America's King George usurps the Constitution "I'm the war president"
This excellent article details the dictatorial, totalitarian nature of george w. bush's presidency.
Under the "Unitary executive" theory...
Let's keep it simple: George W. Bush is the Jefferson Davis president, and he is merely REPRISING those periods in US history where the president(s) created severe, draconian state-of-emergency rule:
#1. President Adams and the Federalist party's unpopular "ALIEN & SEDITION" acts during the undeclared war with France
#2. President Lincoln's suppression of Habeus Corpus, and using soldiers to dispell draft riots, during the civil war
#3. President Wilson's Sedition Act, during (ironically) the last year of the First World War.
#4. President Roosevelt's incarceration of American-Japanese families during the "internment" of WWII.
In all the above cases, significant portions of the population were DISENFRANCHISED before the state-of-emergency rules, Women in America did not get the right to vote until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, and of course the 15th amendment "the right to vote SHALL NOT BE ABRIDGED by race, color, or previous condition of servitude" was of course IGNORED by the entire nation for the almost 100 years from its ratification in 1870 to the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 (respectively).
So, the administration of George W. Bush is merely a REACTIONARY REGRESSION to those earlier eras, an era up to 1964 where the Deep South was ruled by one-party dictatorship that EXCLUDED minority voters in districts where they were even in the majority of the population of that district.
What is appalling about all this is that Democrats DO NOT RECOGNIZE the severity of the Bush disenfranchisement and war-powers agenda, or if they do, they are too cowed to make a public case of it.
For example, the Dept. of Homeland Security SLASHING counter-terror funding from New York City, and awarding it to Montana, demonstrates (yet again) that the Bush administration uses TERROR to INCREASE ITS POWER, rather than using its power to thwart potential terror attacks.
=============================================
America's problem is again a usurping king called George
Bush's determination to impose his own reading of new laws amounts to a power grab and subverts the US constitution
Martin Kettle
Saturday June 17, 2006
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1799717,00.html
Imagine a country with a different kind of monarch from the one we are used to. Forget the nation-binding human monarch whom Archbishop Rowan Williams praised so deftly this week. Imagine instead a monarch who, like many of Elizabeth II's ancestors, routinely reserved the right to override laws passed by the legislature, or who repeatedly asserted that the laws mean something they do not say. Imagine, in fact, King George of America.
Article continues
On April 30 the Boston Globe journalist Charlie Savage wrote an article whose contents become more astonishing the more one reads them. Over the past five years, Savage reported, President George Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws that have been enacted by the United States Congress since he took office. At the heart of Bush's strategy is the claim that the president has the power to set aside any statute that conflicts with his own interpretation of the constitution.
Remarkably, this systematic reach for power has occurred not in secret but in public. Go to the White House website and the evidence is there in black and white. It takes the form of dozens of documents in which Bush asserts that his power as the nation's commander in chief entitles him to overrule or ignore bills sent to him by Congress for his signature. Behind this claim is a doctrine of the "unitary executive", which argues that the president's oath of office endows him with an independent authority to decide what a law means.
Periodically, congressional leaders come down from Capitol Hill to applaud as the president, seated at his desk, signs a bill that becomes the law of the land. They are corny occasions. But they are a photo-op reminder that American law-making involves compromises that reflect a balance between the legislature and the presidency. The signing ceremony symbolises that the balance has been upheld and renewed.
After the legislators leave, however, Bush puts his signature to another document. Known as a signing statement, this document is a presidential pronouncement setting out the terms in which he intends to interpret the new law. These signing statements often conflict with the new statutes. In some cases they even contradict their clear meaning. Increasing numbers of scholars and critics now believe they amount to a systematic power grab within a system that rests on checks and balances of which generations of Americans have been rightly proud - and of which others are justly envious.
The Bush administration has often been charged with unilateralism in its conduct of foreign affairs. But a similar disregard for the rule of law underlies this domestic strategy. Article 1, section 1 of the US constitution states: "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States." Section 7 says that if the president refuses to sign a law, the Congress can override him. But Bush has never vetoed a bill. Instead he signs bills into law and then unilaterally redefines them his way.
The contrast between the rhetoric of the public ceremony and the self-authorisation in the later signing statements is large. Take, for example, the renewal of the USA Patriot Act on March 9. In the signing ceremony Bush stressed that the law had been a bipartisan effort involving Congress and the White House. In the subsequent signing statement, however, he states that he does not feel bound to report to Congress (as the act requires) and would "withhold information the disclosure of which could impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative processes of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties".
