Al Gore: 'America's Constitution is in Grave Danger'

[Henk Elegeert]

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Transcript from Truthout

Al Gore: 'America's Constitution is in Grave Danger'
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011606Y.shtml

Former Vice President Albert Gore Jr. delivered a major policy speech
today that assailed the President for abusing executive power. Gore
argued that "whenever power is unchecked and unaccountable it almost
inevitably leads to mistakes and abuses. In the absence of rigorous
accountability, incompetence flourishes. Dishonesty is encouraged and
rewarded."
The former Vice President went on to say, "Republican as well as
Democratic members of Congress should support the bipartisan call of the
Liberty Coalition for the appointment of a special counsel to pursue the
criminal issues raised by warrantless wiretapping of Americans by the
President.

US Constitution in Grave Danger
     By Albert Gore Jr.
     t r u t h o u t | Speech
     Monday 16 January 2006

   The following is the transcript as prepared for delivery.
     Congressman Barr and I have disagreed many times over the years,
but we have joined together today with thousands of our fellow
citizens-Democrats and Republicans alike-to express our shared concern
that America's Constitution is in grave danger.

     In spite of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in
strong agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been
placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration
to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power.

     As we begin this new year, the Executive Branch of our government
has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and
has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue
without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such
abuses.

     It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored.

     So, many of us have come here to Constitution Hall to sound an
alarm and call upon our fellow citizens to put aside partisan
differences and join with us in demanding that our Constitution be
defended and preserved.

     It is appropriate that we make this appeal on the day our nation
has set aside to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr., who challenged America to breathe new life into our oldest values
by extending its promise to all our people.

     On this particular Martin Luther King Day, it is especially
important to recall that for the last several years of his life, Dr.
King was illegally wiretapped-one of hundreds of thousands of Americans
whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government
during  this period.

     The FBI privately called King the "most dangerous and effective
negro leader in the country" and vowed to "take him off his pedestal."
The  government even attempted to destroy his marriage and blackmail him
into committing suicide.

     This campaign continued until Dr. King's murder. The discovery that
the FBI conducted a long-running and extensive campaign of secret
electronic surveillance designed to infiltrate the inner workings of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and to learn the most intimate
details of Dr. King's life, helped to convince Congress to enact
restrictions on wiretapping.

     The result was the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act
(FISA), which was enacted expressly to ensure that foreign intelligence
surveillance would be presented to an impartial judge to verify that
there is a sufficient cause for the surveillance. I voted for that law
during  my first term in Congress and for almost thirty years the system
has proven a workable and valued means of according a level of
protection for private citizens, while permitting foreign surveillance
to continue.

     Yet, just one month ago, Americans awoke to the shocking news that
in spite of this long settled law, the Executive Branch has been
secretly spying on large numbers of Americans for the last four years
and eavesdropping on "large volumes of telephone calls, e-mail messages,
and  other Internet traffic inside the United States." The New York
Times reported that the President decided to launch this massive
eavesdropping program "without search warrants or any new laws that
would permit such domestic intelligence collection."

     During the period when this eavesdropping was still secret, the
President went out of his way to reassure the American people on more
than one occasion that, of course, judicial permission is required for
any government spying on American citizens and that, of course, these
constitutional safeguards were still in place.

     But surprisingly, the President's soothing statements turned out to
be false. Moreover, as soon as this massive domestic spying program was
uncovered by the press, the President not only confirmed that the story
was true, but also declared that he has no intention of bringing these
wholesale invasions of privacy to an end.

     At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic
surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually
compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been
breaking the law repeatedly and persistently.

     A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of
our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had
established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized
that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution
- our system of checks and balances - was designed with a central
purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As
John Adams said: "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and
judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a
government of laws and not of men."

     An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the
legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the
check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders
sought to nullify in the Constitution - an all-powerful executive too
reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of
James Madison, "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive,
and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and
whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be
pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

     Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet, "On Common Sense" ignited the
American Revolution, succinctly described America's alternative. Here,
he said, we intended to make certain that "the law is king."

