorist or a spy. The president doesn't think so.
If protecting America involves looking at what books I've checked out, I'll be right there with the FBI going through my records. If stealing the key to my grandmother's safe-deposit box would save a life, I'd do it in a second.
But it won't help. If the government is actually going through my records, computers, phone lines, whatever, they would just be wasting their time and our taxpayer dollars. And that's exactly the problem with allowing the government to conduct expanded searches without having to show a connection to a terrorist or a spy.
Talk about the need for a Taxpayer Protection Act (TPA). Let's TPA the FBI and find out how much money has been wasted going through the records of Americans who aren't going to help find bin Laden. If we really wanted to be using taxpayer money efficiently, we should send FBI agents to the caves in Afghanistan to see what records they can come up with. I'd bet those records would be far more revealing than the FBI investigating why I googled "Where's Osama bin Laden?"
In the meantime, if we, as a country, really want meaningful protections, we don't need to protect ourselves from other Americans. We aren't fighting a Civil War, and we haven't been infiltrated by the enemy. Moreover, we know where the enemy is, and we know where the enemy trains. And, I'm confidant that if the enemy is using Helen C. White, someone who lives in the Towers will know way before the FBI ever figures out what Helen C. White is or that the second floor is the best place on campus to turn any terrorist or spy into a beer drinking, Michigan-hating, bar-time-loving Badger.
Jason Ebin ([email protected]) is a second-year law student.
