SpecterDefenderofChecksandBalancesorSecretWeaponofPresidentialPower

During the last 18 months or so, I have gotten the impression that Pennsylvania's senior U.S. Senator, Arlen Specter tel: (215) 597-7200?, is an independent-minded human being who genuinely wants to do right for his constituents, rather than powerful friends and lobbies. Although I disagree with his approach to many issues, in his role as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he recently presented as a fairly strong curb to excessive executive authority (for example, on Presidential orders for illegal wiretaps and some detainee issues).

However, today I learned in a NY Times opinion peace that Specter is responsible for inserting into the Patriot Act the elimination of Senate confirmation of Presidential appointments to U.S. Attorney posts. Previously, Presidential appointments to the posts - including ones that could conceivably have oversight of the President's doings (or mis-doings) - were subject to Senate confirmation within 120 days.

I can't say why the removal of such a reasonable balance on powers was relevant in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when Congress passed the Patriot Act (but it does present one more reason why the Patriot Act must be reviewed line-by-line, paired down and re-approved in more limited form). Today, with numerous cases of executive overreach coming to public light and before the courts, the ability of the President to replace the entire corps of U.S. prosecutors overnight, without review by anyone, smacks almost of a coup. If the President were to re-appoint only friends to every U.S. Attorney position in the land (he already has replaced many competent, independent prosecutors with people who have shown him loyalty in the past), Congress would be left with no legal apparatus by which to limit Presidential power. Only impeachment procedings by the Senate would have any legal purchase whereby the President could be called to account. Senators on both sides of the aisle must be reluctant to escalate their issues with the President to that level of destructive brinksmanship - and they should not have put themselves in this position, in the first place.

Without Senate review of U.S. Attorney appointments, Congress has only the most drastic means to legally and directly enforce its Constitutionally defined authority over the executive branch. Although the federal courts remain an option, as in case-by-case challenges to carefully-defined actions by the President, the courts, too, have been stacked by the sitting President. Also, they are far too slow to provide an adequate recourse for Congress in its duty to oversee the President, month-by-month.

Congress must pair down all the faulty provisions of the Patriot Act, beginning with 'mission-critical' instances such as the removal of Senate confirmation of Presidential appointments to U.S. Attorney posts. Such hastily-adopted measures threaten to disintegrate our government and must be corrected immediately. After these emergency instances have been addressed, Congress should take up the Patriot Act in its totality, and re-write it.

Arlen Specter: (215) 597-7200 Bob Casey: (717) 231-7540