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Dismantling the Imperial Presidency
President-elect Obama's first appointments to the Justice, State and Defense Departments mark no radical change. Rather, they return to a centrist consensus familiar from the Clinton years. But pragmatic incrementalism and studied bipartisanship will do little to undo the centerpiece of the Bush/Cheney era's legacy. At its heart, that regime was intent on forcing the Constitution into a new mold of executive dominance.
Obama enters the White House in a slipstream of forces that will hinder attempts to abandon this constitutional vision. He may be a careful constitutional scholar, but we can't rely on Obama alone to reorient the constitutional order. It will be up to progressives to insist on fundamental repudiation of the Bush/Cheney era.
At first blush, Obama's victory is cause for optimism. As a senator he roundly rejected the signature Bush/Cheney national security policies: torture, "extraordinary rendition," Guantánamo and--until July--warrantless surveillance. Obama appointees like Eric Holder as attorney general speak unequivocally against these violations of constitutional and human rights (to be sure, in Holder's case it was after early equivocation).
The most significant Bush/Cheney innovation was planted at the taproot of our Constitution. It was the insistence that the president can exercise what Cheney in 1987 called "monarchical notions of prerogative." That he can, in other words, override validly enacted statutes and treaties simply by invoking national security. This monarchical claim underwrote not only the expansion of torture, extraordinary rendition and warrantless surveillance but also the stonewalling of Congressional and judicial inquiries in the name of "executive privilege" and "state secrets."
The Bush/Cheney White House leveraged pervasive post-9/11 fears to reverse what Cheney called "the erosion of presidential power" since Watergate. Relying on pliant Justice Department lawyers for legal cover, it put into practice a vision of executive power unconstrained by Congress or the courts. It achieved what James Madison once called the "accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands," which he condemned as "the very definition of tyranny."
Radical change is needed to re-establish legitimate bounds to executive power. We must again place beyond the pale Nixon's famous aphorism that "when the president does it, that means it's not illegal." But radical change--as early appointments and policy signals from the Obama transition team suggest--comes easier as campaign slogan than governing practice. And there are many reasons to fear a go-slow approach from Obama when it comes to restoring the constitutional equilibrium.
No matter how decent, any new president is tempted by the tools and trappings of executive authority. However tainted the Oval Office is now, Obama's perspective will change dramatically on entering the White House. He is already reading more daily security briefs than Bush and beginning each day with a barrage of fearful intelligence, hinting at dangers that largely never materialize. Submersion in that flow of intelligence will wrenchingly change his sense of the world's risks.
So Obama will be tempted to maintain Bush's innovations in executive power. While the terror threat remains substantial, as the Mumbai attack shows, the Bush administration has left counterterrorism policy in tatters. We have no rational strategy for terrorist interdiction and prevention. Obama's nominations of Robert Gates as defense secretary and Gen. James Jones as national security adviser suggest he is acutely aware of these deficits and of the Democrats' perceived vulnerability on national security. Nor are terrorists the only threat that might lead Obama to reach for emergency powers: credit crunches and fiscal meltdowns can also prompt unilateral executive action, with consequences as sweeping as any national security initiative.
Internal pressure for changing the White House position on executive power will thus wane as the new administration settles in. And pressure from the other two branches is unlikely to swell. The Obama White House will at first face a friendly Congress eager to show results on the economy and healthcare. Unlike the recently oppositional Congress, legislators in the majority have little incentive to make constitutional waves (expect some stalwarts, such as Senator Russ Feingold, to buck this trend). Matters are not helped by the turn from the feckless to the competent. Legislators and the public care most about the constitutional restraints on executive power when the occupant of the White House raises concerns about abuses of power. A more capable leader's entrance saps immediate pressure for reform, even when openings for such limits can be glimpsed.
Nor will the judiciary, listing rightward with President Bush's 324 appointments, provide much constraint. In his appointments to the Supreme Court and the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals (which hears many key constitutional cases), Bush seems to have selected executive-power mavens, including Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito and Judge Janice Rogers Brown. Their opinions already evince strong deference to executive claims of secrecy and expediency. Paradoxically, then, one of Bush's key legacies will be a judiciary that instinctually hews to an executive controlled by a Democratic president.
I am thus not optimistic that the Obama administration will of its own volition restore the constitutional balance, even if it gives up some of Bush/Cheney's most extravagant and offensive policies. With formidable forces arrayed against them, advocates for the Constitution's original equilibrium of powers must choose their battles carefully.
