Our President Seeks Dictatorial Power...The Power-Madness of King GeorgeIs Bush turning America into an elective dictatorship?By Jacob Weisberg
Slate Magazine
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2006, at 3:44 PM ETIt's tempting to dismiss the debate about the National Security Agency spying on Americans as a technical conflict about procedural rights. President Bush believes he has the legal authority to order electronic snooping without asking anyone's permission. Civil libertarians and privacy-fretters think Bush needs a warrant from the special court created to authorize wiretapping in cases of national security. But in practice, the so-called FISA court that issues such warrants functions as a virtual rubber stamp for the executive branch anyhow, so what's the great difference in the end?
Would that so little were at stake. In fact, the Senate hearings on NSA domestic espionage set to begin next month will confront fundamental questions about the balance of power within our system. Even if one assumes that every unknown instance of warrant-less spying by the NSA were justified on security grounds, the arguments issuing from the White House threaten the concept of checks and balances as it has been understood in America for the last 218 years. Simply put, Bush and his lawyers contend that the president's national security powers are unlimited. And since the war on terror is currently scheduled to run indefinitely, the executive supremacy they're asserting won't be a temporary condition.
This extremity of Bush's position emerges most clearly in a 42-page document issued by the Department of Justice last week. As Andrew Cohen, a CBS legal analyst, wrote in an online commentary, "The first time you read the 'White Paper,' you feel like it is describing a foreign country guided by an unfamiliar constitution." To develop this observation a bit further, the nation implied by the document would be an elective dictatorship, governed not by three counterpoised branches of government but by a secretive, possibly benign, awesomely powerful king.
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According to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the putative author of the white paper, the president's powers as commander in chief make him the "sole organ for the Nation in foreign affairs." This status, which derives from Article II of the Constitution, brings with it the authority to conduct warrant-less surveillance for the purpose of disrupting possible terrorist attacks on the United States.
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Such a blatant anti-Democracy operation by the White House should rouse every citizen in this country to demand the current Administration be clapped in irons and prosecuted for treason. Even shrinking from what ought to be done, the very least that must be done is to demand, in no uncertain terms, that "our" Congress actually perform it's oversight duties and put a stop to this dictatorial expansion of Executive power!
Considering that Bush is now turning to Congress to enable him to continue his bid to expand his oppressive powers! Not only must they not support him, they need to act to further reign him in! The Republican Congress appears likely to give Bush what he wants--we can't stand idly by and let our Congress do this!
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