     Vigilant adherence to the rule of law strengthens our democracy and
strengthens America. It ensures that those who govern us operate within
our constitutional structure, which means that our democratic
institutions play their indispensable role in shaping policy and
determining the direction of our nation. It means that the people of
this nation ultimately determine its course and not executive officials
operating in  secret without constraint.

     The rule of law makes us stronger by ensuring that decisions will
be tested, studied, reviewed and examined through the processes of
government that are designed to improve policy. And the knowledge that
they will be reviewed prevents over-reaching and checks the accretion of
power.

     A commitment to openness, truthfulness and accountability also
helps our country avoid many serious mistakes. Recently, for example, we
learned from recently classified declassified documents that the Gulf of
Tonkin Resolution, which authorized the tragic Vietnam war, was
actually based on false information. We now know that the decision by
Congress to authorize the Iraq War, 38 years later, was also based on
false information. America would have been better off knowing the truth
and avoiding both of these colossal mistakes in our history. Following
the rule of law makes us safer, not more vulnerable.

     The President and I agree on one thing. The threat from terrorism
is all too real. There is simply no question that we continue to face
new challenges in the wake of the attack on September 11th and that we
must be ever-vigilant in protecting our citizens from harm.

     Where we disagree is that we have to break the law or sacrifice our
system of government to protect Americans from terrorism. In fact,
doing so makes us weaker and more vulnerable.

     Once violated, the rule of law is in danger. Unless stopped,
lawlessness grows. The greater the power of the executive grows, the
more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their
constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally
prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would
expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other
branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is
threatened and we become a government of men and not laws.

     The President's men have minced words about America's laws. The
Attorney General openly conceded that the "kind of surveillance" we now
know they have been conducting requires a court order unless authorized
by statute. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act self-evidently
does not authorize what the NSA has been doing, and no one inside or
outside the Administration claims that it does. Incredibly, the
Administration claims instead that the surveillance was implicitly
authorized when Congress voted to use force against those who attacked
us on September 11th.

     This argument just does not hold any water. Without getting into
the legal intricacies, it faces a number of embarrassing facts. First,
another admission by the Attorney General: he concedes that the
Administration knew that the NSA project was prohibited by existing law
and that they consulted with some members of Congress about changing the
statute. Gonzalez says that they were told this probably would not be
possible. So how can they now argue that the Authorization for the Use
of Military Force somehow implicitly authorized it all along? Second,
when the Authorization was being debated, the Administration did in fact
seek to have language inserted in it that would have authorized them to
use military force domestically - and the Congress did not agree.
Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Jim McGovern, among others, made
statements during the Authorization debate clearly restating that that
Authorization did not operate domestically.

     When President Bush failed to convince Congress to give him all the
power he wanted when they passed the AUMF, he secretly assumed that
power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother.
But as Justice Frankfurter once wrote: "To find authority so explicitly
withheld is not merely to disregard in a particular instance the clear
will of Congress. It is to disrespect the whole legislative process and
the constitutional division of authority between President and Congress."

     This is precisely the "disrespect" for the law that the Supreme
Court struck down in the steel seizure case.

     It is this same disrespect for America's Constitution which has now
brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric
of the Constitution. And the disrespect embodied in these apparent mass
violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming
indifference to the Constitution that is deeply troubling to millions of
Americans in both political parties.

     For example, the President has also declared that he has a
heretofore unrecognized inherent power to seize and imprison any
American citizen that he alone determines to be a threat to our nation,
and that, notwithstanding his American citizenship, the person
imprisoned has no right to talk with a lawyer-even to argue that the
President or his appointees have made a mistake and imprisoned the wrong
person.

     The President claims that he can imprison American citizens
indefinitely for the rest of their lives without an arrest warrant,
without notifying them about what charges have been filed against them,
and without informing their families that they have been imprisoned.

