Backward at the F.B.I.
The Obama administration has long been bumbling along in the footsteps of its predecessor when it comes to sacrificing Americans’ basic rights and liberties under the false flag of fighting terrorism. Now the Obama team seems ready to lurch even farther down that dismal road than George W. Bush did.
Instead of tightening the relaxed rules for F.B.I. investigations — not just of terrorism suspects but of pretty much anyone — that were put in place in the Bush years, President Obama’s Justice Department is getting ready to push the proper bounds of privacy even further.
Attorney General John Ashcroft began weakening rights protections after 9/11. Three years ago, his successor, Michael Mukasey, issued rules changes that permit agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to use highly intrusive methods — including lengthy physical surveillance and covert infiltration of lawful groups — even when there is no firm basis for suspecting any wrongdoing.
The Mukasey guidelines let the bureau go after people identified in part by race or religion, which only raises the danger of government spying on law-abiding Americans based on their political activity or ethnic background.
Incredibly, the Obama administration thinks Mr. Mukasey did not go far enough. Charlie Savage reported in The Times last week that the F.B.I plans to issue a new edition of its operational manual that will give agents significant new powers to search law enforcement and private databases, go through household trash or deploy surveillance teams, with even fewer checks against abuse.
Take, for example, the lowest category of investigations, called an “assessment.” The category was created as part of Mr. Mukasey’s revisions to allow agents to look into people and groups “proactively” where there is no evidence tying them to possible criminal or terrorist activity. Under the new rules, agents will be allowed to search databases without making a record about it. Once an assessment has started, agents will be permitted to conduct lie detector tests and search people’s trash as part of evaluating a potential informant. No factual basis for suspecting them of wrongdoing will be necessary.
The F.B.I. general counsel, Valerie Caproni, said agents want to be able to use the information found in a subject’s trash to pressure that person to assist in a government investigation. Um, well, yes, that is the problem. It only heightens concern about privacy, improper squeezing of individuals, and the adequacy of supervision.
Currently, surveillance squads, which are trained to surreptitiously follow targets, may be used only once during an assessment. The new rules will allow repeated use.
They also expand the special rules covering “undisclosed participation” in an organization by an F.B.I. agent or informant. The current rules are not public, and, as things stand they still won’t be. But we do know the changes allow an agent or informant to surreptitiously attend up to five meetings of a group before the rules for undisclosed participation — whatever they are — kick in.
The changes also remove the requirement of extra supervision when public officials, members of the news media or academic scholars are investigated for activities unrelated to their positions, like drug cases. That may sound like a reasonable distinction, but it ignores an inflated potential for politically motivated decision-making.
The F.B.I.’s recent history includes the abuse of national security letters to gather information about law-abiding citizens without court orders, and inappropriate investigations of antiwar and environmental activists. That is hardly a foundation for further loosening the rules for conducting investigations or watering down internal record-keeping and oversight.
Everyone wants to keep America safe. But under President Bush and now under President Obama, these changes have occurred without any real discussion about whether the supposed added security is worth the harm to civil liberties. The White House cares so little about providing meaningful oversight that Mr. Obama has yet to nominate a successor for Glenn Fine, the diligent Justice Department inspector general who left in January.
Finally, Congress is showing some small sign of interest. Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, has written to Robert Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, asking that the new policies be scuttled. On Friday afternoon, Senators Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Charles Grassley of Iowa, the chairman and the ranking Republican member of the Judiciary Committee, called on Mr. Mueller to provide an opportunity to review the changes before they are carried out, and to release a public version of the final manual on the F.B.I.’s Web site. Mr. Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. need to listen.
Signs of Life Spotted in the Senate
Sitting in a defensive crouch for months at a time can get a little uncomfortable, and several Senate Democrats are finally starting to rouse themselves. In the last weeks, there have been some tiny but tantalizing hints that at least a few senators want to offer an alternative to the Republican cost-cutting frenzy and talk about ways to cut sensibly and help put people back to work.
These actions might seem unremarkable by Democrats in an ordinary year, but those in the Senate have largely been invisible in the current Congress, cowed by a noisy Republican majority in the House and afraid of losing their three-vote edge in the 2012 elections. Senate Democrats will not even put their priorities on the record by producing a budget, leaving it to the White House to negotiate with the House on matters like the debt ceiling.
The Republicans are desperate to show Tea Party voters that they can land a blow on an entitlement program. Medicare cuts are a political loser, but Medicaid — serving a far less powerful clientele than the middle class — has become highly vulnerable to their ax. Paul Ryan, the House budget chairman, has proposed turning Medicaid into a block grant program, giving states lump sums that could not possibly keep pace with rising costs, and allowing states the flexibility to drop coverage for millions.
With the White House eager to cut a deal, 37 senators, led by John Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, wrote President Obama last week urging him to stand firm against these Republican proposals, saying they would not let the government “walk away from Medicaid’s 68 million beneficiaries, the providers that serve them, and the urban and rural communities in which they live.” Similar letters were sent by four other senators.
At the same time, Mr. Rockefeller, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, and a few other Democratic senators are urging the administration to stimulate hiring by spending billions to improve infrastructure. Speaking on the Senate floor last week, Mr. Harkin said the Republican focus on spending cuts would kill millions of jobs, and called for new spending to prevent a double-dip recession. Though Republicans will immediately ridicule the idea by repeating their mantra that the 2009 stimulus “failed,” Mr. Harkin and others have found their voice enough to respond that it actually saved or created at least four million jobs and probably many more.
These signs of a stirring in the Senate should inspire the rest of the caucus — and a reluctant White House — to their feet again. What’s the point of having a majority if you don’t use it?
The Court Disses Fathers
Children born outside the country to an unmarried American parent are considered American citizens at birth if the parent lived in the United States before the child was born. For a mother, the required period of residence is one year. For a father, it is 10 years, five of them after he turns 14. Fathers must also prove parenthood and pledge to support the child.
In a decision based on an outmoded stereotype that fathers are less committed parents, the Supreme Court let this obvious discrimination stand last week when it affirmed a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Flores-Villar v. the United States.
Ruben Flores-Villar was born in Mexico to a Mexican mother and an American father who were not married. His mother remained in Mexico, and Ruben was raised by his father in San Diego. His father could not pass on his citizenship because he was 16 at Ruben’s birth so could not have lived for five years in the United States after he turned 14.
The Ninth Circuit denied Ruben’s bid for citizenship, saying that it is constitutional to make it harder for an unmarried father to pass along citizenship because a father’s relationship to the child “is not so easily established” and a mother’s is “verifiable from the birth itself.”
Congress has already jettisoned such outmoded principles when it comes to married couples. From 1790 to 1934, married American fathers — as “heads” of their family — could pass along citizenship to their foreign-born children, not mothers. A law ended that discrimination.
For the last 30 years, the Supreme Court has repeatedly struck down laws treating men and women differently. The court’s decision in this case was by a 4-to-4 vote, with Justice Elena Kagan recused. The one-sentence ruling does not say how the justices divided, but it is likely that if Justice Kagan had taken part, the court would have outlawed this form of discrimination. That would have been the right choice. The days when fathers were assumed to be minor players in parenting are long over.
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