Back to more familiar topics for this blog. I’ve linked to this before, but in the context of today’s revelations — well, today’s decision to not keep lying about what everybody already knew — regarding the NSA and various secret surveillance operations, now might be a good time a take a look at Senate Report 93-549, produced in 1973 by the Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency.
Back when Congress, for one brief shining moment, tried to do its job, the committee reviewed the modern history of the super-powerful executive branch and what the report called the “aura” of ongoing, overlapping national crisis in which extensive power came to dominate the concept of the presidency — most interestingly, given today’s situation, by having that power delegated by Congress via new legislation.
The thing is even clearly written (I’d only remove the first comma):
A review of the laws passed since the first state of national emergency was declared in 1933, reveals a consistent pattern of lawmaking. It is a pattern showing that the Congress, through its own actions, transferred awesome magnitudes of power to the executive ostensibly to meet the problems of governing effectively in times of great crisis. Since 1933, Congress has passed or recodified over 470 significant statutes delegating to the President powers that had been the prerogative and responsibility of the Congress since the beginning of the Republic. No charge can be sustained that the Executive branch has usurped powers belonging to the Legislative branch; on the contrary, the transfer of power has been in accord with due process of normal legislative procedures.
That’s the scariest part. We know about the illegal stuff. The key thing is the legal shifting of power from the representative to the executive. And that was 1973! So here’s something really painful:
It is fortunate that at this time that, when the fears and tensions of the cold war are giving way to relative peace and detente is now national policy, Congress can assess the nature, quality, and effect of what has become known as emergency powers legislation.
Forty years ago, they were looking back forty years, and they thought they were going to end the emergency.
William Hogeland 