Reply With Quote
but clinton got a blowjob....in the oval office, commie.
Bush Has Crossed the Rubicon
By Paul Craig Roberts
Information Clearinghouse01/16/06 -- -- Dictatorships seldom appear full-fledged but emerge piecemeal. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon with one Roman legion he broke the tradition that protected the civilian government from victorious generals and launched the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. Fearing that Caesar would become a king, the Senate assassinated him. From the civil wars that followed, Caesar’s grandnephew, Octavian, emerged as the first Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus.
Two thousand years later in Germany, Adolf Hitler’s rise to dictator from his appointment as chancellor was rapid. Hitler used the Reichstag fire to create an atmosphere of crisis. Both the judicial and legislative branches of government collapsed, and Hitler’s decrees became law. The Decree for the Protection of People and State (Feb. 28, 1933) suspended guarantees of personal liberty and permitted arrest and incarceration without trial. The Enabling Act (March 23, 1933) transferred legislative power to Hitler, permitting him to decree laws, laws moreover that "may deviate from the Cons ution."
The dictatorship of the Roman emperors was not based on an ideology. The Nazis had an ideology of sorts, but Hitler’s dictatorship was largely personal and agenda-based. The dictatorship that emerged from the Bolshevik Revolution was based in ideology. Lenin declared that the Communist Party’s dictatorship over the Russian people rests "directly on force, not limited by anything, not restricted by any laws, nor any absolute rules." Stalin’s dictatorship over the Communist Party was based on coercion alone, unrestrained by any limitations or inhibitions.
In this first decade of the 21st century the United States regards itself as a land of democracy and civil liberty but, in fact, is an incipient dictatorship. Ideology plays only a limited role in the emerging dictatorship. The demise of American democracy is largely the result of historical developments.
Lincoln was the first American tyrant. Lincoln justified his tyranny in the name of preserving the Union. His extra-legal, extra-cons utional methods were tolerated in order to suppress Northern opposition to Lincoln’s war against the Southern secession.
The first major lasting assault on the US Cons ution’s separation of powers, which is the basis for our political system, came with the response of the Roosevelt administration to the crisis of the Great Depression. The New Deal resulted in Congress delegating its legislative powers to the executive branch. Today when Congress passes a statute it is little more than an authorization for an executive agency to make the law by writing the regulations that implement it.
Prior to the New Deal, legislation was tightly written to minimize any executive branch interpretation. Only in this way can law be accountable to the people. If the executive branch that enforces the law also writes the law, "all legislative powers" are no longer vested in elected representatives in Congress. The Cons ution is violated, and the separation of powers is breached.
The principle that power delegated to Congress by the people cannot be delegated by Congress to the executive branch is the mainstay of our political system. Until President Roosevelt overturned this principle by threatening to pack the Supreme Court, the executive branch had no role in interpreting the law. As Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote: "That congress cannot delegate legislative power to the president is a principle universally recognized as vital to the integrity and maintenance of the system of government ordained by the Cons ution."
Despite seven decades of an imperial presidency that has risen from the New Deal’s breach of the separation of powers, Republican attorneys, who cons ute the membership of the quarter-century-old Federalist Society, the candidate group for Republican nominees to federal judgeships, write tracts about the Imperial Congress and the Imperial Judiciary that are briefs for concentrating more power in the executive. Federalist Society members pretend that Congress and the Judiciary have stolen all the power and run away with it.
The Republican interest in strengthening executive power has its origin in frustration from the constraints placed on Republican administrations by Democratic congresses. The thrust to enlarge the President’s powers predates the Bush administration but is being furthered to a dangerous extent during Bush’s second term. The confirmation of Bush’s nominee, Samuel Alito, a member of the Federalist Society, to the Supreme Court will provide five votes in favor of enlarged presidential powers.
President Bush has used "signing statements" hundreds of times to vitiate the meaning of statutes passed by Congress. In effect, Bush is vetoing the bills he signs into law by asserting unilateral authority as commander-in-chief to bypass or set aside the laws he signs. For example, Bush has asserted that he has the power to ignore the McCain amendment against torture, to ignore the law that requires a warrant to spy on Americans, to ignore the prohibition against indefinite detention without charges or trial, and to ignore the Geneva Conventions to which the US is signatory.
In effect, Bush is asserting the powers that accrued to Hitler in 1933. His Federalist Society apologists and Department of Justice appointees claim that President Bush has the same power to interpret the Cons ution as the Supreme Court. An Alito Court is likely to agree with this false claim.
This is the great issue that is before the country. But it is pushed into the background by political battles over abortion and sexual rights. Many people fighting to strengthen the executive think they are fighting against legitimizing sodomy and murder in the womb. They are unaware that the real issue is that America is on the verge of elevating its president above the law.
Bush Justice Department official and Berkeley law professor John Yoo argues that no law can restrict the president in his role as commander-in-chief. Thus, once the president is at war – even a vague open-ended "war on terror" – Bush’s Justice Department says the president is free to undertake any action in pursuit of war, including the torture of children and indefinite detention of American citizens.
The commander-in-chief role is probably sufficiently elastic to expand to any crisis, whether real or fabricated. Thus has the US arrived at the verge of dictatorship.
This development has little to do with Bush, who is unlikely to be aware that the Cons ution is experiencing its final rending on his watch. America’s descent into dictatorship is the result of historical developments and of old political battles dating back to President Nixon being driven from office by a Democratic Congress.
There is today no cons utional party. Both political parties, most cons utional lawyers, and the bar associations are willing to set aside the Cons ution whenever it interferes with their agendas. Americans have forgotten the prerequisites for freedom, and those pursuing power have forgotten what it means when it falls into other hands. Americans are very close to losing their cons utional system and civil liberties. It is paradoxical that American democracy is the likely casualty of a "war on terror" that is being justified in the name of the expansion of democracy.
Dr. Roberts [send him mail] is John M. Olin Fellow at the Ins ute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Ins ute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
but clinton got a blowjob....in the oval office, commie.
So would you rather have Bush in office or Hitler in power? I thought so.
Would you rather be a mute or a yute? Figures
well, if he is able to crush that term limit thing, I'll agree with you.
As far as the Geneva Convention thing goes, what part has he violated?
While I don't know whether the President has violated the Geneva Convention, some officials his administration have.
U.S.: Pentagon Acknowledges Some Prison Abuse Violates Geneva Conventions
By Charles Recknagel
(file photo)
The Pentagon yesterday acknowledged that some of the abuse of Iraqis at Baghdad's Abu Ghurayb prison was in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The acknowledgement adds fuel to a growing debate in the United States over the extent to which the U.S. administration has loosened observance of the Geneva Conventions to pursue terrorists and whether that may have confused operating procedures in Iraq.
Prague, 14 May 2004 (RFE/RL) -- One of the most sensitive issues raised by the abuse scandal at Abu Ghurayb is whether U.S. interrogation practices violate the Geneva Convention governing the treatment of war prisoners.
That question was at center-stage yesterday as U.S. senators questioned the second-ranking civilian administrator for the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz. Jack Reed, a senator from the Democratic Party, asked the deputy defense secretary whether he considered hooding prisoners and depriving them of sleep to be "humane."
In highly charged and testy exchanges, Reed asked, "Seventy-two hours without regular sleep, sensory deprivation, which would be a bag over your head for 72 hours -- do you think that's humane?" Pressed repeatedly to answer, Wolfowitz responded. "I believe it's not humane," Wolfowitz said. "It strikes me as not humane."
At issue now is the extent to which the precedent established at Guantanamo Bay may have influenced procedures in Iraq.Reed then asked another top Pentagon official, General Peter Pace, whether such interrogation techniques violate the Geneva Conventions. Specifically, the senator asked the general how he would view a foreign nation holding a U.S. soldier in a cell, naked with a bag over his head and squatting with his arms lifted for 45 minutes. Would that be a good interrogation technique or a Geneva Convention violation? General Pace answered, "I would describe it as a violation, sir."