     At the same time, the Executive Branch has claimed a previously
unrecognized authority to mistreat prisoners in its custody in ways that
plainly constitute torture in a pattern that has now been documented in
U.S. facilities located in several countries around the world.

     Over 100 of these captives have reportedly died while being
tortured by Executive Branch interrogators and many more have been
broken and humiliated. In the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, investigators
who documented the pattern of torture estimated that more than 90
percent of the victims were innocent of any charges.

     This shameful exercise of power overturns a set of principles that
our nation has observed since General Washington first enunciated them
during our Revolutionary War and has been observed by every president
since then - until now. These practices violate the Geneva Conventions
and the International Convention Against Torture, not to mention our own
laws against torture.

     The President has also claimed that he has the authority to kidnap
individuals in foreign countries and deliver them for imprisonment and
interrogation on our behalf by autocratic regimes in nations that are
infamous for the cruelty of their techniques for torture.

     Some of our traditional allies have been shocked by these new
practices on the part of our nation. The British Ambassador to
Uzbekistan - one of those nations with the worst reputations for torture
in its prisons - registered a complaint to his home office about the
senselessness and cruelty of the new U.S. practice: "This material is
useless - we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively
harmful."

     Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our
Constitution? If the answer is "yes" then under the theory by which
these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be
prohibited? If the President has the inherent authority to eavesdrop,
imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what
can't he do?

     The Dean of Yale Law School, Harold Koh, said after analyzing the
Executive Branch's claims of these previously unrecognized powers: "If
the President has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the
power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to
license summary execution."

     The fact that our normal safeguards have thus far failed to contain
this unprecedented expansion of executive power is deeply troubling.
This failure is due in part to the fact that the Executive Branch has
followed a determined strategy of obfuscating, delaying, withholding
information, appearing to yield but then refusing to do so and
dissembling in order to frustrate the efforts of the legislative and
judicial branches to restore our constitutional balance.

     For example, after appearing to support legislation sponsored by
John McCain to stop the continuation of torture, the President declared
in the act of signing the bill that he reserved the right not to comply
with it.

     Similarly, the Executive Branch claimed that it could unilaterally
imprison American citizens without giving them access to review by any
tribunal. The Supreme Court disagreed, but the President engaged in
legal maneuvers designed to prevent the Court from providing meaningful
content to the rights of its citizens.

     A conservative jurist on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote
that the Executive Branch's handling of one such case seemed to involve
the sudden abandonment of principle "at substantial cost to the
government's credibility before the courts."

     As a result of its unprecedented claim of new unilateral power, the
Executive Branch has now put our constitutional design at grave risk.
The stakes for America's representative democracy are far higher than
has been generally recognized.

     These claims must be rejected and a healthy balance of power
restored to our Republic. Otherwise, the fundamental nature of our
democracy may well undergo a radical transformation.

     For more than two centuries, America's freedoms have been preserved
in part by our founders' wise decision to separate the aggregate power
of our government into three co-equal branches, each of which serves to
check and balance the power of the other two.

     On more than a few occasions, the dynamic interaction among all
three branches has resulted in collisions and temporary impasses that
create what are invariably labeled "constitutional crises." These crises
have often been dangerous and uncertain times for our Republic. But in
each such case so far, we have found a resolution of the crisis by
renewing our common agreement to live under the rule of law.

     The principle alternative to democracy throughout history has been
the consolidation of virtually all state power in the hands of a single
strongman or small group who together exercise that power without the
informed consent of the governed.

     It was in revolt against just such a regime, after all, that
America was founded. When Lincoln declared at the time of our greatest
crisis that the ultimate question being decided in the Civil War was
"whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can
long endure," he was not only saving our union but also was recognizing
the fact that democracies are rare in history. And when they fail, as
did Athens and the Roman Republic upon whose designs our founders drew
heavily, what emerges in their place is another strongman regime.

