Contributors
Links
Sunday, January 15, 2006
The Imperial Presidency at Work
The New York Times
January 15, 2006
Editorial
You would think that Senators Carl Levin and John McCain would have learned by now that you cannot deal in good faith with a White House that does not act in good faith. Yet both men struck bargains intended to restore the rule of law to American prison camps. And President Bush tossed them aside at the first opportunity.
Mr. Bush made a grand show of inviting Mr. McCain into the Oval Office last month to announce his support for a bill to require humane treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and other prisons run by the American military and intelligence agencies. He seemed to have managed to get Vice President Dick Cheney to stop trying to kill the proposed Congressional ban on torture of prisoners.
The White House also endorsed a bargain between Mr. Levin and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, which tempered somewhat a noxious proposal by Mr. Graham to deny a court hearing to anyone the president declares to be an "unlawful enemy combatant." The bargain with Mr. Levin removed language that stripped away cases already before the courts, which would have been an egregious usurpation of power by one branch of government, and it made clear that those cases should remain in the courts.
Mr. Bush, however, seems to see no limit to his imperial presidency. First, he issued a constitutionally ludicrous "signing statement" on the McCain bill. The message: Whatever Congress intended the law to say, he intended to ignore it on the pretext the commander in chief is above the law. That twisted reasoning is what led to the legalized torture policies, not to mention the domestic spying program.
Then Mr. Bush went after the judiciary, scrapping the Levin-Graham bargain. The solicitor general informed the Supreme Court last week that it no longer had jurisdiction over detainee cases. It said the court should drop an existing case in which a Yemeni national is challenging the military tribunals invented by Mr. Bush's morally challenged lawyers after 9/11. The administration is seeking to eliminate all other lawsuits filed by some of the approximately 500 men at Gitmo, the vast majority of whom have not been shown to pose any threat.
Both of the offensive theories at work here - that a president's intent in signing a bill trumps the intent of Congress in writing it, and that a president can claim power without restriction or supervision by the courts or Congress - are pet theories of Judge Samuel Alito, the man Mr. Bush chose to tilt the Supreme Court to the right.
The administration's behavior shows how high and immediate the stakes are in the Alito nomination, and how urgent it is for Congress to curtail Mr. Bush's expansion of power. Nothing in the national consensus to combat terrorism after 9/11 envisioned the unilateral rewriting of more than 200 years of tradition and law by one president embarked on an ideological crusade.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Blog Archive
-
▼
2006
(1766)
-
▼
January
(93)
- Aide: Reagan Warned Before Beirut Blast
- As Usual, What Digby Said
- The case for impeachment
- The Myth of the American Political "Center" and th...
- Spies, Lies and Wiretaps
- Mike Huckabee Lost 110 Pounds. Ask Him How.
- The truth about The State Of Our Union
- Mr. Abramoff's Meetings, Again
- Feinstein: I'll back the filibuster after all
- Fw: Driven by Fear or Governed by Law?- FCNL
- Filibuster Now! Alito Is Un-American
- Murtha Says Iraq Is Now A "Civil War"
- Fw: Filibuster
- Senators in Need of A Spine
- Kerry to push for Alito filibuster
- How do you like your democracy now, Mr. Bush?
- Reid: Bush Has Made America Less Safe
- Bush Was Also Warned Before 9/11
- Gore Said What Needed To Be Said
- Impeachment hearings: The White House prepares for...
- Bush's PR Blitz Fizzles Under The Facts
- I ... Can't ... Take It ... Anymore
- Banking on the 'bank shot'
- Fw: Patriot Act: Call Your Members of Congress thi...
- Halliburton Cited In Iraq Contamination
- College Funds or Yacht Funds?
- My Right to Roe
- Activists seek to seize Souter's home
- Sounds like the ol' Kenny-boy line to me.....
- Sweet Victory: Progressive Caucuses Sweep the States
- Judge Alito's Radical Views
- Samuel Alito and CAP
- Truthiness 101: From Frey to Alito - New York Time...
- Goodbye, Democracy...Or Who Loves Ya, Ohio?
- Why America Has to Be Fat
- A tip for the cowardly press corps
- U.S. Obtains Internet Users' Search Records
- Could there still be a filibuster in Alito's future?
- Liberals haven't failed to capture Bin Laden
- K Street
- Hardball Scandal: Bin Laden=Michael Moore
- Google resists U.S. subpoena of search data
- Breaking Ranks
- Newt's New Con
- Right Smears Veteran Murtha Without A Qualm
- Bush turns coward against the Brady Bunch of Evil ...
- Strange Bedfellows v. Bush and Cheney
- Al Gore, Hillary Clinton and the GOP blow-back
- Iran issues stark warning on oil price
- Sen. Clinton slams Bush administration
- 10 Things Martin Luther King Would Have Done About...
- Text of Gore speech
- Judicial Gag Rule - New York TimesThe New York Tim...
- "Those Who Would Give Up Liberty For Security Dese...
- Glum Democrats Can't See Halting Bush on Courts - ...
- The Imperial Presidency at Work
- Bush Authorized Domestic Spying Before 9/11
- Who made her cry?
- The President Is Not Entitled To His Nominee
- Shifting the Burden
- Pelosi Wants Probe of "Corrupt Congress"
- Elizabeth Holtzman-from Nixon to Bush & the Case F...
- Alito and his coaches
- Attention, Medicare Shoppers . . . - New York Time...
- Alito falters on CAP
- Alito's "Open Mind"
- Alito hearings
- Alito hearings
- Alito hearings
- Alito hearings
- Alito hearings
- NSA Whistleblower Alleges Illegal Spying
- Personal: EPIC vs MedicareRX
- From Alito, a dodge on the details
- Cost of Iraq war could top $2 trillion - study
- Dean / Blitzer on Late Edition
- The Case Against Alito
- The Pentagon As FEMA or Bush IS the Anti-Christ
- But the President Insists That It's Legal; He's Ju...
- Among the myths and lies that get flattened . . .
- Noam Chomsky: A Tale of Two Quagmires
- Need Medicaid? Show Your Passport - New York Times...
- Bush Ignored Explicit Warnings In 2002 About Mine ...
- Debunking Bush's NSA Lies: A Handy Pocket Guide
- Iran in the Crosshairs
- For Principles or Profit?
- January 2, 2006"Old Half-Witted Sheep"A New York T...
- Student Punished for Refusing to Stand for the Ple...
- Bush's Macho Swagger is Back. But for How Long?
- Eat The Poor
- The Bush Family Coup
- social secuity
- George W. Bush as the New Richard Nixon
-
▼
January
(93)
No comments:
Post a Comment