I live in New York State, and am represented by Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton in the United States Senate. I’ve called the offices of both about the FISA Amendments Act.
After an initial uncertainty, Senator Schumer joined Russ Feingold and Chris Dodd in an attempted filibuster of the proposed law. He clearly is in opposition to the bill.
Senator Clinton is not.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that she will vote for the FISA Amendments Act on Tuesday. It means that she refuses to say how she will vote. Her aides describe this silence as “listening to her constituents”, so that she can make up her mind.
In the case of the FISA Amendments Act, listening to constituents isn’t the way to make the right decision. That’s because the issue is not political. It’s constitutional.
The FISA Amendments Act is profoundly, thoroughly unconstitutional and anticonstitutional. It makes the fourth amendment in the Bill of Rights irrelevant, completely ignores the ban on ex post facto laws, slams the concept of equal protection under the law, and generally wrecks the system of checks and balances between what are supposed to be three coequal branches of government.
The FISA Amendments Act essentially gives George W. Bush everything that he wanted - operationally unlimited spying powers held by his political appointee, the Attorney General, and supervised only by one person in the federal government. That one person is the fox guarding the henhouse: The Attorney General.
That’s like appointing the CEO of ExxonMobil as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
If she cares one jot about the Oath of Office she took when joining the United States Senate, Hillary Clinton ought not to base her decision on what will make most of her constituents happy. She ought to base her decision on what the Constitution requires.
If Senator Clinton decides that he constituents don’t like the Constitution’s protections from unreasonable search and seizure, ex post facto laws, and so on, then she can represent those radical opinions by introducing a constitutional amendment to do away with those things.
The truth is, though, that New Yorkers would not support such a betrayal of American freedom - just as they do not support the FISA Amendments Act.
Senator Clinton, it’s time to do your job. It is time for you to stop cowering behind your aides, stand up, and oppose the unjust FISA Amendments Act.