     There have of course been other periods of American history when
the Executive Branch claimed new powers that were later seen as
excessive and mistaken. Our second president, John Adams, passed the
infamous Alien and Sedition Acts and sought to silence and imprison
critics and political opponents.

     When his successor, Thomas Jefferson, eliminated the abuses he
said: "[The essential principles of our Government] form the bright
constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an
age of revolution and reformation... [S]hould we wander from them in
moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to
regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety."

     Our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, suspended habeas corpus
during the Civil War. Some of the worst abuses prior to those of the
current administration were committed by President Wilson during and
after WWI with the notorious Red Scare and Palmer Raids. The internment
of Japanese Americans during WWII marked a low point for the respect of
individual rights at the hands of the executive. And, during the Vietnam
War, the notorious COINTELPRO program was part and parcel of the abuses
experienced by Dr. King and thousands of others.

     But in each of these cases, when the conflict and turmoil subsided,
the country recovered its equilibrium and absorbed the lessons learned
in a recurring cycle of excess and regret.

     There are reasons for concern this time around that conditions may
be changing and that the cycle may not repeat itself. For one thing, we
have for decades been witnessing the slow and steady accumulation of
presidential power. In a global environment of nuclear weapons and cold
war tensions, Congress and the American people accepted ever enlarging
spheres of presidential initiative to conduct intelligence and counter
intelligence activities and to allocate our military forces on the
global stage. When military force has been used as an instrument of
foreign policy or in response to humanitarian demands, it has almost
always been as the result of presidential initiative and leadership. As
Justice Frankfurter wrote in the Steel Seizure Case, "The accretion of
dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly,
from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions
that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority."

     A second reason to believe we may be experiencing something new is
that we are told by the Administration that the war footing upon which
he has tried to place the country is going to "last for the rest of our
lives." So we are told that the conditions of national threat that have
been used by other Presidents to justify arrogations of power will
persist in near perpetuity.

     Third, we need to be aware of the advances in eavesdropping and
surveillance technologies with their capacity to sweep up and analyze
enormous quantities of information and to mine it for intelligence. This
adds significant vulnerability to the privacy and freedom of enormous
numbers of innocent people at the same time as the potential power of
those technologies. These techologies have the potential for shifting
the balance of power between the apparatus of the state and the freedom
of the individual in ways both subtle and profound.

     Don't misunderstand me: the threat of additional terror strikes is
all too real and their concerted efforts to acquire weapons of mass
destruction does create a real imperative to exercise the powers of the
Executive Branch with swiftness and agility. Moreover, there is in fact
an inherent power that is conferred by the Constitution to the President
to take unilateral action to protect the nation from a sudden and
immediate threat, but it is simply not possible to precisely define in
legalistic terms exactly when that power is appropriate and when it is not.

     But the existence of that inherent power cannot be used to justify
a gross and excessive power grab lasting for years that produces a
serious imbalance in the relationship between the executive and the
other two branches of government.

     There is a final reason to worry that we may be experiencing
something more than just another cycle of overreach and regret. This
Administration has come to power in the thrall of a legal theory that
aims to convince us that this excessive concentration of presidential
authority is exactly what our Constitution intended.

     This legal theory, which its proponents call the theory of the
unitary executive but which is more accurately described as the
unilateral executive, threatens to expand the president's powers until
the contours of the constitution that the Framers actually gave us
become obliterated beyond all recognition. Under this theory, the
President's authority when acting as Commander-in-Chief or when making
foreign policy cannot be reviewed by the judiciary or checked by
Congress. President Bush has pushed the implications of this idea to its
maximum by continually stressing his role as Commander-in-Chief,
invoking it has frequently as he can, conflating it with his other
roles, domestic and foreign. When added to the idea that we have entered
a perpetual state of war, the implications of this theory stretch quite
literally as far into the future as we can imagine.

