Former Senator Tom Daschle writes in today’s WaPo,
In the face of mounting questions about news stories saying that President Bush approved a program to wiretap American citizens without getting warrants, the White House argues that Congress granted it authority for such surveillance in the 2001 legislation authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda. On Tuesday, Vice President Cheney said the president “was granted authority by the Congress to use all means necessary to take on the terrorists, and that’s what we’ve done.”
As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel’s office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.
Now, was that so hard, Tom? Why couldn’t you have talked like that while you were still in the Senate?
I can see from WaPo‘s handy-dandy “Who’s Blogging” links that the spineless, potty-mouth cowards known as “Bush supporters” are arguing that the Senate authorized warrantless wiretaps when the Senate “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided” the attacks of 9/11.
So, the word force includes ” warrantless surveillance.” I wouldn’t have known that, would you? I even looked it up in the dictionary. Nope, not there.
Reminds me of what Humpty Dumpty told Alice:
‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory,”‘ Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t — till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”‘
‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument,”‘ Alice objected.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – – that’s all.’
So righties can fudge the meanings of words to change the meaning of legislation and cause the Senate to approve of something they hadn’t intended. There’s glory for you. By which I mean “righties are sniveling cowards who will destroy everything America ever stood for to save their own skins, and call it ‘patriotism.'”
It’s all in the interpetation..a few years back,I believe it was Florida that enacted a law that proscribed a mandatory life sentence for the use of a firearm in the commision of a drug related felony. Some poor soul made the mistake of trading a handgun for cocaine in a drug deal and prosecutors slamed him with a life sentence. Several lawmakers protested the prosecution in that circumstance because their intention in writing the law was that the firearm was to be used in an aggessive form. Humpty Dumpty is right..words means what he says they mean. And I’m sure that Tom Daschle understood his own understanding.
It’s just like the way they tried to fudge the meaning of “fix the intelligence” from the Downing Street memo.
It’s only slightly OT, but Dave Neiwert wrote the classic Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism: an exigesiswhich discusses the twisting of language by the right.
I think there was about five or fifteen years where we lefties tried to wrap our minds around the right’s “arguments” that relied on shading and inverting the meanings of words, until at least this leftie finally caught on to the game.
Congress clearly did not authorize the warrantless wiretaps in the authorization for force; had they, there would have been no reason to revise FISA statutes in the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act a month later.
In the end, it is the people on the right who are the “traitors”.