ABC News is reporting that former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN) is backing off his Nixon era critique of executive power. Back in 1974, when he was “chief GOP council on the Senate Watergate Committee,” Thompson predicted that “in the future the president is not going to be the sole individual to determine what is a matter of national security” and “suggested the possibility of an executive and legislative committee to take on the task.”

But in tonight’s interview with Nightline, Thompson suggests that while President Nixon “used the umbrella of national security to do some things that were not in fact in the interest of national security,” President Bush has not.

“Thompson said he sides with the Bush administration in its struggle with Congress over “issues of surveillance” and believes that the Bush must “stand firm in executive authority.”

In reality, President Bush has also “used the umbrella of national security” to expand the powers of the executive branch and squash political criticism and protest.

- In December 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft “authorized federal agents to monitor political and religious groups without evidence of criminal activity.”

- In 2003, The New York Times reported that the Bush administration was using the FBI to collect “extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators.”

- In 2005, an ACLU Freedom of Information Act request revealed that the FBI “has collected at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and antiwar protest groups.”

- According to “a secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News” in December 2005, the Pentagon has monitored nearly 1,500 different protest events in a 10-month period, including nearly four dozen anti-war meetings “that have taken place far from any military installation, post or recruitment center.”

- Documents exposed during litigation in January 2006 revealed that “the National Security Agency has been spying” on a Quaker-linked peace group in Baltimore “going so far as to document the inflating of protesters’ balloons, and intended to deploy units trained to detect weapons of mass destruction.”

- Pentagon documents released by the ACLU in November 2006 “show the Department of Defense monitoring the activities of a wide swath of peace groups, including Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, Code Pink, the American Friends Service Committee, the War Resisters League, and United for Peace and Justice.”

Ironically, Thompson’s 1974 approach to limiting executive authority over national security issues may be more necessary now than it was then. Unfortunately, Thompson is too aloof to notice.

During Sunday’s Republican Presidential debate in Florida, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney tried to distance his Massachusetts Health Care plan from Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) most recent health care proposal.

We solved the problem of health care in our state not by having government take it over, the way Hillary Clinton would [but] with private, free-enterprise approaches…Hillary says the federal government’s going to tell you what kind of insurance, and it’s all government insurance.

Romney emphasized that “we’re not going to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House by acting like Hillary Clinton.” But as Fact Checker points out, the plan Romney signed into law in Massachusetts sure acts like Clinton’s proposal. “Both plans mandate universal health care coverage and subsidize health care for people on low incomes. The main difference is that Clinton’s proposal permits people to switch to a Medicare-type plan and increases taxes at higher income levels.”

Rather than “having government take it over,” Clinton’s proposal incorporates the very same “private, free-enterprise approaches” Romney advocates. Clinton’s plan “offers people a choice. If they are happy with their present health plan, they can keep it. Otherwise, they can switch to the plans offered to members of Congress, or a government-run plan similar to Medicare.”

On Sunday, it seemed like Romney wanted to have it both ways. While egregiously misrepresenting, even lying about Clinton’s proposal to win Republican favor, Romney praised the same MIT economist, Jonathan Gruber, who helped design both his Massachusetts plan and Clinton’s proposal.

We wanted them insured, but we didn’t want government to have to pick up a new bill. And so we spent a lot of time working on it. We didn’t just have a bunch of bureaucrats. We had a professor from MIT, an investment banker, a head of a consulting firm.

The Caucus is reporting that “it is on in Iowa between Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton.” Obama is arguing that Clinton’s vote in favor of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which “called for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to be declared a foreign, terrorist organization,” gives President Bush Congressional authorization to “justify an attack on Iran as a part of the ongoing war in Iraq.” From the Obama mailing:

Why is this amendment so dangerous? Because George Bush and Dick Cheney could use this language to justify keeping our troops in Iraq as long as they can point to a threat from Iran. And because they could use this language to justify an attack on Iran as a part of the ongoing war in Iraq.