     This effort to rework America's carefully balanced constitutional
design into a lopsided structure dominated by an all powerful Executive
Branch with a subservient Congress and judiciary is - ironically -
accompanied by an effort by the same administration to rework America's
foreign policy from one that is based primarily on U.S. moral authority
into one that is based on a misguided and self-defeating effort to
establish dominance in the world.

     The common denominator seems to be based on an instinct to
intimidate and control.

     This same pattern has characterized the effort to silence
dissenting views within the Executive Branch, to censor information that
may be
inconsistent with its stated ideological goals, and to demand
conformity from all Executive Branch employees.

     For example, CIA analysts who strongly disagreed with the White
House assertion that Osama bin Laden was linked to Saddam Hussein found
themselves under pressure at work and became fearful of losing
promotions and salary increases.

     Ironically, that is exactly what happened to FBI officials in the
1960s who disagreed with J. Edgar Hoover's view that Dr. King was
closely connected to Communists. The head of the FBI's domestic
intelligence division said that his effort to tell the truth about
King's innocence of the charge resulted in he and his colleagues
becoming isolated and pressured. "It was evident that we had to change
our ways or we would all be out on the street.... The men and I
discussed how to get out of trouble. To be in trouble with Mr. Hoover
was a serious matter. These men were trying to buy homes, mortgages on
homes, children in school. They lived in fear of getting transferred,
losing money on their homes, as they usually did. ... so they wanted
another memorandum written to get us out of the trouble that we were in."

     The Constitution's framers understood this dilemma as well, as
Alexander Hamilton put it, "a power over a man's support is a power over
his will." (Federalist No. 73)

     Soon, there was no more difference of opinion within the FBI. The
false accusation became the unanimous view. In exactly the same way,
George Tenet's CIA eventually joined in endorsing a manifestly false
view that there was a linkage between al Qaeda and the government of Iraq.

     In the words of George Orwell: "We are all capable of believing
things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved
wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.
Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an
indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false
belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

     Whenever power is unchecked and unaccountable it almost inevitably
leads to mistakes and abuses. In the absence of rigorous
accountability, incompetence flourishes. Dishonesty is encouraged and
rewarded.

     Last week, for example, Vice President Cheney attempted to defend
the Administration's eavesdropping on American citizens by saying that
if it had conducted this program prior to 9/11, they would have found
out the names of some of the hijackers.

     Tragically, he apparently still doesn't know that the
Administration did in fact have the names of at least 2 of the hijackers
well before 9/11 and had available to them information that could have
easily led to the identification of most of the other hijackers. And
yet, because of incompetence in the handling of this information, it was
never used to protect the American people.

     It is often the case that an Executive Branch beguiled by the
pursuit of unchecked power responds to its own mistakes by reflexively
proposing that it be given still more power. Often, the request itself
it used to mask accountability for mistakes in the use of power it
already has.

     Moreover, if the pattern of practice begun by this Administration
is not challenged, it may well become a permanent part of the American
system. Many conservatives have pointed out that granting unchecked
power to this President means that the next President will have
unchecked power as well. And the next President may be someone whose
values and belief you do not trust. And this is why Republicans as well
as Democrats should be concerned with what this President has done. If
this President's attempt to dramatically expand executive power goes
unquestioned, our constitutional design of checks and balances will be
lost. And the next President or some future President will be able, in
the name of national security, to restrict our liberties in a way the
framers never would have thought possible.

     The same instinct to expand its power and to establish dominance
characterizes the relationship between this Administration and the
courts and the Congress.

     In a properly functioning system, the Judicial Branch would serve
as the constitutional umpire to ensure that the branches of government
observed their proper spheres of authority, observed civil liberties and
adhered to the rule of law. Unfortunately, the unilateral executive has
tried hard to thwart the ability of the judiciary to call balls and
strikes by keeping controversies out of its hands - notably those
challenging its ability to detain individuals without legal process - by
appointing judges who will be deferential to its exercise of power and
by its support of assaults on the independence of the third branch.

