Every day brings further news that John McCain’s positions are worse than previously believed. Now he claims the President can legally order, as Bush did, wiretapping that is expressly banned by law. If true, the same doctrine would allow the President to order virtually any activity, despite Congressional sanctions or bans.
A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.
In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance.
Mr. McCain believes that “neither the administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the A.C.L.U. and trial lawyers, understand were constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin wrote.
Now that he hopes to achieve the Presidency, McCain here clearly endorses the “unitary executive” theory that our government is an elected dictatorship. Since this claim can only hurt him electorally this year, one can only assume it represents his real opinion.
Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports has philosopher Gerald Dworkin’s (UC Davis) statements from major figures on the central question of our day:
Is the Rack Torture?
Statements by various individuals as to whether the Rack is torture.
Mukasey: I haven’t been read into the details of the Rack, and I
understand that these details are classified. I am firmly opposed to
torture, torture is illegal, but I do not know whether the Rack is
torture. To comment further would be to expose sincere and loyal
Inquisitors to the possibility of retro-active condemnation.
Bush: I am not going to give aid to our enemies by disclosing details of
our interrogation techniques. But if we do expose detainees to the Rack
it is not torture, because we do not torture.
Cheney: A little stretching never hurt anybody. I understand it’s
actually recommended before exercising.
John Yoo: It is well established that torture involves inflicting pain
equivalent to that of the pain accompanying serious physical injury,
such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death. No
one stretched on the Rack has ever suffered fromkidney, lung, or spleen
failure nor, to the best of my recollection, has died. As to impairment
of bodily function, it would be a stretch to include deformed limbs
under this heading.
David Addington: Congress may no more regulate the president’s ability
to use the Rack as an interrogation technique than it may regulate his
ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield. Decisions about
whether to stretch or not require the unity in purpose and energy in
action that characterize the presidency rather than Congress.
Gonzalez: I cannot recall what the Rack was. Nor do I have any
recollection about whether I ever discussed it with the President. The
testimony of some that they heard me mention the Rack in a meeting on
March 23rd — a meeting which I do not remember –may have been a
confusion of Rack with Iraq.
Daniel Levin: I cannot say since I have never been exposed to the Rack.
I do have an appointment next Friday for a 50 minute session in Seville.
Lest you mistakenly think this is simply humor, here is Attorney General Mukasey responding to a question on this issue in Congress:
Mukasey on Shocks, Rack & Screw, & Waterboarding of Citizens
Here Mukasey addresses whether beating is torture. Evidently not, in his all so learned opinion: