About that "bounce" in the polls recently.
Mr. Bush started the year, the first of his second term, with a lower job approval rating than any two-term president in the past 50 years. And his numbers continued to sink from there.
"Adventus" is the exact Christian Latin equivalent of the Greek "parousia."--H.A. Reinhold
"When we talk about love we have to become mature or we will become sentimental. Basically love means...being responsible, responsibility to our family, toward our civilization, and now by the pressures of history, toward the universe of humankind."--Reinhold Niebuhr
"Religion is responsibility, or it is nothing at all."--Jacques Derrida
Mr. Bush started the year, the first of his second term, with a lower job approval rating than any two-term president in the past 50 years. And his numbers continued to sink from there.
Refining what constitutes an assassination was just one of many legal interpretations made by Bush administration lawyers. Time and again, the administration asked government lawyers to draw up new rules and reinterpret old ones to approve activities once banned or discouraged under the congressional reforms beginning in the 1970s, according to these officials and seven lawyers who once worked on these matters.And why is this happening? The "official story" (still being trumpted by WaPo here) is that the nation must be protected from "another attack." As General Mihael Hayden, deputy director national intelligence, says:
Not stopping another attack not only will be a professional failure, he argued, but also "will move the line" again on acceptable legal limits to counterterrorism.But the real reason? The same reason Dick Cheney's official residence is obscured on Google Earth: knowledge is power. Control the knowledge, you control the power:
"The Bush administration did not seek a broad debate on whether commander-in-chief powers can trump international conventions and domestic statutes in our struggle against terrorism," said Radsan, the former CIA lawyer, who is a professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn. "They could have separated the big question from classified details to operations and had an open debate. Instead, an inner circle of lawyers and advisers worked around the dissenters in the administration and one-upped each other with extreme arguments."Close off who has access to the discussion, you control the direction of the discussion.
The semantic effect of this journalistic obfuscation is clear. If Palestinian land is not occupied but merely part of a legal dispute that might be resolved in law courts or discussions over tea, then a Palestinian child who throws a stone at an Israeli soldier in this territory is clearly acting insanely.Robert Fiske
In the Obey Your Thirst/Image Is Everything era of American politics, Bush's National Victory campaign is a creepy innovation. It features the president thumping a document -- the "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" -- that was largely written not by diplomats or generals but by a pair of academics from Duke University named Peter Feaver and Christopher Gelpi. Essentially a PR document, the paper is basically a living political experiment, designed to prove that Americans will more readily accept military casualties if the word "victory" is repeated a great many times in public.Matt Taibbi
"This is not really a strategy document from the Pentagon about fighting the insurgency," Gelpi told The New York Times. "The document is clearly targeted at American public opinion."
The seven military recruiters here, six of whom have themselves served in Iraq, want the sign taken away. "It's disheartening," Staff Sgt. Gary J. Capan, the station's commander, said. "Everyone knows that people are dying in Iraq, but to walk past this on the way to work every day is too much."New York Times
But Scott Cameron, a local man who was wounded in the Vietnam War, says his sign should remain. Mr. Cameron volunteers for a candidate for governor of Minnesota whose campaign opened a storefront office next door to the recruiting station, and he has permission to post the message he describes as "not antiwar, but pro-veteran."
....
A few days after the opening, the office drew a visit from next door. Sergeant Capan, 31, said his recruiters were upset and wanted the sign removed. One woman who had just returned from duty in Iraq, he said, found the sign especially disconcerting and impersonal. "It was upsetting to veterans who don't look at their friends and colleagues killed as numbers on a list," he said.
... We forget that every adult was brought up on fairy tales so it's natural to go on and, politically for example, want to believe that your President is a nice, honest man. The inability to turn to an adult perspective once you get to the age where you have some political weight is a great tragedy, and this is a period of history when it seems the most obvious type of disguise is on display to the entire world and yet those are the people who are still in power.Bruce Springsteen
Bush hoped to erase the year's infamies with the election in Iraq on December 15, his ultimate turning point. He delivered five major speeches crafted by his new adviser on the National Security Council, Peter Feaver, a Duke University political scientist and co-author of "Choosing Your Battles," based on his public opinion research showing that "the public is defeat phobic, not casualty phobic." In one speech, Bush mentioned "victory" 15 times, against a background embossed with the slogan "Plan for Victory," and the White House issued a document entitled "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq."
On December 14, the president invited bipartisan groups of senators and representatives to White House briefings on the progress that would follow the election. Among those assembled in the Roosevelt Room were the president, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Dnald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley - and Peter Feaver, the polling expert. At the meeting with senators after the presentation, Bush called first on Senator John McCain, the Republican maverick, who gave an enthusiastic statement of support. A few more spoke. "Great, gotta go," said Bush. Afterwards, Feaver buttonholed senators to survey their opinions on the new approach.
Since the election of the Shiite slate that will hold power for four years, dedicated to an Islamic state allied with Iran, the president and his advisers have fallen eerily silent. As his annus horribilis draws to a close, Bush appears to have expended the turning points. Welcome to victory.
Despite the gain in polls, some advisers see trouble ahead. Bush's top aides are telling friends they are burned out. Andrew H. Card Jr., already the longest-serving White House chief of staff in a half-century, is among those thought to be looking to leave. Rove's fate is uncertain, as he appears likely to remain under investigation in the CIA leak case, people close to the inquiry said.Let's see: we know the White House has dropped Katrina recovery off of its radar screen; but the stories about New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are still out there. And everyone ignores the impact of Rita on the rest of the Louisiana coast, and the Texas Gulf Coast from Louisiana down to Galveston.
Some are concerned that although Bush has changed his approach, he has not changed himself. He has been reluctant to look outside his inner circle for advice, and even some closest to Bush call that a mistake because aides have given up trying to get him to do things they know he would reject.
As they end a difficult year, advisers said they know they cannot take the recent political progress for granted. "We view this as not mission ccomplished," one top aide said. "It's going to need to be sustained."
No one in the White House expects the speech to include anything of the magnitude of Social Security. As one aide put it, instead of home runs, Bush will focus on hitting singles and doubles. "The lesson from this year," said Grover G. Norquist, a GOP activist close to Rove, "is you cannot do anything dramatic unless you have 60 votes" in the Senate, where Republicans are five shy of the count needed to break a filibuster.Uh, that would be the Patriot Act, WaPo; at a minimum. You know, the one that was supposed to pass handily, and is now extended for only 5 weeks? I mean, even the Republicans in Congress realize they haven't been doing their jobs.
WE remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by King Herod. Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.--Book of Common Prayer
"It would be inappropriate for a lawyer to say, 'The law means A, but I'm going to say B because to interpret it as A would violate American values,'" Yoo said. "A lawyer's job is if the law says A, the law says A."The question of "what the law says" is a question of jurisprudence as well as a question of legal interpretation.
"He has succeeded and won people over and advanced his ideas," said Manus Cooney, who hired Yoo on to the Judiciary Committee staff of Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) in 1995. "As far as conservative academics, I don't think there's anyone in the law whose contacts run deeper in the three branches, or higher."UPDATE: And this is simply one reason why no lawyer can argue that his interpretation is one of "black letter law" that no one else has yet found in that same law, yet his unique interpetation is true and can be trusted:
Defense lawyers in some of the country's biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.That last bit could have come directly from John Yoo. And it is going to sound just as weak in a court of law, as it does in a newspaper article.
The lawyers said in interviews that they wanted to learn whether the men were monitored by the agency and, if so, whether the government withheld critical information or misled judges and defense lawyers about how and why the men were singled out.
The expected legal challenges, in cases from Florida, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia, add another dimension to the growing controversy over the agency's domestic surveillance program and could jeopardize some of the Bush administration's most important courtroom victories in terror cases, legal analysts say.
The question of whether the N.S.A. program was used in criminal prosecutions and whether it improperly influenced them raises "fascinating and difficult questions," said Carl W. Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond who has studied terrorism prosecutions.
