The Most Powerful Senator of the 20th Century?

I nearly lost it in the days after Ted Kennedy's death. It was all I could do not to throw the radio against the wall or swerve into a lamppost just to end the agony of Ted's canonization. He was a man after my own heart; many of the bills he sponsored or supported in his long career, I too supported or support. But as I look over all the verbiage and bandwidth devoted to his legacy, I am struck by his ineffectiveness.

Yes, there's some landmark legislation to his credit - Title IX and other civil rights law from 30 years ago - but much is like the little Dutch boy who tried to stop the flood. Where Kennedy could stick his liberal fingers the water was stopped, but the conservative flood overwhelmed the levee and the country is demonstrably worse off.

While this post is a response to the general tenor of the Kennedy hagiographies, it specifically plays off two blogs at the Rude Pundit, where the author (who I like and follow) lists some of Kennedy's achievements, many of which illustrate my point.

1. State control over school curricula. Nice concept but because of the way the school-book publishing industry is gamed, the nation's schools' curricula is largely determined by a few school districts in Texas, that bastion of enlightened, rational thinking.

2. Getting to vote at 18. Considering the usual turnout of the 18-21 crowd at election time, does this really signify? And considering the voting patterns of the 40- and 50-somethings who first benefited from this amendment, can we consider this the wisest piece of legislation anyway?

3. Cheap airfares (aka, deregulating the airline industry). Talk about mixed blessings. And, this was the opening salvo in the senseless and disastrous assault on any form of government regulation.

4. Mental institutions should treat people humanely. A no-brainer by any standard of morality but this was also the era of Reagan, when such institutions were defunded and their patients dumped on the streets.

5. Minimum wage. This is one fight I was personally involved in. In 1987/88, during my junior year at college, I interned with the Americans for Democratic Action in Washington. One of the big legislative pushes for that year was a Kennedy-sponsored increase in the ludicrously inadequate minimum wage to increase it to a slightly less inadequate wage. The legislation went nowhere (I don't think we got a federal increase until the Clinton era).

6. Health care. For this latest round, I have to give Kennedy a pass - he had his own crisis to deal with - but he was fully competent in 1993 when Clinton introduced his disastrous solution, and he was fully competent for most of the intervening 15 years. I guess we should be grateful he helped block "medical savings accounts" and privatizing Social Security and Medicare.

7. The war(s). Kudos to the man for voting against the original "war" resolution (in 2002 or 2003) but where was he for the next 6 years? Where was he at the anti-war rallies? Where was he on the PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, immunizing the telecoms from illegal wiretapping charges, the legality of rendition, and the other successful assaults on civil liberties and justice? Small comfort to imagine how much worse things might have been if Kennedy hadn't been in the Senate.

His heart was in the right place and he will be missed in the Senate but he never commanded the respect and support he needed to effect his policies, a political tragedy with more far reaching results than either of his brothers' legacies.

The Gates/Crowley Affair

Like many, I've been watching the latest example of our slide toward the "police state," and have been thinking about what to say about it. Well, I need agonize no more. Ted Rall has taken the words right out of my mouth at his latest blog - Everyone Hates the Cops. It captures almost exactly what I've been thinking.

I particularly liked "I admit it: I don't like cops. I like the idea of cops. The specific people who actually are cops are the problem" and "Nevertheless, the Gates incident has illuminated some basic, strange assumptions about our society. Cops think they have a constitutional right to be treated deferentially."

I don't think it's so much a matter of individual cops consciously wanting to further the agenda of the police state but rather a matter of terror. The cops are terrified of the citizenry (in some neighborhoods justifiably so) but they've been trained to respond like soldiers in a war - shoot first and hope you're right. But the rational response should not be to ratchet up the fear and violence. A rational response would include, among other things:

Civilian oversight of the police. (In my own city, it's pointless to complain to the LAPD because they investigate themselves and invariably find that their actions were justified.)

A more just economic system. (I know, it won't and can't solve all crime and violence but you can see the ameliorative effect it has in countries where the divide between rich and poor is not so wide.)

