Rule of law, not of men

The Philadelphia Inquirer‘s Dick Polman has a good round-up of the debate in Washington over the Bush administration’s program warrant-less domesitc spying (“Executive Power: The controversy could become a hot political issue in ’06,” January 8, 2006 – can’t seem to find it online). Is it telling that even people who should be sympathetic are finding this tough to swallow? For instance, conservative lawyer Bruce Fein, a deputy attorney general under Ronald Reagan, thinks that Bush has broken the 1978 law requiring presidents to obtain warrants. Fein says that “President Bush presents a clear and present danger to the rule of law. … Congress should insist the President cease the spying unless or until a proper statute is enacted, or face possible impeachment.”

That seems to me to be the key point. If the administration thought that the existing laws were too strict, they should’ve gone to Congress to get that changed, rather than trying to justify it after the fact by a vague appeal to ill-defined presidential powers. I remember when conservatives used to insist that even the President is not above the law.

Polman also argues, persuasively – alas, that the Dems are probably too chicken to do much about any of this, afraid of being labeled “soft on terrorism,” especially with the mid-term elections coming up. We’ll see, I guess.