     The President's decision to ignore FISA was a direct assault on the
power of the judges who sit on that court. Congress established the
FISA court precisely to be a check on executive power to wiretap. Yet,
to ensure that the court could not function as a check on executive
power, the President simply did not take matters to it and did not let
the court know that it was being bypassed.

     The President's judicial appointments are clearly designed to
ensure that the courts will not serve as an effective check on executive
power. As we have all learned, Judge Alito is a longtime supporter of a
powerful executive - a supporter of the so-called unitary executive,
which is more properly called the unilateral executive. Whether you
support his confirmation or not - and I do not - we must all agree that
he will not vote as an effective check on the expansion of executive
power. Likewise, Chief Justice Roberts has made plain his deference to
the expansion of executive power through his support of judicial
deference to executive agency rulemaking.

     And the Administration has supported the assault on judicial
independence that has been conducted largely in Congress. That assault
includes a threat by the Republican majority in the Senate to
permanently change the rules to eliminate the right of the minority to
engage in extended debate of the President's judicial nominees. The
assault has extended to legislative efforts to curtail the jurisdiction
of courts in matters ranging from habeas corpus to the pledge of
allegiance. In short, the Administration has demonstrated its contempt
for the judicial role and sought to evade judicial review of its actions
at every turn.

     But the most serious damage has been done to the legislative
branch. The sharp decline of congressional power and autonomy in recent
years has been almost as shocking as the efforts by the Executive Branch
to attain a massive expansion of its power.

     I was elected to Congress in 1976 and served eight years in the
house, 8 years in the Senate and presided over the Senate for 8 years as
Vice President. As a young man, I saw the Congress first hand as the son
of a Senator. My father was elected to Congress in 1938, 10 years
before I was born, and left the Senate in 1971.

     The Congress we have today is unrecognizable compared to the one in
which my father served. There are many distinguished Senators and
Congressmen serving today. I am honored that some of them are here in
this hall. But the legislative branch of government under its current
leadership now operates as if it is entirely subservient to the
Executive Branch.

     Moreover, too many Members of the House and Senate now feel
compelled to spend a majority of their time not in thoughtful debate of
the issues, but raising money to purchase 30 second TV commercials.

     There have now been two or three generations of congressmen who
don't really know what an oversight hearing is. In the 70's and 80's,
the oversight hearings in which my colleagues and I participated held
the feet of the Executive Branch to the fire - no matter which party was
in power. Yet oversight is almost unknown in the Congress today.

     The role of authorization committees has declined into
insignificance. The 13 annual appropriation bills are hardly ever
actually passed anymore. Everything is lumped into a single giant
measure that is not even available for Members of Congress to read
before they vote on it.

     Members of the minority party are now routinely excluded from
conference committees, and amendments are routinely not allowed during
floor consideration of legislation.

     In the United States Senate, which used to pride itself on being
the "greatest deliberative body in the world," meaningful debate is now
a rarity. Even on the eve of the fateful vote to authorize the invasion
of Iraq, Senator Robert Byrd famously asked: "Why is this chamber empty?"

     In the House of Representatives, the number who face a genuinely
competitive election contest every two years is typically less than a
dozen out of 435.

     And too many incumbents have come to believe that the key to
continued access to the money for re-election is to stay on the good
side of those who have the money to give; and, in the case of the
majority party, the whole process is largely controlled by the incumbent
president and his political organization.

     So the willingness of Congress to challenge the Administration is
further limited when the same party controls both Congress and the
Executive Branch.

     The Executive Branch, time and again, has co-opted Congress' role,
and often Congress has been a willing accomplice in the surrender of
its own power.

     Look for example at the Congressional role in "overseeing" this
massive four year eavesdropping campaign that on its face seemed so
clearly to violate the Bill of Rights. The President says he informed
Congress, but what he really means is that he talked with the chairman
and  ranking member of the House and Senate intelligence committees and
the top leaders of the House and Senate. This small group, in turn,
claimed that they were not given the full facts, though at least one of
the intelligence committee leaders handwrote a letter of concern to VP
Cheney and placed a copy in his own safe.

