(HT to TalkLeft and How Appealing)
From the California Daily Journal:
An effort to restore habeas corpus rights for enemy combatants could be the first test of the Democrats' resolve to change course in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who is expected to become chairman, confirmed Thursday that he is drafting a bill to undo portions of a recently passed law that prevent terrorism detainees from going to federal court to challenge the government's right to hold them indefinitely.
More in extended.
"It was crazy," [Leahy] said during an interview broadcast Wednesday on National Public Radio. "After 200 years of habeas corpus, we threw it out after just a few hours of debate."
He has also voiced concern that the bill allows the White House to determine what kinds of coercive interrogation procedures are off-limits.
If Leahy does manage to pass a bill restoring habeas corpus, Dear Leader will certainly strike it down. Meaning that the restoration of habeas corpus will have to wait until the courts deem the measure unconstitutional or until a Democrat is in the White House.
As for the "terrorist surveillance program," the fight isn't over. Leahy said to the Associated Press:
"We have been asked to make sweeping and fundamental changes in law for reasons that we do not know and in order to legalize secret, unlawful actions that the administration has refused to fully divulge....If legislation is needed for judicial review, then we should write that legislation together, in a bipartisan and thoughtful way."...
But the Bush administration is not so keen on working together when it comes to national security matters, particularly regarding the president's warrantless wiretapping program:
The Bush administration has a backup plan. In speeches over the next few weeks, the Justice Department will launch a new campaign for the legislation by casting the choice as one between supporting the program or dropping it altogether--and appeaing soft on al-Qaida.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez will make the eavesdropping program the focus of a Nov. 18 speech at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Kenneth L. Wainstein, assistant attorney general for the national security [sic], will make a similar pitch Wednesday to the American Bar Association.
So much for the bipartisan love-fest. Back to your regularly-scheduled Terra! Terra! Terra! rheotoric.
Wainstein won't exactly be speaking to an enthusiastic group of supporters. Back in February, the ABA spoke out against the president's surveillance program, as currently constituted:
Resolved, that the American Bar Association calls upon the President to abide by the limitations which the Constitution imposes on a president under our system of checks and balances and respect the essential roles of the Congress and the judicial branch in enduring that our national security is protected in a manner consistent with constitutional guarantees.
Further resolved, that the American Bar Association opposes any future electronic surveillance insider the United States by any U.S. government agency for foreign intelligence purposes that does not comply with the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, ...and urges the President, if he believes that FISA is inadequate to safeguard national security, to seek appropriate amendments or new legislation rather than acting without explicit statutory authorization.
Thankfully, a rubber stamp of the program by the lame duck Congress
isn't going to happen...but you can't blame them for trying. While Democrats may seek to pass legislation restraining the president's warrantless wiretapping program, it will be met with a quick veto. The likelihood of a compromise being unlikely, Congress' oversight function gains importance under such contrained circumstances. But with arguments of executive privilege and national security sensitivity, it may be the Intelligence Committees alone who are able to investigate the program fully...and even then there's no assurance that full disclosure will be granted. Meaning that the courts, as is the case with the Military Commisssions Act, will likely play a more important role in the fate of these two controversial issues.