The testimony was highly charged because it went to the heart of what for some lawmakers is the central concern in the Abu Ghurayb scandal. The concern is that the U.S. government must not only find and punish the individual soldiers guilty of abuse. It must also determine whether the abuses resulted in part from a larger, systemic disregard for human rights within the military that now needs to be corrected.
The possibility of "systemic" problems has been debated in Washington ever since the pictures of some soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners emerged late last month. The pictures depict hooded prisoners forced to assume sexually humiliating poses by their smiling captors.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has consistently said that the Pentagon is observing the Geneva Conventions in Iraq and that the abuses are the acts of a few aberrant soldiers. He restated that position yesterday as he made a surprise visit to Abu Ghurayb on a one-day trip to Baghdad. "The United States government announced with respect to Iraq that the Geneva Conventions -- Articles 3 and 4 -- apply for the Iraqi prisoners or war and apply for the civilian non-military detainees," Rumsfeld said. "That has been the case from the beginning."
He continued: "And all of the orders and instructions that I have seen or that I know about say that. People are trained in that, supposedly. Full stop. Therefore, anyone who is running around saying the Geneva Convention did not apply in Iraq is either terribly uninformed or mischievous. In either case it is harmful to the country."
But Rumsfeld's assertions have drawn fire in Washington because they come as congressional hearings reveal that some interrogation practices approved by the Pentagon involve the use of threatening, disruptive, and stressful procedures. The U.S. daily "The Washington Post" reported that the approved list of practices identifies two categories of measures, one approved for all detainees, the other requiring special authorization from senior commanders. The papers says, "among the items in the second category are 'sensory deprivation, stress positions, and dietary manipulation (and) forced changes in sleep patterns.'"
Many human rights groups have called those sorts of procedures violations of the Geneva Conventions. The conventions, which date to the 1920s and have since been signed by almost all nations, prescribe how prisoners of war should be treated by captors. The state in part that "no physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them."
David Roth, the executive director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, recently criticized U.S. interrogation techniques in Iraq. He said that "international law and domestic law are absolutely clear: You can never torture a detainee regardless of the cir stances, even in the midst of a war. Similarly, you can never engage in cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment or punishment."
Some opinion makers debating the Abu Ghurayb scandal are asking whether -- in the wake of 11 September -- the U.S. administration sent confusing signals to the military when it loosened its observation of the Geneva Conventions in the interest of extracting information from terrorist suspects.
"The Washington Post" said in an editorial early this month that the Abu Ghurayb abuses "can be traced, in part, to policy decisions and public statements" by Rumsfeld. The editorial adds, "beginning more than two years ago, Mr. Rumsfeld decided to overturn decades of previous practice by the U.S. military in its handling of detainees in foreign countries."
The Pentagon determined that terrorist suspects captured in Afghanistan could be detained off U.S. territory at a U.S. military base in Cuba and deprived of rights under the Geneva Conventions. Rumsfeld said at the time that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay would be treated "for the most part" in "a manner that is reasonably consistent" with the conventions.
At issue now is the extent to which the precedent established at Guantanamo Bay may have influenced procedures in Iraq. A recent report on the abuses at Abu Ghurayb by U.S. Army General Antonio Taguba says that guards at Abu Ghurayb were not instructed on the convention provisions and that no copies of them were posted in the facility.
In the days ahead, there is likely to be much more attention paid to the question of whether the U.S. military today is doing enough to assure soldiers in Iraq follow the Geneva Conventions, and to whether the abuse was more widespread than already reported.
Stupid ing assholes... he's trying to defend the country..
At least now you know ing asshole Kerry and Gore would of just sat on there ass
not using military, NSA or CIA...
Proves the point you liberials are a bunch of useless pussies that if left in charge would do nothing to upset the "rights" of terrorists to plot and execute more attacks.
Yea you would be like Clinton not even visiting or giving a about the 1st WTC attack...
Bunch of ing pathetic loosers.