     Though I sympathize with the awkward position in which these men
and women were placed, I cannot disagree with the Liberty Coalition when
it says that Democrats as well as Republicans in the Congress must
share the blame for not taking action to protest and seek to prevent
what they consider a grossly unconstitutional program.

     Moreover, in the Congress as a whole - both House and Senate - the
enhanced role of money in the re-election process, coupled with the
sharply diminished role for reasoned deliberation and debate, has
produced an atmosphere conducive to pervasive institutionalized corruption.

     The Abramoff scandal is but the tip of a giant iceberg that
threatens the integrity of the entire legislative branch of government.

     It is the pitiful state of our legislative branch which primarily
explains the failure of our vaunted checks and balances to prevent the
dangerous overreach by our Executive Branch which now threatens a
radical transformation of the American system.

     I call upon Democratic and Republican members of Congress today to
uphold your oath of office and defend the Constitution. Stop going
along to get along. Start acting like the independent and co-equal
branch of government you're supposed to be.

     But there is yet another Constitutional player whose pulse must be
taken and whose role must be examined in order to understand the
dangerous imbalance that has emerged with the efforts by the Executive
Branch to dominate our constitutional system.

     We the people are - collectively - still the key to the survival of
America's democracy. We - as Lincoln put it, "[e]ven we here" - must
examine our own role as citizens in allowing and not preventing the
shocking decay and degradation of our democracy.

     Thomas Jefferson said: "An informed citizenry is the only true
repository of the public will."

     The revolutionary departure on which the idea of America was based
was the audacious belief that people can govern themselves and
responsibly exercise the ultimate authority in self-government. This
insight proceeded inevitably from the bedrock principle articulated by
the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke: "All just power is derived
from the consent of the governed."

     The intricate and carefully balanced constitutional system that is
now in such danger was created with the full and widespread
participation of the population as a whole. The Federalist Papers were,
back in the day, widely-read newspaper essays, and they represented only
one of twenty-four series of essays that crowded the vibrant marketplace
of ideas in which farmers and shopkeepers recapitulated the debates that
played out so fruitfully in Philadelphia.

     Indeed, when the Convention had done its best, it was the people -
in their various States - that refused to confirm the result until, at
their insistence, the Bill of Rights was made integral to the document
sent forward for ratification.

     And it is "We the people" who must now find once again the ability
we once had to play an integral role in saving our Constitution.

     And here there is cause for both concern and great hope. The age of
printed pamphlets and political essays has long since been replaced by
television - a distracting and absorbing medium which sees determined
to entertain and sell more than it informs and educates.

     Lincoln's memorable call during the Civil War is applicable in a
new way to our dilemma today: "We must disenthrall ourselves, and then
we shall save our country."

     Forty years have passed since the majority of Americans adopted
television as their principal source of information. Its dominance has
become so extensive that virtually all significant political
communication now takes place within the confines of flickering
30-second television advertisements.

     And the political economy supported by these short but expensive
television ads is as different from the vibrant politics of America's
first century as those politics were different from the feudalism which
thrived on the ignorance of the masses of people in the Dark Ages.

     The constricted role of ideas in the American political system
today has encouraged efforts by the Executive Branch to control the flow
of information as a means of controlling the outcome of important
decisions that still lie in the hands of the people.

     The Administration vigorously asserts its power to maintain the
secrecy of its operations. After all, the other branches can't check an
abuse of power if they don't know it is happening.

     For example, when the Administration was attempting to persuade
Congress to enact the Medicare prescription drug benefit, many in the
House and Senate raised concerns about the cost and design of the program.
But, rather than engaging in open debate on the basis of factual data,
the Administration withheld facts and prevented the Congress from
hearing testimony that it sought from the principal administration
expert who had compiled information showing in advance of the vote that
indeed the true cost estimates were far higher than the numbers given to
Congress by the President.