"It seems to me that it would be relevant to a person's case," Professor Tobias said. "I would expect the government to say that it is highly sensitive material, but we have legal mechanisms to balance the national security needs with the rights of defendants. I think judges are very conscientious about trying to sort out these issues and balance civil liberties and national security."
While some civil rights advocates, legal experts and members of Congress have said President Bush did not have authority to order eavesdropping by the security agency without warrants, the White House and the Justice Department continued on Tuesday to defend the legality and propriety of the program.
Trent Duffy, a spokesman for the White House, declined to comment in Crawford, Tex., when asked about a report in The New York Times that the security agency had tapped into some of the country's main telephone arteries to conduct broader data-mining operations in the search for terrorists.
But Mr. Duffy said: "This is a limited program. This is not about monitoring phone calls designed to arrange Little League practice or what to bring to a potluck dinner. These are designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings and churches."
He added: "The president believes that he has the authority - and he does - under the Constitution to do this limited program. The Congress has been briefed. It is fully in line with the Constitution and also protecting American civil liberties."
The current dispute over whether the president had the authority to order domestic spying without warrants, despite a law against it, has put new focus on the legal officials who have guided Bush. And the qualifications of Ashcroft, Gonzales, and Miers could become a focus of the upcoming Senate hearings on the spying decision.The crux of the biscuit: our governmental system is only as good as the men and women who agree to be bound by it.
Legal advice given to the president in national security matters can hardly be of greater importance. Telling Bush that he lacks the authority to make a particular move could leave the country vulnerable to attack; assuring him that he has the power to override civil liberties could consign innocent suspects to imprisonment, abuse, or disappearance to secret holding areas in other countries.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, Bush's legal advisers have cleared the way for him to hold enemy combatants without trials; eavesdrop on overseas telephone calls and e-mails; place ever-greater numbers of government documents under a veil of secrecy; imprison a US citizen indefinitely on the suspicion of terrorist links; and, according to The Washington Post, operate a secret CIA prison in an Eastern European country.
In each case, the legal official responsible for assessing the extent of Bush's powers was Ashcroft, Gonzales, or Miers.
Defining the president's powers -- when he can act alone, when he's constrained by treaties, when he must seek congressional authorization -- is extremely difficult. If there's one area of the law where the framers of the Constitution relied on the good faith of the men and women in government, it's in adhering to a system of divided powers. Nonetheless, presidents and members of Congress have often disagreed on their respective powers, and the Supreme Court has approached such cases warily, fearful of upsetting the constitutional balance of power.
The determinations of Ashcroft, Gonzales, and Miers have had great weight because they effectively cut Congress out of the decision-making, at least until the Supreme Court could weigh in. But in spying cases especially, the targets weren't aware that they were being monitored, and thus could not challenge Bush in court.
"Have it alls," the ideal Guard recruit, who wants to go to college, likes military paraphernalia, wants to be an officer, and actually tests higher than those who want to use the Guard for tuition.But working-class youth do otherwise have a worthless existence. What does Professor Markos think all the consumer society is all about, if not to convince them of that?
The last category accounts for 32 percent of Guard members and is the one Jones and company are most interested in.
Moskos, the professor, said the biggest challenge for the Guard is to make it enticing for men and women from more affluent families to join. In England, the military has a different cache, he said.
Military recruiters in the United States acknowledge that getting first daughter Jenna Bush to join would be a far bigger boost than even doubling the recruiting budget again, Moskos said.
"Unless you get privileged youth to serve, you'll have recruitment difficulties," he said. "This is trying to convince working-class youth they otherwise have a worthless existence.
"I'd like see an ad with somebody listening to Mozart and reading Milton or
Shakespeare," Moskos said.
The consequences of Yoo's vaunted "flexibility" have been self-destructive for the US—we have turned a world in which international law was on our side into one in which we see it as our enemy. The Pentagon's National Defense Strategy, issued in March 2005, states,Yoo protests that he was never in a position to be so powerful, but the NYR article establishes that he protests too much. It is long, but worth reading.Our strength as a nation state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak, using international fora, judicial processes, and terrorism.The proposition that judicial processes —the very essence of the rule of law —are to be dismissed as a strategy of the weak, akin to terrorism, suggests the continuing strength of Yoo's influence. When the rule of law is seen simply as a device used by terrorists, something has gone perilously wrong. Michael Ignatieff has written that "it is the very nature of a democracy that it not only does, but should, fight with one hand tied behind its back. It is also in the nature of democracy that it prevails against its enemies precisely because it does." Yoo persuaded the Bush administration to untie its hand and abandon the constraints of the rule of law. Perhaps that is why we are not prevailing.