Three areas are particularly important in the administration's early days: torture, the law that the executive follows and accountability. In each case, measures can be taken that would correct a policy the Obama administration clearly disagrees with and simultaneously help dismantle the Bush/Cheney constitutional revolution. (The other pressing issue to face the incoming administration--detention policy--is so complex and difficult, largely thanks to the outgoing administration's compounded mistakes, that it needs to be looked at separately.)
Begin with torture. President Bush's repeated disavowals of government-sanctioned torture have created cognitive dissonance: White House protestations that "we don't torture" are no longer believed. An Obama administration dedicated to restoring America's tarnished international reputation must do more than talk. The best way to begin is for Congress to enact and President Obama to sign already introduced legislation that would limit the intelligence community to the specific interrogation tactics listed in the recently revised Army Field Manual. This law would make it clear that the CIA in particular cannot use what it euphemistically calls "enhanced interrogation techniques." In signing the law, Obama should eschew the weaseling signing provisos favored by Bush and instead forthrightly recognize that there is no presidential override when it comes to torture. This bill is a golden opportunity to restore international credibility and repudiate the monarchical presidency. So it is unfortunate that Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein and Ron Wyden have already begun backsliding on it.
Also on the torture front, the Obama administration should candidly acknowledge past wrongs, thereby abandoning the Bush/Cheney demand for absolute secrecy. In legal cases filed by torture victims such as Maher Arar, Khaled el-Masri and Shafiq Rasul, the Bush administration has parried demands for acknowledgment or restitution with a sweeping constitutional theory of "state secrets." Rejecting this theory would be a significant step in dismantling the Bush/Cheney view of executive unilateralism. It would be the smallest measure of justice to abandon this theory as ill founded and also to offer profound apologies and restitution to victims. It would be a public acknowledgment that our fears are never an excuse for anyone's suffering.
Torture is only one aspect of a larger distortion of the Constitution. Changing the executive's operating definitions of the law will be critical to rolling back the Bush/Cheney vision. Now this vision is largely memorialized in Justice Department opinions, many still secret. Some of them directly address presidential prerogatives to override laws. Others deal with specific constitutional rights, such as Fourth Amendment privacy rights and the freedom from indefinite detention without trial.
While there is not much general public pressure to change these positions, many constitutional scholars and advocacy groups have protested these opinions. Consistent pressure is required to ensure that the Obama Justice Department cleans house. All department opinions on executive power should be revealed, and troubling ones should be red-flagged so officials will know they can no longer rely on them. The Justice Department should then develop opinions that systematically repudiate the most offensive positions, in particular the idea of monarchical prerogatives to override the law.
Traditionally, opinions have been prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel in secret and then closely held within the administration. Given executive-branch lawyers' habitual pro-presidential tilt, this process should be refashioned. Not only should opinions be made public after publication; the OLC should invite comment and criticism from the public and scholars during drafting, much as other federal regulations are subject to pre-publication "notice and comment."
Finally, there is the thorny matter of accountability. Absent accountability, the lesson of the Bush/Cheney era would be that those who violate the law can, if brazen enough, get away with it. Yet the Obama transition team has signaled no appetite for criminal proceedings. And in any case, indictments might be pre-empted by a blanket pardon before January 20.
Many others have made a compelling case for prosecutions. But what if they don't happen? Paradoxically, blanket presidential pardons may be the least bad alternative. If prosecutions proceed, they may not be edifying. Admissible evidence will be sparse, given secrecy rules. Officials will protest at being sandbagged after having relied on (flawed) OLC opinions. And there is the danger of a repeat of the Iran/Contra trials, where Oliver North used the dock as a soapbox. Given these risks, a blanket pardon perversely might send the clearest signal that the malaise of the Bush/Cheney era was endemic.
Yet this is no reason to renounce accountability. Several commentators have urged a commission to establish full documentation of what was done and its legal justifications. An investigative commission could be less amenable to manipulation than trials. If it could carry out its work in a bipartisan spirit, while insisting on the investigative tools needed to cut through secrecy, such as subpoena power, it could establish a definitive historical record of Bush/Cheney's extraordinary power grab. Bringing to public scrutiny the imperial presidency's infractions will, I suspect, be as good a way as any of thoroughly discrediting that constitutional vision.
No one should assume that the end of the Bush presidency marks the end of the imperial presidency. The Obama administration faces a geostrategic environment of growing uncertainty, with treasury, reputation and military depleted by eight feckless years. It would be foolhardy simply to assume that the worst will be swept away. Yet the opportunities exist for progressives to insist that Obama stay true to his message of hope and his promise of restoring America's tarnished Constitution.
