Chance for Redemption

I think one of the reasons the Alito nomination caused such consternation in the blogging community is because the Senate Judiciary Democrats botched the hearings. Between Roberts and Alito I've come to completely jettison the hearings process as a source of any kind of valuable information. The Dems weren't asking enough questions, they narraowed focus onto trivial issues, and they generally seemed more concerned with hearing themselves talk than anything else. The groundswell of support for a filibuster came too late, and the hearings played a role in that.

I don't know that in our media age whether or not you CAN use Senate hearings to make a case. But we'll certainly have a chance to find out, and quickly, when hearings into the illegal domestic spying program begin next week. Glenn Greenwald has an excellent post about questions for the Attorney General. It is now clear that Abu Gonzales lied in his confirmation hearings, and Russ Feingold wasn't hesitant in pointing that out (although an Attorney General lying to Congress apparently makes page A7 nowadays):

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) charged yesterday that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales misled the Senate during his confirmation hearing a year ago when he appeared to try to avoid answering a question about whether the president could authorize warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens.

In a letter to the attorney general yesterday, Feingold demanded to know why Gonzales dismissed the senator's question about warrantless eavesdropping as a "hypothetical situation" during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January 2005. At the hearing, Feingold asked Gonzales where the president's authority ends and whether Gonzales believed the president could, for example, act in contravention of existing criminal laws and spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant.

Gonzales said that it was impossible to answer such a hypothetical question but that it was "not the policy or the agenda of this president" to authorize actions that conflict with existing law. He added that he would hope to alert Congress if the president ever chose to authorize warrantless surveillance, according to a transcript of the hearing.

"It now appears that the Attorney General was not being straight with the Judiciary Committee and he has some explaining to do," Feingold said in a statement yesterday.

I have no doubt Feingold will lead the effort in these hearings to get to the bottom of this program and understand why the President chose to ignore standing law. Bush's claim last week that "the law was from 1978 and didn't meet today's challenges" is the latest in a series of ridiculous justifications for the program from this White House. You know, the Constitution's pretty old too, yet a whole lot of Presidents have managed to follow it. If the statute didn't meet changing needs, you change the statute. You don't circumvent it.

Greenwald is absolutely right when he says this:

I believe we should not leave it up to the members of the Judiciary Committee -- again -- to decide for themselves which questions will be asked. We should try to play an active role in demanding that the Attorney General be held accountable and that the real questions raised by this scandal be meaningfully explored.

I hate the words "proactive" and "reactive," but in this case they make sense. I will be calling my Senator on the Judiciary Comittee
and asking her chief of staff to present the right questions on this program, to make sure civil liberties are protected, to make sure the Constitution is protected, to make sure Presidential power is kept in check, and to redeem the notion of Congressional oversight when the executive branch overreaches.

In the end, I believe the President will be forced to stop going around the law. How soon is up to our Democrats on Judiciary. That's a worthy cause.