Congress cannot act as a check on the executive branch in the way the Framers intended when hugely consequential policies it is overseeing are treated as state secrets. The Senate, intended as a deliberative body, cannot deliberate when only the folks on the right committees are fully briefed, and the Ron Wyden types among them think what's happening is horribly wrong, but can't tell anyone why because it's illegal just to air the basic facts.
Our senators have literally been reduced to giving dark hints.
And the House of Representatives? Members are up for reelection every two years because the body is supposed to respond to the will of the people. But by some accounts, the people are only now finding out about surveillance that some House members signed off on three or four election cycles in the past.
Not that we know all the details even now.
It's one thing to keep the identities of CIA agents and the location of our nuclear arsenal classified. But this is something different. The national-security state, as currently constituted, is removing many of the most important moral and strategic policy questions we face from the realm of democratic debate and accountability. In a real sense, our current approach is preventing our system of government from functioning in very basic ways that the Framers intended.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
From The Atlantic: Secrecy Undermines the Ability of Congress to Function as the Framers Intended
Does the surveillance state - or the "deep state" - undermine the system of checks and balances?