- Posted in
40 Comments so far
Show AllObama enters the White House in a slipstream of forces that will hinder attempts to abandon this constitutional vision.
If Obama is a serious democrat (small d) he will, during the next four years, make repeated public statements that he intends to obey both the letter and spirit of the law and return the executive branch to its co-equal status with the other two branches. And he will have his Justice Department working furiously to identify and squash as many of the dictatorial termites Bush/Cheney let loose in the basement as they can. That is if the heroin of power doesn't make him nod off.
Hope for the best,expect the worst.
Just as greed and crime are natural accompaniments of the Wall Street Crowd, so it is with politicians. They naturally grab wealth and power, and plunder and punish their enemies.
Our ace in the hole is that the empire is beginning to wind down: we're broke, the oil is peaking, the spirit is lacking and our leadership is truly Roman (See Gibbons). Obama can't run the ship on empty.
Dr Wu, the last of the big-time thinkers
Aziz, here is how:
http://ni4d.us/
Sioux Rose
Cheney's assertion that the state of war allots to the president the right to overstep established law. Let's follow this argument by reversing it, since so much of the Bush-Cheney presidency involves reversals, Orwellian at that. What this does is set up a natural desire in those leaders who are not morally grounded to MAKE war precisely to attain the prize of all these unlimited powers!
I'll bet the rightwing Supreme Court justices will not sing the swan song of "unitary executive" quite so loudly if Obama governs the slightest bit left of center, or center-right. Stay tuned...
And as for the author's point that terrorism (after the awful events in India) is to be feared, well sure... we just had a president willfully create the problem he purported to fix. It's that Orwellian reversal thing, again. Just like giving the same bankers who engineered our monetary crisis (a form of war on the American taxpayer) the money that should go to salvaging those directly harmed by these hucksters version of smoke & mirrors fiscal alchemy.
Sioux Rose:I especially like your next to last paragraph.
> I'll bet the rightwing Supreme Court justices will not sing the swan song of "unitary executive" quite so loudly if Obama governs the slightest bit left of center, or center-right. Stay tuned...
Of course not. Remember Whitewater/Paula Jones. Now the papers tell us an ex-President is above the law.
Unless Obama restores the right of habeas corpus to those identified as enemy combatants by April 20, 2009, it will be clear that he is not serious about constitutional reform.
If one person doesn't have the right of habeas corpus, neither do the rest of us. Ever since the October 2006 patriot act amendment took the right away from enemy combatants, anybody can be labelled an enemy combatant, thereby losing the right to prove their true identity or obtain due process.
Marjorie Cohn's article down further on the page, argues the limits of Bush's pardons in re criminality that he authorized. I think this is a really good article.
I do not think we can predict behaviors/events,such as judiciary decision making. I am reacting specifically to a judiciary that has a hefty percent (30%?)of Bush appointees who are leaning to the right, as the author says, but will have a Democratic president. I do not think we can predict if they will support the executive branch, when it's a Democrat as President. I'd like some examples from the past/history on that issue. There is also the whole DOJ, which is full of political appointees to do political work which has never happened, that is, in recent times, no executive branch has used the DOJ for political activities,as has this Rove driven administration in re DOJ.
Ah, Congress:that will be something to behold in the new term. (Disclosure:I am a Dem.,barely.)
I won't bet on a criminal prosecution of George W. Bush and associates, and the reason why is that the Congress is up to its eyebrows in alligators, by being complicit to the Iraq occupation, in the continued support with the money required to do it.
Mr. Obama voted for supporting the war with the appropriations in the senate, and is as guilty, as the rest of them, and I should really say the rest of US, since we have turned a blind eye and allowed these murderers to continue on their killing spree.
We have a representative Govt. and ALL of us share at least part of the blame and guilt.
I'm no historian but I cannot think of a historical precedent in which errant leaders of any nation, having committed crimes against humanity through power-grabbing and the illicit alteration and deliberate mis-interpretation of core constitutional documents and standards, have ever been brought to justice and prosecuted by/in the same country they once led. Usually the country stumbles on for a generation or two trying to clean up the mess after they are gone or deposed, or is dismantled and reassembled by forces outside of its borders. I would, however, like to hear about any in which this was not the case.