Kanye West had it right: Bush is a racist. But that's such an offensive charge, that none dare level it unless we have photos of Bush in a white peaked cap standing smiling that twisted smile before a burning cross. Bush is an amoral monster, but none dare say it unless we find his version of the "Final Solution" in draft form and it is leaked to the New York Times or the Washington Post. Bush is hell-bent on destroying the very democracy he claims to promote and protect, but none dare state that obvious fact until...well, until when?Where is the shame in Washington today? How does Donald Rumsfeld not blush in the presence of the soldiers he so routinely betrays? How does Dick Cheney maintain that straight face, treating core values as a joke? The recasting of the nation's moral meaning - a blatant embrace of ends-justify-the-means - is happening in plain daylight. No shadows here.
Everytime the Bush administration is caught in one of its repugnant purposes (Thank God, again this year, for Seymour Hersh), the White House declares its intention to stay the course. Torture? Wiretapping? Kidnapping? Deceit? The president's eyes widen: Trust me, he says with a twisted smile. Then he leans closer to display a snarling defiance. The combination reduces his critics to sputters.
Perhaps Bush's savviest achievement has been to make the public think that Rumsfeld and Cheney are the dark geniuses behind the administration's malevolence. If Bush is taken as too shallow to have a fascist ideology; as too weak to stick with hard policies that undermine democracy; as a religious nutcase whose apocalyptic fantasies don't matter; as a man, in sum, the average citizen can regard as slightly less than average - then what he is pulling off will not be called by its proper name until it is too late. 2005? Oh yes, that was the year of the coup.
Pope Benedict XVI, standing on the spot where he appeared as the newly elected pontiff last spring, delivered his first Christmas message to a large crowd in St. Peter's Square and warned of dangers of technological advance made in the absence of religious belief.Though maybe it just sounds better coming from a poet:
"Today we can marshal vast material resources," he said from a balcony to thousands of people below as rain poured down from gray skies. "But the men and women in our technological age risk becoming victims of their own intellectual and technical achievements, ending up in spiritual barrenness and emptiness of heart.
"The modern age is often seen as an awakening of reason from its slumbers, humanity's enlightenment after an age of darkness," he said. "Yet without the light of Christ, the light of reason is not sufficient to enlighten humanity and the world."
WASHINGTON -- Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday supported government eavesdropping to prevent terrorism but said a major controversy over presidential powers could have been avoided by obtaining court warrants.What's not to love about a guy who can so fluidly be on both sides of an issue, standing firm and resolute by standing for absolutely nothing at all.
Powell said that when he was in the Cabinet, he was not told that President Bush authorized a warrantless National Security Agency surveillance operation after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Appearing on ABC's "This Week" Powell said he sees "absolutely nothing wrong with the president authorizing these kinds of actions" to protect the nation.
But he added, "My own judgment is that it didn't seem to me, anyway, that it would have been that hard to go get the warrants. And even in the case of an emergency, you go and do it."
President Bush has been summoning newspaper editors lately in an effort to prevent publication of stories he considers damaging to national security.Say goodnight, Gracie.
The efforts have failed, but the rare White House sessions with the executive editors of The Washington Post and New York Times are an indication of how seriously the president takes the recent reporting that has raised questions about the administration's anti-terror tactics.
There is nothing I can give you, which you have not; But there is much, very much, that while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant. Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within reach, is joy. There is a radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see, and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look. Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly, or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, believe me that angel's hand is there; the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Our joys too: be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts. And so, at this time, I greet you. Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.--Fra Giovanni 1513
HOW far Christianity had seized hold of the imagery of the sun god and appropriated it for her own use can be seen vividly today in the necropolis excavated under St. Peter's in Rome during the search for the apostle's grave. Not far from the traditional site of the tomb there is a small Christian burial chamber of the third century, hemmed in between two pagan mausoleums. The walls of the interior are decorated with biblical themes-fishermen, the Good Shepherd, and Jonah-but in the ceiling there is a splendid mosaic of Helios in his chariot of the sun, drawn by white steeds. His right hand (now lost) must have been raised as a signal for the journey to start. He stands erect, his mantle fluttering in the breeze and his left hand holding the world orb. But it is the nimbus of light rays round his head that reveals his true identity. The lower rays are fashioned into a T cross, a design unknown in earlier pagan examples of this type. The Helios is Christ. No wonder Christian apologists had to deny so often that the members of the church were sun-worshipers!This kind of data is shocking only to the ignorant, and I have to count Mr. Dobny among their number. His silly generalizations about religion demean the contributions to Western culture of Aquinas, Augustine, Anselm, and so many people I cannot start to mention them all. Indeed, it is Thomas Cahill's assertion that the Irish saved civilization, and they did so in the name of religion. Literacy, that beacon of reason so fundamental we insist every one in a civilized country learn to read, was once the province almost solely of monks and priests, and the books Mr. Dobny no doubt prizes as much as I do, were kept alive from the time of Heraclitus by religious people. But not by an irrational fear of death, or a perplexed group of benighted fools who couldn't explain a solar eclipse in Newtonian terms.
On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the story still will be told: a poor woman traveling, hugely pregnant and exhausted, along on a dirt road. Her husband, going door to door, looking for shelter and finding none. Off the beaten track, in the hay beside the animals, she gives birth, and even though her child is manger-born, something happens: People come to see him. They tell others. Word reaches the shepherds high in the hills.But it is also, and inescapably, about this (though I would never so forcibly tell her so; this addition is for my own sake):
This is a holiday that, at its heart, is about grace from unlikely beginnings and hope in dark times, about stories spread among the poor and the outcast about someone who was coming to give them a chance. It's a holiday well suited to a time of ancient rites designed to remind people of light in the darkness: the Norse Yule, the Roman Saturnalia, celebrations of family and harvest, warmth and plenty, in the coldest and shortest of our days.
TODAY the virgin is on her way to the cave where she will give birth in a manner beyond understanding to the Word who is, in all eternity. Rejoice, therefore, universe, when you hear it heralded: with the angels and the shepherds, glorify him who chose to be seen as a new-born babe, while remaining God in all eternity.Which, of course, is the problem, what Johannes Climacus called "the Absolute Paradox" (and why I would never force it on Athenae). But we have to acknowledge that this is just as much a mystery, too. For, as Sidney Callahan says:
MARY speaks for all those who have been lowly, on the outside, at the bottom, colonized, suppressed, andtotally outside of the halls of the princes and power wielders. If she has been favored and blessed, if she is a sign of the ultimate and greatest power, then the lowly who follow her can believe themselves favored and backed up by the universe. They may make their demands and unite against the princes who oppress them. If the hidden is real, if it is true that spiritual power is greater than the power of guns and bombs, then the lowly and the oppressed have hope. If the Almighty sides with justice, hope can be fulfilled and all can win equality.That is the mystery of the life of the man whose birth we celebrate, was all about. That he was proclaimed as the Creator of the Universe; but as far as the Romans were concerned, he died as a defender of the poor, proclaiming a kingdom that raised them, not Caesar, to the highest position.
It is no accident that almost always the cult of Mary has been a cult of the people. Everywhere "folk Catholicism" has main-tained a devotion to Mary in the face of opposition and disparagement from theologians and leaders of church and state. True the major central doctrines of Christianity were frequently obscured by crude superstitions and by importation of pagan myths and rites into the cult of Mary. But as at the beginning of the devotion of Mary and in the first developments of under-standing of her, perhaps it has been something more subtle which has fired this devotion. Perhaps it has been the realization in Marian cultic practice of the importance of the lowly and humble and outcast and oppressed who will triumph in the end. If Mary, the young unmarried pregnant girl, can believe in the incredible happening that she is a part of, if she can trust herself and believe in her role in the great story, then the most ordinary people can believe in their parts in the drama. Her exaltation is their exaltation. She carries the banner for all those powerless ones whom the princes have ignored as they go to and fro on the earth making policy, making war, making for-tunes, and bringing destruction everywhere. Mary is the cham-pion for all the obscure, peaceful ones who live in the corners of the world, who work, who help each other, who bear chil-dren and hope to see them live and prosper-those who do not aspire to the thrones and the vanities of princes.
