A state of emergency
Bush is a danger to the constitution in his wartime capacity as commander in chief
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday June 1, 2006
The Guardian
.. Once Bush approved them, the clerisy of neoconservative lawyers put them into effect. They believe fervently that the constitution is fatally flawed and must be circumscribed. The Bush administration's holy grail is to remove suspects' rights to due process, speedy trial and exculpatory evidence. The war paradigm is to be strengthened to conduct permanent war against terror that can never be finally defeated. There is no exit strategy from emergency.
In the short run, Bush's defence of his war paradigm may precipitate three constitutional crises. In the first, freedom of the press is at issue. On May 21 Alberto Gonzales, the attorney general, announced the possibility that the New York Times would be prosecuted for publishing its Pulitzer prize-winning article on the administration's domestic surveillance. "It can't be the case," he said, that the first amendment trumps the right of the government "to go after criminal activity".
In the second case, a wartime executive above the law may be asserted. Last week the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who charged the vice-president's former chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby with perjury and obstruction of justice, made plain his intention to summon Cheney to the witness stand to impeach Libby's credibility or else commit perjury himself. But will the administration fight the subpoena as an infringement on a unitary executive that should be immune from such distractions in wartime?
In the third case, if either house of Congress should fall to the Democrats in the November midterm elections, the oversight suppressed during one-party rule would be restored. Would the administration refuse congressional requests for documents as it did when the Democratic Senate in Bush's first year asked for those pertaining to Cheney's energy taskforce, which reportedly included Enron's CEO Ken Lay, last week convicted on numerous counts of fraud? ..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1787109,00.html