Better police training that emphasizes defusing situations and an emphasis on those quaint Constitutional guarantees of privacy and innocence until proven guilty.

"Celebrating" the Fourth of July

Last Thursday (July 10), I was listening to Randi Rhodes' show on my local radio station. The topic was the abominable FISA Amendment bill that our hopelessly spineless Congress passed the day before. In all seriousness, a caller asked, "Except that it's unconstitutional, what's the big deal about warrantless wiretapping?" (I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist.)

It's times like this that I want to get that lobotomy and just join brain-dead fools like this guy in their ignorant bliss.

That or move to Canada.

Honestly, there was nothing in the original FISA law as it stood before 2001 to stop Bush from wiretapping pretty much anyone he damn well pleased. Out of nearly 20,000 requested FISA warrants, literally a handful were refused -- five! Of course, to this administration even the possibility of someone checking its authority is anathema, and, hence, the need to eviscerate an already suspect law.

David Bromwich's post on HuffPo eloquently presents the case for why July 9's vote is a disaster for this country. Why should we trust any president to voluntarily relinquish any powers he's able to squeeze out of supine Congresses and Supreme Courts? Why should we depend upon Obama's promise to "fix" the legislation when he becomes president?

Joseph Galloway, of McClatchey, poses two pertinent questions in his excellent column here:

How can even one senator on either side of the aisle in good conscience vote in favor of this law that does nothing to enhance our security and everything to diminish our rights as a free people?

How can both men who seek to become our next president cast such a vote when both should be standing shoulder-to-shoulder declaring that they would govern by our consent and with our approval, not by wielding the coercive and corrosive and corrupt powers that King George III and his latter-day namesake from Texas thought are theirs by divine right?

George Bush broke the supreme law of the land (and there's evidence he was doing it before 9/11, the ostensible reason for amending the law in the first place). That we haven't stripped him of his office, not to mention his freedom, shows just how far we've fallen from the ideals of the Founders.

[Addendum: I just came across this op-ed from Chris Hedges that ran in the LA Times on Friday. Just another reason to oppose everything this administration does.]

The Death of a Thousand Cuts

Apologists for the latest example of Congress' craven spinelessness say that the FISA "compromise" protects fundamental civil rights but it's like "the death of a thousand cuts": If someone suffers one papercut, no major harm done; but if they suffer a thousand, they bleed to death. Just so with the latest capitulation to the Bush Administration's terrorism.

They've launched assaults against the First Amendment, they've launched assaults against habeas corpus, and now it's the Fourth Amendment's turn.

I'm happy to say that my representative voted with the "angels," opposing the FISA bill, which (if the Senate passes it) will "legalize" warrantless wiretapping and immunize the telcoms that allowed the government to do it. Unfortunately, she was in the minority.

I took down my copy of the Constitution and reread the Fourth Amendment:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

By my reading, there's no ambiguity here, no provisional language for wars or "public emergency" -- the government cannot wiretap without a warrant. Everyone is secure. Everyone. Everywhere. Everytime. And under the current FISA law, the government has 72 hours to get a retroactive warrant, anyway!

Furthermore, there's no provision for immunity. The "just obeying orders" defense didn't work at Nuremberg and it shouldn't work here. The telcoms that allowed the administration to tap communications without warrants are guilty of aiding and abetting a criminal conspiracy and should be held responsible. (Not to mention the thugs in the administration.)

I've read that, in a rare display of spine, Senator Majority Leader Reid has vowed to fight the bill, and may actually split it in 2: one addressing the FISA warrants and the other addressing immunity. With luck, it could delay a final vote until after November. Also encouraging is Senator Feingold's and Dodd's intentions to filibuster this atrocious measure.

Less encouraging, is Obama's support of the "compromise," which casts doubt on his qualifications as a teacher of constitutional law (unless he were John Yoo's TA!). We need to put pressure on him to join Messers. Reid, Feingold and Dodd in opposing the law. Maybe we could say to him, "We're not going to contribute to your campaign for the next 2 weeks until you change your tune, Senator `Change.'"