Clinton has responded in kind:

Let me be clear – I am opposed to letting President Bush take any military action against that country without full Congressional approval. And I see nothing today that would justify giving that approval.

Ironically, Clinton has used similar language to justify her 2002 vote granting the President authorization to go to war with Iraq. In a speech on the Senate floor, here is how Clinton explained her vote:

Even though the resolution before the Senate is not as strong as I would like in requiring the diplomatic route first and placing highest priority on a simple, clear requirement for unlimited inspections, I will take the president at his word that he will try hard to pass a U.N. resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible.

But a day before casting the vote, Clinton “voted against the Levin amendment, which would have required UN approval for the use of force against Iraq; and, failing that, another Congressional vote authorizing the President to use American military force…Clinton’s other notable Senate action on that day was drawing a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, saying Saddam had given “aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members.”

Since then, Clinton has argued that she was duped by the President.

I voted for [the resolution] on the basis of the evidence presented by the administration, assurances they gave that they would first seek to resolve the issue of weapons of mass destruction peacefully through United Nations sponsored inspections, and the argument that the resolution was needed because Saddam Hussein never did anything to comply with his obligations that he was not forced to do,” Clinton writes. “Their assurances turned out to be empty ones, as the administration refused repeated requests from the UN inspectors to finish their work. And the ‘evidence’ of weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaida turned out to be false.

But President Bush has made similar diplomatic assurances in his approach towards Iran. According to the New York Times, “the United States has said it is pursuing a diplomatic approach to Iran, including the threat of a new round of United Nations sanctions, but it has refused to rule out military action to halt Iran’s nuclear program.” Has Clinton been duped again?

In recent days, the President and the Vice President have both stepped-up their war rhetoric against Iran. President Bush warned of the risk of ‘World War III’ if Iran acquires “the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,” and Vice President Cheney warned Iran of “serious consequences” should it continue to develop a nuclear weapon.

Thus, the question remains: if Clinton believes that the President misled her in the lead-up to war with Iraq, why does she still trust the administration’s “diplomatic assurances” on Iran?

During his speech at the Values Voters Summit, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney suggested that the biggest problem facing African American communities is “out-of-wedlock childbirth.”

Ann and I will use the bully pulpit to teach America’s children that before they have babies, they should get married. It’s time to make out-of-wedlock births out-of-fashion again!

Bill Cosby related that in some inner cities: ‘There are whole blocks with scarcely a married couple, whole blocks without responsible males to watch out for wayward boys, whole neighborhoods in which little boys and girls come of age without seeing up close a committed relationship and perhaps never having attended a wedding.’ This simply breaks my heart. And then there are the broad national implications of this tragedy. A nation built on the principles of the founding fathers cannot thrive when so many children are being raised without fathers in the home.

While “close to 70% of all new [African American] babies are born to unwed mothers–about three times the rate of illegitimate birth that prevails among whites and Asians” — preaching about family values does not address the structural racial inequalities that are undermining African American families. As author and social critic Paul Street points out:

The phenomena that are hopelessly muddled include an inequitably funded educational system that apparently just happens to provide poorer instruction for blacks than whites; an electoral system whose voting irregularities and domination by big money happens to disproportionately disenfranchise blacks; a criminal justice system that happens to especially stop, arrest, prosecute, and incarcerate African-Americans; a political economy whose tendency toward sharp inequality happens to especially impoverish and divide black communities; and residential markets and housing practices that happen to disproportionately restrict African-American children to the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods and communities, where kids’ chances of learning are significantly diminished by the threats of injury and violence. The list goes on.

Rev. Jesse Jackson made a similar argument in a rare appearance on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor. Jackson argued that in African American communities “jobs out, investment out, guns and drugs in. We do not grow drugs, nor manufacture them. To unleash semiautomatic weapons as legal again to enforce the drug trade. Taxes up, service down. First-class — second-class schools.”

There’s a phenomenon here that lends itself to marginalizing a whole body of American people. We must take that on seriously, because in some sense, it costs more to lock up than to lift up.

