Russ Feingold's Principled Stance Frightens Both Parties

Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold reiterated his call for his congressional colleagues to stand on constitutional principle and political courage on Thursday with a piece that ran in The Nation's TomPaine.com.

Senator Feingold send (too) many Senate Democrats scurrying for cover when he introduced his resolution to censure President Bush for violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by authorizing the National Security Agency to troll the communications of large numbers of American citizens without obtaining the approval of the FISA court that the FISA Act mandates.

On Thursday, Feingold invoked the record of Congressional Republicans who stood up to the lawlessness of President Richard Nixon during the early 1970s (some of the abuses Nixon faced impeachment for resulted in passage of the FISA Act) to challenge the current crop of Republicans to stand up for their country and their party against the abuses of Bush:

During the Watergate hearings, then-Senator Howard Baker, a Republican, showed tremendous courage, and a deep sense of Congress's duty to hold President Nixon accountable, when he asked that now-famous question: "What did the President know and when did he know it?" Baker was one of a handful of Republicans during the scandal who stood up to their party, and to the President. Today, as the President admits, even flaunts, his program to wiretap Americans on American soil without the warrants required by law, we need more courageous Republicans to stand up and check the President's power grab.

Feingold's reasoning is a mini-course in American Constitutional law, as it lays out in stark terms the dire challenge to America's constitutional order that the NSA spying represents:

Yet, as we face a President who thinks he is above the law, most Republicans are willing to cede enormous power to the executive branch. Their actions are not just short-sighted, they are a departure from one of the Republican Party's defining goals: limiting government power.

Some Republicans are defending the President's conduct as appropriate and arguing he should have free rein to continue his program, regardless of whether it is legal. Others seek to grant him expanded statutory powers so as to make his illegal conduct legal. But current law already allows a wiretap to be turned on immediately as long as the government goes to the court within 72 hours. The President has claimed an inherent authority to wiretap Americans on American soil without a warrant that he thinks allows him to break this law. So why would anyone think the President will comply with any new proposal? The constitutional system of separation of powers demands that we check a President who recklessly grabs for power and ignores the rule of law, not reward him – particularly when the law he breaks is designed to protect innocent Americans from intrusive government powers.

As many Republicans focus on defending the President, they are losing sight of what ceding these powers to the President now will mean for their own party down the road. Those expansive powers will rest with whoever sits in the Oval Office. Republicans who argue today that the President has the power to ignore a law passed by Congress are relinquishing authority not just to this Republican President, but to future presidents of any party. They are helping to render future members of their own party powerless to check an executive who claims expansive powers under the Constitution or a future Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution.

The fact that so many of the poll-watching, damp fingers in the wind, congressional Democrats have avoided Feingold and his resolution like the plague is proof positive that Feingold's censure motion is based on principle and not on politics. Nothing scares unprincipled politicians so much as a person who actually has principles and acts on them.

This is no stunt; Feingold is playing for keeps and everyone in Washington knows it. That's why so many people are so scared of him. And, why his words on the President and the implication of the Republican Party's lock-step defense of his power grab are so powerful:

The Republican effort to defend the President works against the party in the long run, and it also goes against the party's longstanding rhetoric about checking government power and strengthening individual freedoms. It's hardly in keeping with those values to allow Americans' communications to be monitored without a warrant, or to concentrate power in one branch of government. One of the best ways to limit government power is to ensure that each branch provides a check on the other two, but most Republicans in Congress today aren't checking the President's power or defending the judicial branch's right to do so – they are giving him a blank check to ignore the rule of law.

A party that prides itself on limiting government, and supporting individual freedom and the rule of law, should think twice before it allows any President to ignore the laws that Congress passes. By supporting the President now, Republicans are making it tougher for members of their own party to challenge the power of future presidents and departing from their own values in the process. That's a short-sighted strategy that won't serve either party, or the nation, in the long run. What would serve the nation, and support the rule of law, is for a few courageous Republicans to follow the example set during the Watergate scandal by standing up to a President of their own party, asking tough questions, and holding the President accountable for his abuse of power.

So, Senator Feingold's call for censure has majorities in both parties scared out of their wits. That's got to be a sign that he's right.