Supreme Court, media team up to rein in Bush excesses

The New York Times and other media outlets recently revealed the existence of another Bush administration "fighting the war on terrorism" program that focuses on tracking financial transactions of American citizens and any others who might be linked to activities sympathetic to terrorism.

Information on this program comes on the heels of the revelation of unauthorized warrantless wiretapping and National Security Agency-ordered collection of data on phone records of U.S. citizens as well. The president and administration spokesmen have continually defended these actions as necessary to the war on terror and constitutionally justified under powers vested in the president.

The revelations of the monitoring-of-financial-transactions program have been greeted with universal condemnation by conservatives and Republicans in Congress. They charge The New York Times and the media in general with breaking the law, unauthorized leaking of classified information and exposing details of secret intelligence programs.

They did not express any concern about the legality of the financial monitoring program or how it ties into questions about the overall administration approach of secretly launching programs that may or may not be authorized properly. And their supporting documentation are memos from the attorney general asserting that the president inherently has the authority to take these actions under the Constitution.

The House has been debating a resolution to condemn the actions of the press, and House leaders have called for criminal investigations. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., described the actions of the print media as "loose lips that kill American people."

This approach has been tried and proven by the administration as a successful way to keep the argument defined as one of being patriotic and supporting the fight against terrorism and thereby avoid having to deal with the also real arguments over potential abuse of power and excessive unauthorized use of presidential power.

So far, it appears that this approach is working. Polls show that most Americans support administration actions with regard to unauthorized wiretapping and phone-data collection. Yet, those same polls show that support for these activities drops substantially if the courts were to rule that the administration actions were not justified or supportable under our existing laws and separation-of-powers provisions of the Constitution.

And then, finally, the Supreme Court weighed in on one of these areas of contention in a way that should send a sobering signal to the administration and, in my judgment, encourage us to support the efforts of media outlets, not condemn them.

The Supreme Court ruled that President Bush overstepped his authority when he ordered military war-crimes trials for Guantánamo Bay detainees. The court also ruled that the military war-crimes trials were illegal and violated both U.S. and international law. The administration's response was predictable — it said the court's rulings highlighted mostly "technical" points. Even Republican Sen. John McCain repudiated that response and dismissed the notion that the violations were merely technical.

But more importantly, we live in an environment in which one party controls the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives, and there is a perception that anyone who questions actions by this administration is subject to questions about his or her patriotism or desire to fight terrorism.

In some ways, the press is doing the job a thorough and independent Congress should have done with regard to all of these programs and special actions the administration has taken — ask questions and demand either irrefutable justification or a broader legal review of the programs themselves.

We can't ask the press to do this job for us. We can take steps this Nov. 7 to put representatives in place who can do this job.

Carl Jeffers is a Seattle- and Los Angeles-based columnist, political analyst and lecturer. He hosts a KIRO-AM (710) talk-show program. E-mail: cjintel@juno.com