Lithwick on how the Patriot Act was changed

A really significant element of the replacing of the U.S attorneys is that the Patriot Act was changed to remove the need to have the Senata approve replacement U.S. Attorneys. Dahlia Lithwick of Slate provides the story of how that change occcurred without the knowledge of the Senate.

The background: When Congress reauthorized the Patriot Act last year, it included little-noticed language that changed the way U.S. attorneys would be appointed if their predecessors were removed in the middle of their term. Under the old regime, interim U.S. attorneys needed to be confirmed by the Senate after 120 days. If they weren't, federal district judges could select their replacement. The new language removed both judicial and congressional oversight of the interim U.S. attorneys, letting DOJ anoint them indefinitely. This served three important goals: consolidating presidential power, diminishing oversight, and ensuring that "interim" prosecutors had permanent jobs.

On Feb. 6, when the Senate held hearings on the issue of prosecutorial independence, former judiciary committee Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., proudly claimed to have been as clueless as the rest of us. Denying New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer's claim that he or his staff had "slipped the new provision into the Patriot Act in the dead of night," Specter asserted, "The first I found out about the change in the Patriot Act occurred a few weeks ago when Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein approached me on the floor."

Specter added that he only looked into how the provision was altered after Feinstein told him about it. As he explained, "I then contacted my very able chief counsel, Michael O'Neill, to find out exactly what had happened. And Mr. O'Neill advised me that the requested change had come from the Department of Justice, that it had been handled by Brett Tolman, who is now the U.S. attorney for Utah, and that the change had been requested by the Department of Justice because there had been difficulty with the replacement of a U.S. attorney in South Dakota."

Thus, at least according to Specter, O'Neill had merely been following orders from the Department of Justice when he snuck new language into the Patriot Act that would consolidate executive branch authority. Huge relief there.

I see the snark in Dahlia's "Huge relief there." Oh, and one more thing that is especially significant in the story.

"So, Specter concedes that the item is controversial. He denies knowing about it. That implies it was O'Neill who slipped the new language in, and misled Specter and the Senate. And yet, at least as far as I can tell, nobody in power has said a word about O'Neill's conduct, and not one iota of blame has been laid at his doorstep. Joe Conason noted in Salon last month that 1) O'Neill is a former Clarence Thomas clerk, and 2) he joined Specter's staff at the same time Specter was fighting accusations of being wobbly in his fealty to the White House."

This was planned by the Department of Justice. It is part of their overall scheme to collect power with the President so that the President and the Executive Department is superior to both the Congress and the Judiciary. That eliminated the entire concept of "Checks and Balances" as the Constitution originally set things up and moves America from a federated democracy back to an executive authoritarian government in which the Rights of Government block any Rights belonging to the People.

Apparently O'Neill still works for Sen. Specter. Sen. Specter has only two options with regard to O'Neill. Either Specter approves of what O'Neill did and supports his action or Specter does not dare fire him.