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Sunday, April 30, 2006

We have allowed George W. Bush to appoint himself King
Posted by Jill | 8:34 AM
Not a shot was fired, not a law was changed -- and yet we no longer have a President, we have a king -- a king who claims he need not obey any law he doesn't like:

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.


Since when is George W. Bush become a Constitutional scholar? More:

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.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.

Former administration officials contend that just because Bush reserves the right to disobey a law does not mean he is not enforcing it: In many cases, he is simply asserting his belief that a certain requirement encroaches on presidential power.

But with the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, in which he ignored a law requiring warrants to tap the phones of Americans, many legal specialists say Bush is hardly reluctant to bypass laws he believes he has the constitutional authority to override.

Far more than any predecessor, Bush has been aggressive about declaring his right to ignore vast swaths of laws -- many of which he says infringe on power he believes the Constitution assigns to him alone as the head of the executive branch or the commander in chief of the military.

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.

Phillip Cooper, a Portland State University law professor who has studied the executive power claims Bush made during his first term, said Bush and his legal team have spent the past five years quietly working to concentrate ever more governmental power into the White House.

''There is no question that this administration has been involved in a very carefully thought-out, systematic process of expanding presidential power at the expense of the other branches of government," Cooper said. ''This is really big, very expansive, and very significant."


Every patriotic American should be appalled at this -- especially the people with the ribbon magnets on their cars and the flags in front of their homes. This is not what American presidents do. The presidency is one of three branches of government, not the final arbiter of what is and is not Constitutional. If a Democratic president had made such claims, the howling from the right would be ferocious. Instead, the right has joined in the anointment of Bush as some kind of hybrid of king and god -- in complete violation of not just the spirit, but the letter of the laws of this country.

Bush likes to say that if he can't wiretap anyone he wants to, if he can't invade any country he wants to, that the terrorists win. Well, the terrorists have already won. They have succeeded where the Soviet Union couldn't -- because they have destroyed this country not by bombs, but by fear -- a fear that a ruthless, corrupt president and his henchmen have used to turn this country into the kind of totalitarian state they claim to be fighting elsewhere.

And the American people have allowed them to do it.

Now that the United States is headed by a sociopathic man with dictatorial aims, a sense of royal entitlement, and delusions of divinity, does anyone still actually believe that he intends to leave office on January 20, 2009?
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