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Impressive Speech From Sheldon Whitehouse
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) delivered an important speech today full of shocking information, if it's still possible to be shocked by the Bush administration. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Whitehouse has access to the Justice Department's secret legal determinations. He then was able to get some of the determinations declassified, or at least the summaries he wrote down while reading them in a secure room. This is how he characterizes three of them:
1. An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President's authority under Article II.3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President's legal determinations.
In other words, the president is the law. Whitehouse concludes:
When the Congress of the United States is willing to roll over for an unprincipled President, this is where you end up. We should not even be having this discussion. But here we are. I implore my colleagues: reject these feverish legal theories.
There is, of course, little reason for Whitehouse to be optimistic this will happen. Still, it's a surprise to see even one senator demonstrating he cares about these issues, and explaining them in a way normal people can understand.
For more, see Marcy Wheeler's typically cogent commentary.
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An unelected lawless outlaw.
I wonder if Bush was the one doing the CIA's waterboarding personally. (the destroyed tapes)
God knows what this criminal was up to.
Our editorial columns are full of the dictatorial powers of Chavez, Putin and Musharrof, but they all forget about GWB. What kind of power has GWB used to silence these journalists?
Bush is using the BIBLE and the corporate powers to whip his country into line. Putin and Chavez are using the benefits to the poor to bring their people around. Which is better? Which is worse?
I have to think Putin and Chavez are lambs next to Bush.
The same day that Sen. Whitehouse was taking on the White House, Speaker Pelosi was busy jumping the shark by making brave statements about the goings on in the Page Dorm:
(actual quote) "As a mother and a grandmother, nothing is more important to me than the safety and security of our House pages."
Great, thanks Nancy. If this is your top priority, then why don't we just put you in charge of the Cub Scouts.
For actual leadership in a time of constitutional crisis, please see the Gentleman from Rhode Island.
Executive orders weren't invented by GWB, they've been around a long time. Teddy Roosevelt was the first US President to make wide use of them, FDR issued many in WWII and JFK started the Peace Corps with one.
Senator Whitehouse is correctly addressing the danger of a runaway executive, but overlooking the fact that the only remedy for such behavior is a Congress willing to step up to the plate and restrict such an autocrat with appropriate laws. This the Congress has been unwilling to do, in fact it was the Congress which passed the FISA bill which Whitehouse objects to, remember?
So, Senator, use your ire to get Congress to do something constructive, instead of rubber-stamping Bush's every dream. How about cleaning up FISA and not funding war? How about rescinding the six-year-old "national emergency" enacted by Executive Order?
A do-nothing Congress, at twenty percent popularity, does not give us the laws we need. In the absence of law, the President is the law.
Executive Orders have been a problem in imperial presidencies for many years. The "power of the treaty process" is vested in the Executive Order without the advise and consent of the Senate. Now, the President no longer needs to pay attention to the 'treaties' he and past presidents have made. The President's very actions determine the status of an Executive Order - either modifying it or voiding it.
The President has given himself the legal authority to determine the extent of his powers under our Constitution's Article II. This is the part of the Constitution that includes the election of the President, is it not? Will we have elections next year?
Article II is the Article stating that the President can be impeached. Now that the President has usurped the power to determine the extent of his powers under Article II, can he still be impeached?
The President now instructs the Justice Department on what the law is. The Office of Legal Counsel is part of the Department of Justice. The President now has the power to instruct the OLC to write an opinion declaring legal any action the President chooses to take. The President is now the chief law of the land.
We can no longer have elections without permission of the President, we can no longer have our representatives pass laws that will be honored without the permission of the President, and we no longer have the power to remove the President from office.
We no longer have an effective Constitution.
It is interesting that a fairly blemish-free senator was chosen to make these disclosures. Is anybody aware of whether the President has used his self-given powers of warrantless wiretaps to place surveillance on the Democrat and Republican members of Congress? This would explain much in terms of the perceived Democratic rollover on an Iraq pullout that the public has been so up in arms about since the Democrat majority was elected. If the President has pulled a (J. Edgar) Hoover on Congress, individual members of Congress are wide-open to coercive and extortive pressures from the President, rendering them ineffective in protecting our Constitution from enemies both foreign AND domestic (as Senator Whitehouse emphasized in his speech).
We have a President that has instructed the Department of Justice to grant him dictatorial powers. This is no longer a national problem. The entire world has much to lose if our Constitution falls by the wayside. I suggest that we now have a global problem bigger than WWII.
The Wall Street Journal ran an article on Friday that covered the Bush Administration's official policy on "protection" for American's civil liberties with regard to the FISA bill that's up for a vote this week. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119707483628317892.html?mod=googlenews_w...)
It points out that, given these revelations by Senator Whitehouse, the Bush line is fundamentally deceptive, as it claims that "protection" is granted by way of an 1981 EO signed by President Regan - an EO that, like all other EOs, had become secretly meaningless long before the White House issued its 'assurances'.
Claiming that people have real protection in something you've secretly gutted is the very definition of fraud. It may even be enough to make Pelosi wake up and take notice.
I think it's becoming abundantly clear that 9/11 was this country's Reichstag fire. It's already become painfully clear that Pelosi is the Democrat's Judas.
FYI - the Link to the speech doesn't work
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