While conservatives, and some liberals, are generally reluctant to discuss or address America’s deep racial inequalities, Mitt Romney’s misunderstanding of the problems plaguing African American communities may rest in his sheer reluctance to learn. Back in September, Mitt Romney was one of four top-tier GOP candidates who skipped a minority issues debate, citing a “scheduling conflict.” Unfortunately, rather than address what he calls one of the “biggest threats to the fabric of our society” with tailored solutions, Romney prefers to apply misguided ‘family values’ templates and leave the real problem unresolved.

Yesterday, President Bush “derided Democrats for running a do-nothing Congress that has failed to address critical domestic, economic and security issues in the nine months since they took control of Capitol Hill.”

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. “Congressional oversight of the executive branch has intensified under Democratic rule, especially in the House, following years of inattention and deference by their Republican predecessors under unified government.”

Moreover, as ThinkProgress has pointed out, the “110th Congress has had more roll call votes this year than any other Congress in history, almost doubling the number under the previous Congress overseen by Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL).” If Bush has forgotten that he has signed 96 bills into law since the opening of the 110th Congress, then here is a sampling of some of the “do nothing” he has overseen:

- Implementation of the 9-11 Commission recommendations

- Lobbying and ethics reform

- An increase in the minimum wage

- Reform of foreign investment rules

- A competitiveness package encouraging scientific research and innovation

In fact, “the Democratic Congress’s legislative harvest this year has been bountiful compared with that of its Republican counterpart in 1995,” despite Republican attempts to obstruct legislative progress. Bush has vetoed popular legislative initiatives, axing bills expanding children’s health care, timetables to “responsibly redeploy from Iraq” and an expansion of life-saving medical research on stem cells,” while Congressional Republicans have tried to block legislation. According to a July McClatchy report, “1 in 6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture votes.”

If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record number of cloture votes.

While Democrats should do more to challenge the President on Iraq, public dissatisfaction with Bush’s policies and Republican obstructionism has contributed to the body’s sagging poll numbers. According to a recent Brookings Institution report,”Congress is catching the diffuse blame” for “public discontent with the direction of the country, the war in Iraq, the state of the economy and the performance of the president.”

Democrats correctly point to polling evidence that while Congress as an institution gets low marks, the public also rates the Democrats substantially higher than the Republicans on almost every important public issue and prefers to maintain the current majority in power.

It seems that the American public would rather Republicans “do nothing” than obstruct the Democratic agenda.

Tonight on Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani accused Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) of lacking experience.

So I’m trying to figure out where the experience is here. It would seem to me that in a time of difficult problems and war we don’t want on the job training for an executive. The reality is that these areas in which - maybe there are some areas in which she has experience but the areas of having the responsibility of the safety and security of millions of people on your shoulders is not something Hillary has ever had any experience with.

But Giulian’s own experience has also come into question. “Firefighters and families of 9/11 victims” have criticized the mayor for “failing to ensure “interoperability” of communications devices; placing the city emergency command center in the World Trade Center even after the 1993 terrorist attack at the Twin Towers; and Giuliani’s decision to abandon efforts to recover remains of dead firefighters as he sought a quick clean-up of Ground Zero.”

Giuliani’s characterizations of the events surrounding 9/11 and the war in Iraq have also raised some eyebrows. In fact, Giuliani’s strong support for President Bush’s failed foreign policy and his complete misunderstanding of the terrorist threat suggests that even his so-called 9/11 experience does not qualify him for the presidency.

In today’s Washington Post, twelve former Army Captains write that the U.S. military is overstretched and loosing ground to insurgents in Iraq.

Five years on, the Iraq war is as undermanned and under-resourced as it was from the start. And, five years on, Iraq is in shambles… There is one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately. A scaled withdrawal will not prevent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and treasure on a losing proposition. America, it has been five years. It’s time to make a choice.

