Republicans: Get Away Bush, You Pest

Stay no longer and get away fast is the message from Republicans for the fading President George W. Bush. [Bush is pictured at right.] But God still loves him.

From Der Spiegel, Gabor Steingart reports:

It's twilight at the White House. First it was voters and now it's the president's friends who are abandoning him. Thank God, says conservative luminary Newt Gingrich. According to Gingrich, Republicans can only hope to hold onto power by breaking their ties with Bush. The end of an era has many faces. One is that of a narrow-lipped president appearing on primetime TV, asking Americans for money and their confidence. Another is that of Utah native Nathan Barnes, 23, who didn't survive his deployment to Iraq and whose photo appeared in the obituaries section of his local paper.

My personal message to the ass-in-chief is: Take a long walk on a Baghdad street.

This is pretty much the message delivered by the UN listening to Bush's speech today, though you won't read it in the American papers. See L.C. Johnson at Daily Kos.
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Supreme Court of 1972 Protected the 4th Amendment

The Richard Nixon years (1969-1974) saw an acceleration of warrantless surveillance and presidential claims of executive power to wiretap and spy on American citizens under the umbrella of national security and the acclaimed inherent power of the presidency to engage in action deemed necessary to protect national security just as President Nixon perceived this obligation.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney make the same claims for themselves.

Such Nixonian claims led Congress to pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, mandating the government to demonstrate probable cause and obtain a warrant before placing Americans under surveillance for national security rationales within the United States.

FISA negated claims of inherent executive power to engage in extra-Constitutional programs and action.

But last week FISA was gutted, and rendered inoperative for six months (sunset clause) under the guise of national security with the cooperation of many congressional democrats and virtually every single republican. [Only two Republicans in Congress voted “nay” on the gutting of FISA: Representative Walter Jones, Jr. (R-NC) and Timothy V. Johnson (IL). Wisconsin's entire delegation of congressional democrats voted nay, and all three Wisconsin republicans in congress voted yea.]

So, we just have to trust that the administration will use this power judiciously for six months, and that the administration that has politicized virtually every function of the executive branch, attacked and smeared prominent critics, and self-consciously lied the nation into a war costing over $1 trillion and 100,000s of lives will respect the liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

As a New York Times editorial notes: The new bill allows the “director of national intelligence and the attorney general authority to intercept — without warrant, court supervision or accountability — any telephone call or e-mail message that moves in, out of or through the United States as long as there is a ‘reasonable belief’ that one party is not in the United States.”

Bush like Nixon attempts to codify and legalize an unconstitutional program, in this case violative of (among other liberties) the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and First Amendment right to engage in free speech critiquing the government.

UNITED STATES v. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, 407 U.S. 297 (1972)

In 1972, a unanimous Supreme Court shot down Nixon’s similar attempt to legalize his monarchical claims of his presidency through warrantless wiretapping.

In the vital decision UNITED STATES v. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, 407 U.S. 297 (1972), Justice Lewis Powell denounced the Nixon administration’s electronic surveillance, warrantless-wiretapping program not just on Fourth Amendment grounds, but as a betrayal of the sovereign rights of citizens in a democracy to criticize their own government.

History abundantly documents the tendency of Government - however benevolent and benign its motives - to view with suspicion those who most fervently dispute its policies. Fourth Amendment protections become the more necessary when the targets of official surveillance may be those suspected of unorthodoxy in their political beliefs. The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect ‘domestic security.’ Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent. ... The price of lawful public dissent must not be a dread of subjection to an unchecked surveillance power. Nor must the fear of unauthorized official eavesdropping deter vigorous citizen dissent and discussion of Government action in private conversation. For private dissent, no less than open public discourse, is essential to our free society.- Justice Lewis Powell (UNITED STATES v. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, 407 U.S. 297 (1972))

Will the Supreme Court of today protect and defend the Constitution and American citizens from an out-of-control and corrupt executive branch?

Not likely.

Lewis Powell was an establishment Republican from Virginia, but today’s Republicans on the Supreme Court are more likely to be of the Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) variety—do and say anything to protect the administration no matter the cost to the Constitution, the American treasury and lives.

One can only wish that the Supreme Court of the early 1970s that reflected the consensus of popular movements of the American citizenry demanding their Constitutional rights were functioning today.

The fact is the current Supreme Court bears no resemblance to the Supreme Court of 35 years ago.

Only poplar movements made powerful by citizen action can prevent the dissolution of our Constitution through the actions of a fear-mongering administration that longs for the unchecked power of a monarch.

As Senator Feingold writes:

We should not delay passing a bill that will end Alberto Gonzales's six-month, oversight-free surveillance holiday. The president will undoubtedly oppose these efforts and the Republicans in the Senate will no doubt filibuster any efforts to reinstate judicial involvement and tighten the controls around the president's eavesdropping authorities. In the face of that expected opposition, Democrats will need to stick together this time to fix the mess that we just created. And at least some Republicans will have to be convinced to support the Constitution.

Clearly, this will be an uphill fight. But it's a fight worth having. Our constitutional rights should not be sacrificed to scare tactics. Congress must stand up to the president. The sooner that Democrats realize that standing tough on national security doesn't mean giving into the administration, the better off they - and the country - will be.

Update: See the Nation for more information.

Update II: Powell is from Virginia, not Minnesota.

Idiot Wind

The logical consequence of the latest administration assertion of executive authority is that once the president invokes "executive privilege," then the administration or any member thereof no longer is subject to Congressional oversight or legal prosecution.

The name for this form of government is not democracy, but rather a strongman formally anwserable to no one and no law, as a worried country of non-Republicans looks on.

As is predictable, this administration action, a genuine move away from democracy, is portrayed by the Washington Post as a mere dispute among political parties.

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.

The position presents serious legal and political obstacles for congressional Democrats, who have begun laying the groundwork for contempt proceedings against current and former White House officials in order to pry loose information about the dismissals.

What would the administration have to do to compel an accurate description of what form of government to which we have devolved?

Glenn Grenwald at Salon nails it:

The administration's position is a direct assault on prosecutorial independence, and an attempt to vest the President with the unchallengeable power to block criminal prosecutions of anyone in the Executive Branch who breaks the law at the President's direction.

Via ThinkProgress:

White House seeks legal cover from Gonzales. The New York Times reports that the White House is confidently asserting that any attempts by Congress to hold White House staffers in contempt will be stymied by Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department:

“The Justice Department would be likely to block any efforts by Congressional Democrats to seek contempt charges against present and former White House officials for refusing to give information to Congress, a White House spokesman said Friday. […]

A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said Congressional threats to have presidential aides charged with criminal contempt would probably end in failure. “It has been the Justice Department’s long-held view that the law does not permit Congress to require a U.S. attorney to convene a grand jury or otherwise pursue a prosecution” when someone refuses on the basis of executive privilege to testify or turn over documents, Mr. Fratto said.”

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Happy Independence Day

I write this one day early from the holiday marking our revolution for liberty.

There is something wrong about our country today.

We did not declare and fight for freedom, for our rights and for our separation from King George III, so that 231 years later, our democratic republic could fall to the imperial, unitary executive of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove who declare the dissolution of habeas corpus and unlawful government surveillance the prerogatives of their proclaimed all-powerful office of the American presidency.

Resist this disgraceful tyranny by whatever means you see fit to preserve our liberty, " ... the soul’s right to breathe ... " (- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher (1813 - 1887). Happy Independence Day and long live the American revolution for liberty.

Declaration of Independence

[Adopted in Congress 4 July 1776]

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.


He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:


For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.


In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.


We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levey war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott


New York:William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris


New Jersey:Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
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