At any rate, because of all the reasons stated in this fine article... the rampant complicity, the denial, the refusal to rehabilitate the constitutions' well-articulated processes to remove errant leaders from the executive to protect the integrity of the constitution and the foundations of the republic itself, not to mention the need to triage problems in order to prevent the country from sinking even further into the sordid outcomes of the morass of lawlessness and corruption encouraged by the fiction of an imperial US executive... no realist can expect that at any powerful enough station of the US government will the perpetrators of the last eight years of decrepitude be brought to justice, nor will their wrongs be redressed and called out in the commons and reversed in any but the most superficial, campaign-management style.
In this way it might be best to ask for and rely upon outside allies and legal actions and hope for the best. And at that point it may come down to who has the bombs and who has the oil. Not a very pretty picture any way you cut it.
The best thing to do right now? Keep this issue front and center in a variety of ways as long as it takes and look for those allies.
How about South Africa or Rwanda? And yes, it's very sad that there are only two examples that I can think of..
yes our challenges are daunting and I don't accept any historical example as a map of our present predicament and a realist is a sceptic by nature and not inclined to make encouraging predictions ....or any realist i know of...Paul Krasner?
But who can predict is not what we have to do as has been known and reminded in a very comprehensive list above of things we got to do to survive and work for justice.
The changes we face today are greater and more complex than anything the human race has faced... we are riding the wave of now and now is everywhere and where she wipes out is anybody's guess but we have to ride it out and ask... Why Not?
the best story will survive... and we are the Story.
It is pretty common for the ruling class to be put to death after a successful revolution. Mussolini was lynched. But you want courts and so forth. Let's see....
The Kaiser was legally deposed after 1918. I think Slobadon Milosevich was sent to the Hauge by his countrymen. Benhazir Bhutto of Pakistan was convicted of corruption. Thaksin in Thailand was deposed and convicted in absentia, I think. Tommy Suharto went to jail, I'm certain of that one. So it has happened.
Thanks for these examples.
The circumstances around most of them is rather frightening... don't you think? And then I started thinking about how many of these leaders were considered staunch allies of the US... and I wonder how much pressure from the US was responsible in many of their demises, and how many were a result of populist response against US manipulation of the deposed? In the case of Milosevich, I think I recall that there remained a large component of the population that supported him even after he was sent to the Hague (Weren't there large demonstrations?). At any rate, the nature of the wars (as you have said "after a successful revolution") that preceded many of these leaders' demise is sobering. In the case of Mussolini it is doubtful that the Italians would have hung him without the Allied troops having marched up the peninsula by then... and then one wonders if Italians by and large were as angry at how he had botched his attempts at a Fascist system as any thing else.
I think what happened in Chile after Pinochet may be a better model... though it took all together too long... which is my original point.
Merry Kwanzukuhmas
Nicholas II and family were deposed (quickly) for starting and losing an unpopular war.
He and his were living off of the fat of the peasants who were being starved. Deja vu?
Emperor Obama won't delete a shred of his new Imperial powers. Cheney was a lot smarter then we all think. Is aim was to destroy our republic and if u ask me he probably did, if human nature is any guide.
It is futile to pass a law that the law must be obeyed. If there is no prosecution of malefactors, if there are no consequences, then it will all happen again but even worse.
The idea that setting a good example will shame future presidents into being nicer is silly.
After a few centuries it would be nice to get Habeus Corpus back. This administration has been an out-of-body experience.
-30-
OleManRiver -- once again -- a timely , always timely, reminder.
This assault on habeas corpus is the single most frightening aspect of events.
habeas corpus - whether it applies to human beings or science, or finance, or economy, or arguments, or truth and lies, - is, in essence the foundation of liberty.
WITHOUT IT -- anyone in power can claim anything and force people to obey without demonstrating WHY in an appeal to their knowledge.
This loss is why Paulson and company can NOW OPENLY DEMAND "bail outs OR ELSE" without explanation .
or the state can hold anyone under spying or detention and even torture and death and "disappearance" by saying :"state secret" , "security reasons", "trust us". and THEN ...fear descends on the people..fear of their own government for it has demonstrated that "what we CAN do, we WILL do to you".
until it becomes :
YOU -- the people have NO rights whatsoever.
it's NOT completely true the the US government has "tried" to keep torture and secret detention and spying "secret"...
whether or not it was intended to be KNOWN eventually , as would all things "secret and corrupt" - it is ALSO a CRITICALLY USEFUL TOOL -- because it MAKES the people AWARE that their own government and institutions (such as corporations armed with government backing to preserve their power) - CAN do to them what it has demonstrated - or was "uncovered" to have done and be doing.