Or take the contrast after Bush signed an overwhelmingly supported congressional bill last year outlawing the torture of detainees. On the face of it the new law was explicit, strengthening what Bush described as "values we hold dear" and extending a domestic ban on torture to cover US actions around the world. But the signing statement on December 30 carefully undermined that claim. It asserted that "the executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the president ... as commander in chief," adding that this approach would "assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the president ... of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks". In other words, circumstances might arise in which torture might still be authorised.
The Bush White House did not invent the presidential signing statement; it goes back to the 19th century. But the frequency and ambition of Bush's signing statements go far beyond his predecessors. Whereas earlier presidents issued signing statements of a highly specific nature, those of Bush are repeatedly broad and unspecific. Above all, they make claims to enhanced executive power that impinge on profound issues of liberty such as torture or wiretapping.
Too late in the day for comfort, Bush's approach is coming under greater scrutiny. In February the bipartisan Constitution Project warned of "the risk of permanent and unchecked presidential power". Last week the American Bar Association announced an independent inquiry into the practice. A powerful article in the New York Review of Books by the veteran writer Elizabeth Drew has also given the subject higher saliency.
To their credit, even some Bush supporters are alarmed. If Bill Clinton had done what Bush is doing, the Republican senator Chuck Hagel has pointed out, Congress would be up in arms. If Bush were to bequeath the powers he claims to Hillary Clinton, the right would soon go berserk with indignation at the threat to American values. Which is why the most pertinent comment so far on the president's strategy has come from the anti-tax conservative Grover Norquist. He told Drew: "If you interpret the constitution's saying that the president is commander in chief to mean that the president can do anything he wants and can ignore the laws, you don't have a constitution: you have a king."
It is not anti-American to warn about what Bush is doing. On the contrary, it is profoundly pro-American. In 1776 Americans issued their declaration of independence. They demanded a new form of government in place of the "repeated injuries and usurpations" to which they had been subjected. In the long list of grievances that followed, the first was that King George had "refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good". That suddenly has a contemporary ring. Now, as then, America's problem is a usurping king called George.
martin.kettle@guardian.co.uk
Under the "Unitary executive" theory...
Let's keep it simple: George W. Bush is the Jefferson Davis president, and he is merely REPRISING those periods in US history where the president(s) created severe, draconian state-of-emergency rule:
#1. President Adams and the Federalist party's unpopular "ALIEN & SEDITION" acts during the undeclared war with France
#2. President Lincoln's suppression of Habeus Corpus, and using soldiers to dispell draft riots, during the civil war
#3. President Wilson's Sedition Act, during (ironically) the last year of the First World War.
#4. President Roosevelt's incarceration of American-Japanese families during the "internment" of WWII.
In all the above cases, significant portions of the population were DISENFRANCHISED before the state-of-emergency rules, Women in America did not get the right to vote until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, and of course the 15th amendment "the right to vote SHALL NOT BE ABRIDGED by race, color, or previous condition of servitude" was of course IGNORED by the entire nation for the almost 100 years from its ratification in 1870 to the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 (respectively).
So, the administration of George W. Bush is merely a REACTIONARY REGRESSION to those earlier eras, an era up to 1964 where the Deep South was ruled by one-party dictatorship that EXCLUDED minority voters in districts where they were even in the majority of the population of that district.
What is appalling about all this is that Democrats DO NOT RECOGNIZE the severity of the Bush disenfranchisement and war-powers agenda, or if they do, they are too cowed to make a public case of it.
For example, the Dept. of Homeland Security SLASHING counter-terror funding from New York City, and awarding it to Montana, demonstrates (yet again) that the Bush administration uses TERROR to INCREASE ITS POWER, rather than using its power to thwart potential terror attacks.
=============================================
America's problem is again a usurping king called George
Bush's determination to impose his own reading of new laws amounts to a power grab and subverts the US constitution
Martin Kettle
Saturday June 17, 2006
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1799717,00.html
Imagine a country with a different kind of monarch from the one we are used to. Forget the nation-binding human monarch whom Archbishop Rowan Williams praised so deftly this week. Imagine instead a monarch who, like many of Elizabeth II's ancestors, routinely reserved the right to override laws passed by the legislature, or who repeatedly asserted that the laws mean something they do not say. Imagine, in fact, King George of America.