The captains’ argument has been echoed by retired and active duty military officials. Just days ago, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq, called the war “a nightmare with no end in sight.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Army Chief of Staff General George Casey, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Undersecretary for Intelligence Gen. James Clapper and other top officials have also argued that the war may be crippling the military’s ability to respond to other crises. ThinkProgress has the full run down here.

The Bush administration has consistently claimed that the decision to draw down troops from Iraq “will be made on a calm assessment by our military commanders based on the conditions on the ground, not a nervous reaction by Washington politicians or poll results in the media.” In reality, the President only listens to those who wear his brand of rose-colored glasses.

For instance, during today’s White House press conference, Press Secretary Dana Perino dismissed Sanchez’s criticism and responded like a “nervous…Washington politician.”

General Sanchez had a good career with the military and the President appreciates his service. I think that, by any measure, if you look at Iraq today, where we’ve been because of the surge — where we’ve come because of the surge, we’re in a much better place today because of what General Petraeus has been able to do in providing the additional troops and getting the Anbar — Anbari sheikhs to turn against al Qaeda, reducing civilian death, electricity is up around the country.

Similarly, fearing that a military drafty would rally the American people against the Iraq war, President Bush rejects the idea and its proponents. Rather than end the Iraq war and preserve the American military, Bush choses to fight the war on the cheap. Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, put it best:

I say to those people who want to keep up this surge indefinitely, if you have the courage of your convictions, then call for reinstatement of the draft. Because our volunteer Army was not designed, as Gen. Abizaid said, for the long war.

But Bush ignores all this. Rather than strategically deploying the American military to defend the homeland, Bush has hijacked America’s volunteer forces to propel a failed ideological agenda. Fortunately, members of the military are increasingly calling Bush on his bluff. For the second time in three months, American foot soldiers have provided the President and the American people with “calm assessments … based on the conditions on the ground in Iraq.” Today’s pleas, like those that came before, have fallen on deaf ears.

The ACLU is reporting that the Department of Defense improperly collaborated with the FBI and issued “hundreds of national security letters (NSLs) to obtain private and sensitive records of people within the United States without court approval.” According to ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero

The Department of Defense may have secretly and illegally conducted surveillance beyond the powers it was granted by Congress. It also appears as if the FBI is serving as a lackey for the DoD in misusing the Patriot Act powers. At the very least, it certainly looks like the FBI and DoD are conspiring to evade limits placed on the Department of Defense’s surveillance powers.

But in a January 2007 interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, Vice President Dick Cheney described the practice of issuing national security letters as a “perfectly legitimate activity.”

There’s nothing wrong with it or illegal. It doesn’t violate people’s civil rights. And if an institution that receives one of these national security letters disagrees with it, they’re free to go to court to try to stop its execution.”

The ACLU documents seem to contradict Cheney’s assertions. “Although compliance with Defense Department-issued NSLs is voluntary, the coercive language found in these letters would lead a reader to believe compliance was mandatory.” Moreover, while “the Defense Department told Congress that it seeks NSL assistance from the FBI only in joint investigations… an internal program review shows that the military asks the FBI to issue NSLs in strictly Defense Department investigations.”

UPDATE: The Washington Post reminds us that “earlier this year, the Justice Department’s inspector general found that the FBI may have improperly obtained phone, bank and other records of thousands of people inside the United States since 2003 by using national security letters and exigent letters, or emergency demands for records. “

The Washington Post is reporting that “the U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.”

But the military has long overestimated the size and impact of al-Qaeda in Iraq. According to “working-level analysts and troops on the ground,” in the first half of 2007, Al Qaeda accounted for just 8 percent to 15 percent of attacks in Iraq and the group is believed to comprise just 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. A recent Congressional Research Service report noted that attacks from al Qaeda are only a small percentage of the violence in Iraq.

In fact, even the President’s own Benchmark Assessment Report, released on September 14th, concedes that the “main elements” of Iraqi violence “include a communal struggle for power and resources between the Shi’a majority and Sunni, Kurd, and other minorities.”

