Our Rabbit Hole

For everyone who's asked, the reason for the lack of content recently isn't simple busyness. It's that it's becoming increasingly apparent that there was an explicit order drafted in the White House with the president's knowledge and approval, and executed by the relevant field commander, to torture irony to death at Abu Ghraib. It's hard, in other words, to find any unoccupied reflective space.

Fortunately, Tom Tomorrow did find some. As did, I have it on some authority, my friend and YDN colleague Keith Urbahn, who will shortly be going to press with a defense of the administration's illegal surveillance program---or as the press should not allow them to presumptively call it, the "terrorist surveillance program"---and presumably also a swipe or two at me.

Now, if Keith has been paying attention to the flow of things, he'll know that not even the Bush Justice Dept. is trying to maintain the pretense that the wiretapping program doesn't flatly contradict FISA; but Keith has another argument: FISA is unconstitutional, as it restricts the power of the president in contravention of Article II.

Think about that. FISA does not, in fact, limit what an administration is permitted to do under the law at all; it simply sets up a requirement that executive action be subject to oversight by another branch of government, or as we learned in middle school physics, a check or balance. If FISA is unconstitutional, then the Constitution provides the president with an utterly unchecked power. Recall Logic 101. To affirm the antecedent is to affirm the conclusion. And to affirm the conclusion is to demonstrate breathtaking ignorance of the constitutional tradition. It's also a way of declaring one's preference for elective dictatorship.