Article continues
On April 30 the Boston Globe journalist Charlie Savage wrote an article whose contents become more astonishing the more one reads them. Over the past five years, Savage reported, President George Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws that have been enacted by the United States Congress since he took office. At the heart of Bush's strategy is the claim that the president has the power to set aside any statute that conflicts with his own interpretation of the constitution.
Remarkably, this systematic reach for power has occurred not in secret but in public. Go to the White House website and the evidence is there in black and white. It takes the form of dozens of documents in which Bush asserts that his power as the nation's commander in chief entitles him to overrule or ignore bills sent to him by Congress for his signature. Behind this claim is a doctrine of the "unitary executive", which argues that the president's oath of office endows him with an independent authority to decide what a law means.
Periodically, congressional leaders come down from Capitol Hill to applaud as the president, seated at his desk, signs a bill that becomes the law of the land. They are corny occasions. But they are a photo-op reminder that American law-making involves compromises that reflect a balance between the legislature and the presidency. The signing ceremony symbolises that the balance has been upheld and renewed.
After the legislators leave, however, Bush puts his signature to another document. Known as a signing statement, this document is a presidential pronouncement setting out the terms in which he intends to interpret the new law. These signing statements often conflict with the new statutes. In some cases they even contradict their clear meaning. Increasing numbers of scholars and critics now believe they amount to a systematic power grab within a system that rests on checks and balances of which generations of Americans have been rightly proud - and of which others are justly envious.
The Bush administration has often been charged with unilateralism in its conduct of foreign affairs. But a similar disregard for the rule of law underlies this domestic strategy. Article 1, section 1 of the US constitution states: "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States." Section 7 says that if the president refuses to sign a law, the Congress can override him. But Bush has never vetoed a bill. Instead he signs bills into law and then unilaterally redefines them his way.
The contrast between the rhetoric of the public ceremony and the self-authorisation in the later signing statements is large. Take, for example, the renewal of the USA Patriot Act on March 9. In the signing ceremony Bush stressed that the law had been a bipartisan effort involving Congress and the White House. In the subsequent signing statement, however, he states that he does not feel bound to report to Congress (as the act requires) and would "withhold information the disclosure of which could impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative processes of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties".
Or take the contrast after Bush signed an overwhelmingly supported congressional bill last year outlawing the torture of detainees. On the face of it the new law was explicit, strengthening what Bush described as "values we hold dear" and extending a domestic ban on torture to cover US actions around the world. But the signing statement on December 30 carefully undermined that claim. It asserted that "the executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the president ... as commander in chief," adding that this approach would "assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the president ... of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks". In other words, circumstances might arise in which torture might still be authorised.
The Bush White House did not invent the presidential signing statement; it goes back to the 19th century. But the frequency and ambition of Bush's signing statements go far beyond his predecessors. Whereas earlier presidents issued signing statements of a highly specific nature, those of Bush are repeatedly broad and unspecific. Above all, they make claims to enhanced executive power that impinge on profound issues of liberty such as torture or wiretapping.
Too late in the day for comfort, Bush's approach is coming under greater scrutiny. In February the bipartisan Constitution Project warned of "the risk of permanent and unchecked presidential power". Last week the American Bar Association announced an independent inquiry into the practice. A powerful article in the New York Review of Books by the veteran writer Elizabeth Drew has also given the subject higher saliency.
To their credit, even some Bush supporters are alarmed. If Bill Clinton had done what Bush is doing, the Republican senator Chuck Hagel has pointed out, Congress would be up in arms. If Bush were to bequeath the powers he claims to Hillary Clinton, the right would soon go berserk with indignation at the threat to American values. Which is why the most pertinent comment so far on the president's strategy has come from the anti-tax conservative Grover Norquist. He told Drew: "If you interpret the constitution's saying that the president is commander in chief to mean that the president can do anything he wants and can ignore the laws, you don't have a constitution: you have a king."
It is not anti-American to warn about what Bush is doing. On the contrary, it is profoundly pro-American. In 1776 Americans issued their declaration of independence. They demanded a new form of government in place of the "repeated injuries and usurpations" to which they had been subjected. In the long list of grievances that followed, the first was that King George had "refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good". That suddenly has a contemporary ring. Now, as then, America's problem is a usurping king called George.
martin.kettle@guardian.co.uk
posted by verifi at 8:03 AM
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