The Post article also points out that “views of the extent to which AQI has been vanquished also reflect differences over the extent to which it operates independently from Osama bin Laden’s central al-Qaeda organization, based in Pakistan.”

“Everyone has an opinion about how franchisement of al-Qaeda works,” a senior White House official said. “Is it through central control, or is it decentralized?” The answer to that question, the official said, affects “your ability to determine how successfully [AQI] has been defeated or neutralized. Is it ‘game over’?”

But since the administration maintains that the fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq is connected to the greater struggle against Al Qaeda Central in the “war on terror,” then judging by the administration’s own standards, the Iraq war has been unsuccessful in reducing the overall Al Qaeda threat. Military officials have consistently underestimated Al Qaeda’s resiliency. As ThinkProgress notes, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the leading advocate of a “declaration of victory” over Al Qaeda, “also fiercely advocated the declaration of Mission Accomplished” in 2003. President Bush has made similar missteps. Here is a sampling:

- Thanks to President Musharraf’s leadership, on the al Qaeda front we’ve dismantled the chief operators of al Qaeda…over 500 al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists are detained, they’re no longer a problem. So slowly but surely, we’re dismantling the networks. [White House, 6/24/04]

- We have gone after al Qaeda and other terrorists with relentless determination, disrupting their communications, planning, training, and financing. We have put the enemy on the run, and now they spend their days avoiding capture, because they know America’s Armed Services are on their trail. [White House, 5/27/05]

- Absolutely, we’re winning. Al Qaeda is on the run…We’re winning, and we will win, unless we leave before the job is done. And the crucial battle right now is Iraq. [White House, 6/25/06]

But according to the National Intelligence Estimate, “Al Qaeda has reconstituted its core structure along the Pakistani border and may now be a stronger and more resilient organization today than it appeared a year ago.” Similarly, in early September, the Washington Post reported that “by drawing on lessons learned during 15 years of failed campaigns to destroy it,” Al Qaeda “has grown stronger, rebuilding the organizational framework that was badly damaged after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.”

While the extent of the relationship between Al Qaeda in Iraq and Al Qaeda Central may not be known, one thing is certain: Bush’s ill planned “war on terror” and America’s continued presence in Iraq only fuels Al Qaeda’s recruitment efforts and endangers American lives.

The Washington Post reveals that “the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.” Previously, the Bush administration and the GOP maintained that the NSA eavesdropping program was put in place in response to the 9/11 attacks.

President Bush: After September the 11th, I vowed to the American people that our government would do everything within the law to protect them against another terrorist attack. As part of this effort, I authorized the National Security Agency to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations. In other words, if al Qaeda or their associates are making calls into the United States or out of the United States, we want to know what they’re saying. [White House, 5/11/06]

Former Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman: “This is authority the president does have. It’s authority that is consistent with protecting our Constitution and our civil liberties, and it’s an authority that is critical to learning the lessons of 9/11.” [CNN, 1/16/06]

But this latest revelation exposes the Bush administration’s post 9/11 power grab for what it is: an ideologically driven attempt to expand the power of the executive. Because the administration focused on implementing a neoconservative ideology in the wake of 9/11, rather than meeting the unique security needs of the nation, they increased the terror threat. They allowed ideology to trump reason.

Rather than pursue Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora, the administration dusted off pre-9/11 invasion plans for Iraq and diverted resources from Afghanistan to Iraq. Rather than disrupting specific terror plots through reasonable and legal intelligence gathering methods, the administration instituted warrantless wiretapping, overwhelming intelligence agencies with useless information.

While Democrats should amend FISA to allow for warrantless wiretapping of foreign to foreign communication, they must ensure that intelligence agencies do not target Americans without first securing individualized warrants.

As “more than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret eavesdropping program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips” that resulted from the warrantless wiretapping of Americans, “led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.” [NYT, 1/17/06]

America’s response to terror should be tailored to meet the terror threat. Unfortunately, the Bush administration applied an ill-conceived neoconservative template to the very real threat of international terrorism. Today, we live with its consequences.