Title VIII of the so-called "Protect America Act" is called "Protection of Persons Assisting the Government." Greenwald's interpretation:
So all the Attorney General has to do is recite those magic words -- the President requested this eavesdropping and did it in order to save us from the Terrorists -- and the minute he utters those words, the courts are required to dismiss the lawsuits against the telecoms, no matter how illegal their behavior was.
That's the "compromise" Steny Hoyer negotiated and which he is now -- according to very credible reports -- pressuring every member of the Democratic caucus to support. It's full-scale, unconditional amnesty with no inquiry into whether anyone broke the law. In the U.S. now, thanks to the Democratic Congress, we'll have a new law based on the premise that the President has the power to order private actors to break the law, and when he issues such an order, the private actors will be protected from liability of any kind on the ground that the Leader told them to do it -- the very theory that the Nuremberg Trial rejected.
It's amazing how many legislators can support a measure like this. Either they don't understand the implications or they support the kind of unchecked power that it gives the president. The same is true for those who passed the Military Commissions Act. I assume people like Sherrod Brown who voted for it just didn't understand what they were doing. I think that happens a lot more than we want to think. Maybe these legislators have a staffer read it who makes a political calculation based on polling, and that's as far as the thought process goes. That's probably at the root of McCain's calling the Guantanamo ruling last week the worst in Supreme Court history.
Could it be possible that they honestly don't understand what kind of precedent they are setting? Do they really believe that their insistence to refuse of habeas rights to non-citizens, a dubious proposition to begin with, will be limited only to non-citizens? Don't they realize that any American citizen can be imprisoned indefinitely without recourse if the president or his agents simply assert that such a citizen aided terrorists. Why shouldn't a power like that be used to target political enemies? What check is there on such a power being abused? And it will be abused if already these rightists flout existing laws and restraints.
The kinds of things that Kristol, Graham, and McCain have been saying about the Guantanamo or Boumediene ruling tryng to frame habeas corpus as a proedural issue rather than a human rights issue are just astonishing--and their comments disqualify them from ever being taken seriously again on anything. (There was a time when I was opne to listen to those guys--no longer) There is no possibility that I can extend even a little respect to a man like McCain. He is either stupid, which I'm beginning to think might partially explain his statements and behavior--he graduated 894 out of 899 at the bottom of hiis class at Annapolis--or he is an egregiously unprincipled panderer, or is he a proto authoritarian. Is there another possibility I'm not seeing here?
At some point start talking about how much slack we're willing to cut Obama when it comes to his own political calculation. The reality anyone faces in dealing with a Democratic congress that is willing to approve a law like this is depressing to say the least, and his best interests lie in ridding the congress of Blue Dog Bush enablers like John Barrow. I realize that there is a certain amount of having to play the game that goes on if you are going to get into politics as it plays out on the ground rather than in our dreams. And I realize that he has to bring conservatives into the conversation, but not hacks like Barrow. I'd like to hear his justification for that one.