Awkward Questions 2: Is Grassley Right?
Yesterday, Republican Senator Charles Grassley asked 'where have I been in the last four years?' Funny as it is to hear a Senator ask that kind of question, it was something to ask of all the Senators. As Grassley further noted, these hearings are a day late and a dollar short. Referring to the privileged, private knowledge of this program by certain Senators:
'members of congress were told about this program over a period of four years...and then all of the sudden it hits the New York Times, and when it does, that song changes its tune from one going on in private to outrage...If something was wrong when they reported it, then something was wrong before they reported it...members of Congress have not done their job...we in Congress have some internal looking to do.'
Grassley, of course, wasn't being all that serious. Whenever Congress does some 'internal looking' it ends up passing useless pieces of legislation like the 1978 FISA act, which created the court that Bush bypassed but which has done little to constrain the executive. Or they pass the 1973 War Powers Act, which erected a paper barrier that every president since Ford has ignored, and which nobody has paid much attenttion to. Moreover, it's not that Grassley was so interested in reigning Bush as we was in symbolically asserting a little of his Senatorial powers. He also wanted throw the whole affair back in the face of Senate Democrats who had suddenly started baying about the spying program. But good points are raised for bad reasons. Isn't this really all a piece of political theater, as Grassley says? Why didn't the Democrats who knew about this spying come out and say something before? Their opportunism really is galling. It is especially so given that their six-year terms are ostensibly justified on the grounds that they lead rather than follow the mood of the fleeting present. Bush doesn't know what good friends he has in the Senate Democrats, whose loyal opposition grants a veneer of democracy to the lack of real politics up there on the Hill.
'members of congress were told about this program over a period of four years...and then all of the sudden it hits the New York Times, and when it does, that song changes its tune from one going on in private to outrage...If something was wrong when they reported it, then something was wrong before they reported it...members of Congress have not done their job...we in Congress have some internal looking to do.'
Grassley, of course, wasn't being all that serious. Whenever Congress does some 'internal looking' it ends up passing useless pieces of legislation like the 1978 FISA act, which created the court that Bush bypassed but which has done little to constrain the executive. Or they pass the 1973 War Powers Act, which erected a paper barrier that every president since Ford has ignored, and which nobody has paid much attenttion to. Moreover, it's not that Grassley was so interested in reigning Bush as we was in symbolically asserting a little of his Senatorial powers. He also wanted throw the whole affair back in the face of Senate Democrats who had suddenly started baying about the spying program. But good points are raised for bad reasons. Isn't this really all a piece of political theater, as Grassley says? Why didn't the Democrats who knew about this spying come out and say something before? Their opportunism really is galling. It is especially so given that their six-year terms are ostensibly justified on the grounds that they lead rather than follow the mood of the fleeting present. Bush doesn't know what good friends he has in the Senate Democrats, whose loyal opposition grants a veneer of democracy to the lack of real politics up there on the Hill.
1 Comments:
You're glossing over the fact that it would likely have been illegal for the senators to say something (because what they were told was highly classified). Now, true, a committed senator probably could have called up the ACLU and asked them what to do in a hypothetical situation where a senator had received classified information suggesting the President was violating the law, but that seems a little too much to expect from this breed.
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