I find it terribly ironic that a President who justifies fighting terrorists on the basis that "they hate our freedoms" (an original justification for fighting terrorism in the immediate aftermath of September 11) is perfectly willing to cir scribe the freedoms and civil liberties of his own "subjects" -- indeed, demands that no cons utional concern exists, despite well-established principles of law to the contrary -- in justifying his actions in prosecuting that fight.
Essentially, the White House takes the position that the American people should be willing to concede certain freedoms in an effort to defeat terrorists who hate us for those freedoms.
Indeed, the President, on more than one occasion, has suggested that relenting in our freedoms aids the terrorists in their campaign.
If we should now be willing to have our freedoms limited in the name of prosecuting a war on terror, doesn't that make the terrorists winners?
Complete bull leftist talking point crap here...
EVERY president has had piles of secret's. Clinton and Jimmy Carter did classified that would embarass them if leaked.
Bush signed off on a NSA list to spy on suspected terrorists...
He promised survivors he would do whatever it takes....
Now you know the other party would not have.
Oh, oh. Republicans hate paradoxes almost as much as irony.If we should now be willing to have our freedoms limited in the name of prosecuting a war on terror, doesn't that make the terrorists winners?
total right-wing bull propaganda
1. He may be trying to protect the country, but he is still exceeding his authority with some of his actions.
2. What is a "looser?"
I interpret that as a recommendation for the other party.
someone that doesn't drink beer and kick ass.
Why don't you go change your pants now Vashner. I know the mean old terrorists have you quivering in front of your keyboard.
Typical right wing chicken hawk. Too scared to enlist, too scared to have freedom. You want others to fight your fight for you.
Of course, what is the point in fighting for this country if you don't believe what it stands for.
Coward.
You bas , Vashner can't type. He lost the ability to type after twisting off a non-twistable bottlecap during the Grenada conflict. God bless him.
USA is going after IRAN before the elections soon. Ray Taliaferro first reported this last night and he is correct about 98%. Go Spurs, this maybe the last le anyone wins ever.
Damn! I only drink wine and file formal complaints.
Last edited by Mr. Peabody; 01-18-2006 at 04:40 PM.
And you are an over educated twerp. How many wars have you fought?
What do you want some mushroom cloud over a city of the US to prove a
point. You need to go read the cons ution with something other than
a jaundice eye.
Terrorist do have me quivering in fear. Fear of what they are willing to
sacrifice to gain their end. Fear of seeing my children, grandchildren and
others die because of people like you. I believe you stated that you had
a graduate student do something or other. Does that mean you teach
you dumb ass leanings to your students? Damn, people like you sicken me.
yeah, you pencil-neck. Xray, was liberating us from the Vietnamese when you were popping pimples and jerking off to your mother's Sears Catalogues.
I didn't realize that we needed to be liberated from the Vietnamese.
Isn't that the old song-and-dance? We send our troops overseas to keep us free, right? That's why our troops are in Iraq right now, they're ensuring our freedom (or so I've been told by FOXNews).
Actually I am a vet from a military family. I only served four years and since I was in the Air Force in the 70s I never saw combat.
I don't have a problem with the government wiretapping terror suspects foreign and domestic. I do have a problem with the executive branch doing it without a check from one of the other two branches of the government. In this case there is a FISA court that the executive branch has up to 72 hours after they have tapped whoever they want to tap to get the warrant. That is more than generous and it offers us the protections from one branch gaining too much power.
Without the warrant, we have no idea who Bush is monitoring. None. He have to take him for his word. I don't trust the guy and if Hillary were to be elected in '08 I doubt most of you who support the Bush administration's right to do this would be too happy with Hillary able to wiretap whoever she wanted and say she was doing it on a limited basis with people who are taking calls from Al Qaeda.
Like every American whether they be liberal or conservative, I want the terrorists destroyed. We can prevail while maintaining the same freedoms that have served us well for over 200 years. All the critics are saying (and there are critics of this policy from both parties) is follow the law and get the warrant. Listen all you want as long as a judge says you do have a good reason too.
Oh, Gee!!, I don't agree with your statement, but I will slaughter as many foreigners as it takes to protect your right to say it.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
