The Power-Madness of King George

Is Bush turning America into an elective dictatorship?

By Jacob Weisberg

Posted Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2006, at 3:44 PM ET

It'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.

(more)

http://www.slate.com/id/2134845/nav/tap1/

"In June, 2002, Republican Sen. Michael DeWine of Ohio introduced legislation (S. 2659) which would have eliminated the exact barrier to FISA which Gen. Hayden yesterday said is what necessitated the Administration bypassing FISA. Specifically, DeWine's legislation proposed:

to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to modify the standard of proof for issuance of orders regarding non-United States persons from probable cause to reasonable suspicion. . . .

In other words, DeWine's bill, had it become law, would have eliminated the "probable cause" barrier (at least for non-U.S. persons) which the Administration is now pointing to as the reason why it had to circumvent FISA."

See Glenngreenwald.blogspot

Greenwald has all the facts gathered together at his blog including the legislation that was introduced (S.2659)

Triple Bourbon for Glenn Greenwald

Triple Tequila for the blogosphere!!!!

Oh Ya, Bush the liar, time you have a shot of your own Cool-Aid!

This is a winner, good day for free America.

Keep it up blogosphere, keep it up free democratic America, You can lead the news!

Woa right-on, Keep it up everyone!

Probably the most cogent legal analysis thus far can be found in the recent issue of the NY Review of Books in the form of a letter to Congress signed by constitutional heavy hitters.

remember....Hitler was voted into power too....for different reasons, but riding the wave of outrage too (loss of WWI, failed economic policies and corruption in the Wiemar republic)

Whate remains to be seen is if his lackeys start to argue that, "since we're at war", we can't afford to change leaders, so Georgie needs to stay as President until we finally win.

At that point the 22nd Amentment goes the way of the 4th, and the Constitution really IS toilet-paper for the republicans.

online in Feb. 9 issue at

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18650