Monday, June 30, 2008
Editorial: Will no one be held accountable?
Rep. Boucher switched his vote on the FISA bill. Intense lobbying swayed the House.
From the RoundTable blog
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In March, Rep. Rick Boucher stood by the principle that immunity should not be extended to telephone companies that helped the government spy on Americans without a court's knowledge or consent. Last week, the Southwest Virginia Democrat voted to grant them that immunity. What changed his mind?
Boucher claims he had no choice: To vote against the bill would allow the president to continue violating the Constitution with warrantless surveillance of e-mails, messages and phone conversations.
MAPlight.org offers a different, more scurrilous reason: Boucher received $27,500 from Verizon, AT&T and Sprint PACS, making him the fourth-highest recipient of telecom money of the 94 Democrats who changed their votes.
In Boucher's defense, he has for 20 years received money from communication companies by virtue of assignments to committees that deal with legislation affecting the industry. And if he were truly in the telecoms' pocket, he would have granted them immunity in March.
Still, even if the money didn't influence Boucher, intense lobbying -- the companies spent at least $10.8 million this year -- swayed House leadership.
The Democrats capitulated to the phone companies.
Earlier, House leadership separated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act from the immunity bill, making it easy to take the principled stance: A rebuke to President Bush who trampled the Constitution when it didn't fit his vision of enhanced powers, a stern warning that the law and not a unitarian executive would govern and a reprimand to telecoms for violating customers' privacy.
The Bush administration wouldn't have been able to spy on Americans for several years without anyone's knowledge -- including that of Congress -- if a Republican Congress had risen to its constitutional mandate and kept checks on his grab for power.
The House, now under Democratic leadership, had an opportunity to finally do so. It blew it.
Instead of holding fast to two separate bills -- one that dealt with immunity and one that requires court oversight of domestic spying -- leadership rolled it into one bill.
Boucher said that he was left with little choice: Either restore constitutional protection or vote against the telecoms. He thought the more principled stance was to protect Americans from a president run amok.
The better position would have been for the rank-and-file members, like Boucher, to have held fast and forced leadership not to sell out principles.
