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Edited on Sun Dec-25-05 10:44 AM by Peace Patriot
...quotation:
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"'The president thinks the war on terror gives him carte blanche to go outside of the law,'' says attorney Michael Ratner of New York's Center for Constitutional Rights, an early critic of the administration's expansive use of power.
"He calls revelations of warrantless wiretapping ''all of one piece, another power grab by the president'' that skirted not only Washington's secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court but symbolizes the overarching issue of presidential powers.
'''It is not debatable whether the president can order electronic eavesdropping once Congress has passed a law making it criminal to do so,'' asserts Ratner. 'It is impeachable. The fact that we are sitting in 21st century America debating the issue of presidential power is ridiculous to me.'
"Enter Congress. Four years ago after it authorized the use of military force against al Qaeda, on Sept. 18, 2001, says Kmeic, the war on terror seems to most Americans less like World War II -- and 'more like Vietnam.'
"So now, Kmeic says, lawmakers have begun to debate the meaning of that military force authorization:
"• 'Is it strong enough to allow the president to unilaterally determine enemy combatants?
"• 'Is it strong enough to say that those in Guantánamo have no access to federal courts?
"• 'Is it a strong enough hand for him to authorize spying on American citizens, seemingly contrary to the statutes that have been passed for other purposes?'
"FIRESTORM REACTION
"Civil libertarian protests have been on a slow burn for some time -- first over plans to summarily deport illegal immigrants, later on the question of whether a White House legal argument became a cover for interrogation using torture.
"Now, the disclosure that President Bush authorized domestic wiretapping more than 30 times, every 45 days, has ignited a firestorm.
"Amid last week's Christmas sales, the American Civil Liberties Union bought a full-page ad in The New York Times that showed Richard Nixon and the headline, 'This Man Wasn't Above the Law' -- then President Bush under the heading, 'Neither Is This One.'"
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The Democrats should never have let Reagan off the hook on Iran-Contra. He should have been impeached. But they decided not to do the right thing, and let him get away with treating the matter as if it had been a "rogue operation." The difference between that situation and this one is that there is no case for this illegal spying on Americans as the work of a "rogue' element. Bush has admitted committing crimes, repeatedly. He seems proud of it. He and Cheney are defending it, not stopping it. The brass of it is amazing. If the Democrats had made Reagan bear responsibility for Iran-Contra, and had punished him accordingly--with impeachment and removal from office, or at least censure--(and if elections in this country weren't thoroughly rigged, now, with Bushite corporations tabulating all our votes with "'TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code, and virtually no audit/recount controls), Bush and Cheney would not be so bold in claiming power to violate the law. I think our party went bad then, with Reagan. I think they liked Reagan's tax code rewrite. It made them all millionaires. And most of the Dems support big military budgets, and realize that we have to have wars in order to keep the war profiteers in cash. Our war economy (unchanged since WW II) really can't function on its own. It is not capitalistic, in its essence. It is a "corporate welfare" economy--with the corporate military the biggest of the pigs at the trough. And Democrats who keep voting billions for war, with no accountability on Bush's actions or his spending, are as guilty of Bush's war crimes as Bush is.
This Constitutional crisis did not start with Bush's pervasive spying on Americans, just revealed. It started right after 9/11, with Bush/Cheney immediately grabbing as much dictatorial power as they could, and continued through 2002 and the Iraq war resolution, by which our Senators and Congress people GAVE AWAY their power to declare war to George Bush--in violation of the Constitution and their oaths of office. (133 voted against--the heroes of our Republic!). IF Congress had NOT unconstitutionally given away its war powers, then the debate over Iraq WMDs would have been decided by Congress, not by Bush. Congress would likely have held off invading Iraq at least until the UN inspectors had finished their job, and THEN it would have been obvious that no invasion was needed, and massive loss of life--and the utter chaos of Iraq today--could have been avoided.
Stopping Bush NOW, at burning the Constitution with illegal spying, is certainly to be desired--spying that doesn't even have a FISA warrant (which means that it is HIGHLY subject to abuse--to political, economic, and personal spying, and potential blackmail, ruination of peoples' careers, illegal arrests and imprisonment, and worse). But Congress should have stopped Bush LONG AGO, on any number of unconstitutional usurpations of power, secrecy, lack of accountability, torture, making up its own laws, lying to Congress, engaging in a war of choice, and war crimes.
All of these TERRIBLE precedents do not bode well for Congress requiring any accountability now--let alone adequate punishment. The Democrats caved to the fascists way back in the '80s. And the Republicans are just Bush "pod people." Also, neither of them is really beholden to the voters any more--not with the new electronic voting systems, controlled by Bushite corporations, with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code and virtually no audit/recount controls. They may feel some vague, "quaint" tug of the old democracy, when public opinion counted. And public opinion is not yet totally without value as political coin. But, will they act in the public interest? Will they respond to the will of the people? They have only recently begun to do anything even remotely resembling representing the true majority--because things are so bad. Treason, perjury and obstruction of justice, unjust war, pervasive lying, bankrupting the federal government, murderous neglect in New Orleans, and massive, unaccountable theft! What does it take? Bush and Cheney are just men; they are not monarchs. They should have been impeached and put in jail right after 9/11, for failing to defend our nation's capitol (with nearly an hour's notice).
So we'll see what they do now. Meanwhile, we had better see to our election system, if it's democracy that we want. If not, well, then we have an election system in place that guarantees fascist rule.
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