     Deprived of that information, and believing the false numbers given
to it instead, the Congress approved the program. Tragically, the
entire initiative is now collapsing - all over the country - with the
Administration making an appeal just this weekend to major insurance
companies to volunteer to bail it out.

     To take another example, scientific warnings about the catastrophic
consequences of unchecked global warming were censored by a political
appointee in the White House who had no scientific training. And today
one of the leading scientific experts on global warming in NASA has been
ordered not to talk to members of the press and to keep a careful log
of everyone he meets with so that the Executive Branch can monitor and
control his discussions of global warming.

     One of the other ways the Administration has tried to control the
flow of information is by consistently resorting to the language and
politics of fear in order to short-circuit the debate and drive its
agenda forward without regard to the evidence or the public interest. As
President Eisenhower said, "Any who act as if freedom's defenses are to
be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that
is alien to America."

     Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse
and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once
wrote: "Men feared witches and burnt women."

     The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in
their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very
existence of our country was at risk.

     Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing
the Bill of Rights.

     Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors
when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more
dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands
of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country
at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced
worldwide fascism on the march - when our fathers fought and won two
World Wars simultaneously?

     It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed
so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than
they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us
to do the same.

     We have a duty as Americans to defend our citizens' right not only
to life but also to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is
therefore vital in our current circumstances that immediate steps be
taken to safeguard our Constitution against the present danger posed by
the intrusive overreaching on the part of the Executive Branch and the
President's apparent belief that he need not live under the rule of law.

     I endorse the words of Bob Barr, when he said, "The President has
dared the American people to do something about it. For the sake of the
Constitution, I hope they will."

     A special counsel should immediately be appointed by the Attorney
General to remedy the obvious conflict of interest that prevents him
from investigating what many believe are serious violations of law by
the President. We have had a fresh demonstration of how an independent
investigation by a special counsel with integrity can rebuild confidence
in our system of justice. Patrick Fitzgerald has, by all accounts, shown
neither fear nor favor in pursuing allegations that the Executive Branch
has violated other laws.

     Republican as well as Democratic members of Congress should support
the bipartisan call of the Liberty Coalition for the appointment of a
special counsel to pursue the criminal issues raised by warrantless
wiretapping of Americans by the President.

     Second, new whistleblower protections should immediately be
established for members of the Executive Branch who report evidence of
wrongdoing - especially where it involves the abuse of Executive Branch
authority in the sensitive areas of national security.

     Third, both Houses of Congress should hold comprehensive - and not
just superficial - hearings into these serious allegations of criminal
behavior on the part of the President. And, they should follow the
evidence wherever it leads.

     Fourth, the extensive new powers requested by the Executive Branch
in its proposal to extend and enlarge the Patriot Act should, under no
circumstances be granted, unless and until there are adequate and
enforceable safeguards to protect the Constitution and the rights of the
American people against the kinds of abuses that have so recently been
revealed.

     Fifth, any telecommunications company that has provided the
government with access to private information concerning the
communications of Americans without a proper warrant should immediately
cease and desist their complicity in this apparently illegal invasion of
the privacy of American citizens.

     Freedom of communication is an essential prerequisite for the
restoration of the health of our democracy.

     It is particularly important that the freedom of the Internet be
protected against either the encroachment of government or the efforts
at control by large media conglomerates. The future of our democracy
depends on it.

     I mentioned that along with cause for concern, there is reason for
hope. As I stand here today, I am filled with optimism that America is
on the eve of a golden age in which the vitality of our democracy will
be re-established and will flourish more vibrantly than ever. Indeed I
can feel it in this hall.

     As Dr. King once said, "Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If
it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may
be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way
beyond the darkness that seems so close around us."



"If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll
have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an
American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human
being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government."
- - Dwight D. Eisenhower
"

Hoe staat het eigenlijk met onze democratie?


Henk Elegeert

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