The campaign of Presidential candidate Senator Chris Dodd issued a statement yesterday.
"Today's report that Verizon provided the Bush Administration with personal information of American citizens absent judicial authorization is deeply troubling. We must be told the full extent of Verizon's activities and what other private information they have provided to the Bush Administration.
"More troubling still is that the United States Senate would sanction those telecommunications companies that have violated the law and the privacy of our citizenry, enabling this Administration's assault on the Constitution."
While I certainly share the sentiment and appreciate that Senator Dodd is paying close attention to the duties of his current position in the Congress, the statement could have been much clearer.
Still, as it is, I think the statement provides an opportunity to consider some really important matters and offer the following critique in hopes of spurring that on.
I don't think "sanction" is the best word to use. Although it's a contranym, a word which can mean the opposite of itself, the usual use of the word implies a prohibition. Why would that be troubling?
I don't know if Dodd actually spoke that sentence or if someone wrote it for him. If the latter, he needs another speech writer. The use of the subjunctive, which implies that something is contrary to fact, is never an example of clear communication. Indeed, the whole statement is extremely murky and the logic is faulty.
If the communications companies have violated the criminal law, then expecting Verizon to tell what its employees did is unreasonable. They would be incriminating themselves.
Moreover, the second sentence has a dangling participle which suggests that the privacy of our citizenry enabled the assault on the Constitution. The reader has to conclude that's surely not what is meant, but having to take this interpretive step detracts from the message. Never mind that blaming the communications companies for the misdeeds of Bush/Cheney sort of lets the latter off the hook.
It's quite correct that the function of the legislative body is to "enable" the executive to carry out the functions of government. The Congress is "permissive"--i.e. it issues permits to the executive on behalf of the people it represents. The use of the word here, while technically correct in the sense that the people, by their consent, enable the agents of government, using it here to suggest that Verizon is responsible for what Bush/Cheney did is wrong.
The Congress also issues prohibitions to the general population regarding particular anti-social or criminal behaviors, which also apply to the agents of government, as individuals. But, there isn't any need for the Congress to issue prohibitions to the executive, because the executive is already limited by what is permitted. The executive can do nothing that hasn't been permitted and funded. Individuals and, to a certain extent, private corporations can do anything that's not prohibited.
So, what Bush/Cheney has been about is trying to evade the limitations of the Constitution on government functions by transferring functions to private corporations which aren't bound by the same limitations. Bush/Cheney has been trying to circumvent the rule of law by taking advantage of the rights directly and implicitly reserved for the people as individuals.
The question is how to deal with an executive that neglects or refuses to carry out its assigned duties and depends on the private sector to perform functions that it is not permitted to do itself. The Constitutionally established remedy, it seems to me, is impeachment.
Perhaps the communications companies could claim that they were entrapped--induced to commit a crime that they had no intent to commit.
Finally, if we think of the law as being either permissive of government or prohibitive of individual crime, then Bush's claim to have a "mandate" may be more significant than we thought. A permit is obviously different from a mandate.
