Time after time seems to feel he is… King George
Bush on the Constitution: A ‘goddamned piece of paper’
Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.
Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal.
GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.
“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”
“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”
“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”
Bush has a record of ignoring the constitution when it serves his purpose
To the Bush Administration, the Constitution of the United States is little more than toilet paper stained from all the sh-t that this group of power-mad despots have dumped on the freedoms that “goddamned piece of paper” used to guarantee.
Put aside, for a moment, political affiliation or personal beliefs. It doesn’t matter if you are a Democratic, Republican or Independent. It doesn’t matter if you support the invasion or Iraq or not. Despite our differences, the Constitution has stood for two centuries as the defining document of our government, the final source to determine - in the end - if something is legal or right.
Every federal official - including the President - who takes an oath of office swears to “uphold and defend” the Constitution of the United States.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says he cringes when someone calls the Constitution a “living document.”
"“Oh, how I hate the phrase we have-a ‘living document,’” Scalia says. “We now have a Constitution that means whatever we want it to mean. The Constitution is not a living organism, for Pete’s sake.”
As a judge, Scalia says, “I don’t have to prove that it’s perfect; I just have to prove that it’s better than anything else.”
President Bush has proposed seven amendments to the Constitution a record for any modern President, including a controversial amendment to define marriage as a “union between a man and woman.”
WASHINGTON – President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.
Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.
Many legal scholars say they believe that Bush’s theory about his own powers goes too far and that he is seizing for himself some of the law-making role of Congress and the Constitution-interpreting role of the courts.
Bush has also said he can bypass laws requiring him to tell Congress before diverting money from an authorized program in order to start a secret operation, such as the ''black sites" where suspected terrorists are secretly imprisoned.
On several other occasions, Bush contended he could nullify laws creating ''whistle-blower" job protections for federal employees that would stop any attempt to fire them as punishment for telling a member of Congress about possible government wrongdoing.
When Congress passed a massive energy package in August, for example, it strengthened whistle-blower protections for employees at the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The provision was included because lawmakers feared that Bush appointees were intimidating nuclear specialists so they would not testify about safety issues related to a planned nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada – a facility the administration supported, but both Republicans and Democrats from Nevada opposed.
When Bush signed the energy bill, he issued a signing statement declaring that the executive branch could ignore the whistle-blower protections.
Bush’s statement did more than send a threatening message to federal energy specialists inclined to raise concerns with Congress; it also raised the possibility that Bush would not feel bound to obey similar whistle-blower laws that were on the books before he became president. His domestic spying program, for example, violated a surveillance law enacted 23 years before he took office.
Originally, Bush and Cheney disdained Bill Clinton’s 1994 deal with the North as appeasement. They criticized South Korea’s “sunshine policy” of reconciliation with the North, refused to negotiate, and included that despotic regime in a purely rhetorical “axis of evil.” And they watched as the North produced enough new plutonium for eight to 10 bombs.
In Iraq and elsewhere, Bush’s successor will be called on to clean up a staggering mess. Above all, this will mean returning to the principles of US foreign policy as practiced by every other president since FDR. Particularly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Bush and his advisers presumed that this hoary old approach was no longer relevant. But the record shows that Bush has not succeeded in rewriting the rules of statecraft. Proceeding from false premises, he came to false conclusions. His successor, whether a Democrat or a Republican, will need to revive the internationalist traditions of his predecessors to clean up the mess he is leaving behind.
there has been an ominous decline in America’s reputation throughout much of the Muslim world and even in Europe. The horrors of Abu Ghraib, the rendition of terrorist suspects to countries that torture, the lack of legal protections for captives in Guantanamo: These and other panicky reactions to the threat of terrorism have made American preaching about the rule of law seem hypocritical. Bush has played into the hands of propagandists who portray America as hostile to all Muslims or a threat to world peace. The result is a loss of soft power, the good will that inclines foreign states and populations to give America the benefit of the doubt.
Is voting for McCain ,the kind of signal we want to send to Lawmakers?
Would we be telling them that changing the constitution and changing what they want ,when they feel like it is ok with us?
Maybe Bush will change the law to stay in office as long as he sees fit .
I guess all you Republicans will say it is OK with you.
http://oasn04.247realmedia.com/RealMedia/
and capital hill blue.