The poor may have seen a defender of their cause in the woman and mother. She is beloved in an infinite variety of feminine forms, from young virgin to older mother. By exalting Mary as queen of mercy, queen of peace, a mother most gracious, a mother most wise, in all of the traditional devotions, there has been a hope that the feminine qualities which have been demeaned for so long in our society could have their day and could be influential in ordinary life. The high, cool exercise of power and judgment was never seen as part of Mary's role. She never rejected the poor and the lowly or those who tried and met failure time after time. While Christ's mercy and ten-derness and feminine qualities were often obscured by the male princes and powers who fought in his name and killed in his honor and taxed for his representatives, still Mary as mother could guard that aspect of the Christian message which her son's followers hid so successfully.
IN the liturgy the solstice themes of the birth and the appearance of the light or the sun powerfully recur, and are interwoven with the related themes of our seeing and of the renewal of the earth. . . .
The theme is not the infancy or childhood of Jesus. It is rather that the presence of the man Jesus is the presence of the Light and of the Sun. . .. Just as with the world's solstice, light is celebrated where light seems most threatened. Solstice festivity means to encourage the return of the light. Christian liturgy at solstice means to pray for the Light and to celebrate its presence. . . .
The immense popularity of Christmas among us is probably due to the dominance in North America of people whose ethnic origins are in northern latitudes where the solstice is an impressive and still powerful event, as it is in much of North America as well. Most of what has been added to Christmas over the ages can be interpreted as solstice phenomena: feasting and greetings and greens and the light-tree and lights against the darkness and the yule-log and nostalgia for the recovery of old memories and, for us especially, gift-giving and consumer over-spending-all are attempts to secure the return of light and summertime wholeness, are mid-winter protest.
These solstice phenomena are powerful metaphors for us. The darkness does stand for our fears and the feast does awaken-perhaps more than we would have them awakenedour hopes. These metaphors ought not be easily maligned. The pastoral intention of the origin of the feast may be recalled. The human feast of Christmas needs a good deal of sympathetic interpretation and loving support. We have had enough campaigns against the world's Christmas. It is more important to ask: "Why do we keep it with such vigor?" For us solstice is an immensely important human and therefore pastoral occasion.--Gordon Lathrop
It is both terrible and comforting to dwell in the inconceivable nearness of God, and so to be loved by God that the first and last gift is infinity and inconceivability itself. But we have no choice. God is with us.--Karl Rahner
No one can truly celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God--for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.--Oscar Romero
The attorney general should be immune from lawsuits for ordering wiretaps of Americans without permission from a court, Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, wrote in a memorandum in 1984 as a government lawyer in the Reagan administration.The best argument the White House can come up with is basically a legal technicality.
The memorandum, released yesterday by the National Archives, made recommendations concerning a lawsuit against former Attorney General John N. Mitchell over a wiretap he had authorized without a court's permission in 1970. The government was investigating a plot to destroy underground utility tunnels in Washington and to kidnap Henry A. Kissinger, the national security adviser.
The White House said yesterday that the issues discussed in that memorandum were not the same as those posed by President Bush's orders to the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on international communications without warrants.
"Judge Alito's memo regarding a purely domestic threat is completely different from N.S.A.'s efforts to thwart threats from foreign terrorist organizations," said Steve Schmidt, a White House spokesman.
In a letter to Judge Alito, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said yesterday that he would question him vigorously about his current views on whether the attorney general and other top officials "have absolute immunity from suits based on even willful unconstitutional acts."
In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled that wiretaps without warrants in the context of domestic intelligence surveillance violated the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. The court did not address international communications.