IT is the basis of PLANTING FEAR in people to make them subjugated. .to "behave" in such a manner as will be considered "safe" and "patriotic" and IMAGINE that they will THEN escape scrutiny or worse...
and that is the basis of totalitarianism.
Who needs habeas corpus when you have ten thousand ice cream flavors to choose from? To arms! Defend our flavors!
Holder is defending paramilitary operations against farmers in columbia. What is good about Holder?
Without reading through the comments to see if this is a repetition, a problem with Cheney's argument about war powers is that the US has engaged in invasions, not wars. 911 was an attack, not a war, and Afghanistan and Iraq were invasions/occupations.
As someone else said, you have to attack the notion of the War on Terror to beat back the type of thinking Cheney and others have used.
People who drum the War on Terror mantra are exploiters or cowards or both.
Well said _ W E B B E R _,
Although I prefer the more accurate and revealing framing of the
[______ W A R __ O F __ T E R R O R _______]
Namaste
I think Jesus said it best, "Exterminate all the Brutes!"
If Mr. Obama wants real political change, he should ask the Supreme Court to resign, then appoint his own crew like FDR.
Amend the Constitution so that pardons must be ratified by both houses.
Start a Constitutional Central bank controlled by the Treasury, and subjected to over sight by Congress.
This would be a good start for change. But, we will get the same Old Shite; for example, look at Mr. Obama's cabinet.
one of the INSIDERS working with Bush and Karl Rove -- had a "change of heart" , seemingly , and was preparing to publicly talk about the inside workings of the administration, including about Florida 2000 --
he died in a private plane crash this week.........one can only wonder....
I'd like to thank you all for coming....first I'd like say I hope you all had a Merry Christmas or an enjoyable Holiday of whatever type you chose. I've just recently joined this website and have had what I call some enlightening and positive communications. Each time I try to find an article that doesn't just invite the regurgitation of the author's topic. I don't care to go into that now.
My topic is the MESS WE are in TODAY (economic,social,industry and education) I would simply like to point out that venting your gripes at our soon to be retired president and welcoming the new President and a few Congressional seats aren't going to help us. It is the same crowd who got us into this horrible situation and we all know they will not get us out. Bitching will not help us, does anybody think there is a solution for THE MESS. WELL HERE IS MINE, I CAN'T SIT BY AND DO NOTHING. WE THE PEOPLE MUST TAKE BACK OUR GOVERNMENT - WE MUST RUN OR OWN SCHOOLS - WE MUST CONTROL THEM NOT THE NEA. THEY HAVE PROVEN THEY CANNOT. THEY HAVE TAKEN ONE OF THE BEST EDUCATION SYSTEMS IN THE INDUSTRIALIZED WORLD AND MADE IT A DISGRACE....THEY HAVE REMOVED "EDUCATION" AS ITS PRIME OBJECTIVE AND MADE IT A FEEL GOOD BABY SITTING SERVICE. THEY HAVE ALREADY THROWN/FLUSHED OUR TAX DOLLARS INTO A CORRUPT ABYSS WITH PROMISES THAT THE BEST SOLUTION IS FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO OWN ALL THE MAJOR BANKING AND CREDIT INSTITUTIONS, THIS DECISION ALL WITHOUT ANY TYPE OF A SOUND EXPLANATION FOR IT SUCCESS, AND THE SURE FIRE DESTRUCTION OF OUR FREE ENTERPRISE SYSTEM. IT ONLY LOOKS LIKE THE FAT CATS WILL JUST GET FATTER AT OUR EXPENSE. WE NEED TO BUILD BACK OUR INDUSTRIAL INFRASTRUCTURE. WE NEED TO SEE TO IT THESE THINGS ARE DONE. YOU CAN CHOOSE YOUR OWN FAVORITE TOPIC. YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
So, I have already installed both my Senators and my Congressman to speed dial in my cell phone. My new years resolution is to make sure everybody in each of their offices gets to know my name. I in turn will learn all there names and begin my year long dialogue. This will give me some relief from my guilt, you see that I've read that it was our generation the spoiled baby boomers that allowed this to happen. Now I will get my baby boomer revenge. I can't get no satisfaction... So quit whining and crying about past crap you can't point your finger at one without pointing at all of them. WE ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO CAN MAKE THE CHANGES THAT WILL PULL US OUT OF THIS MESS. Thanks for your time...
YUP!! SPEED DIAL. A CALL A DAY KEEPS THE TYRANTS AT BAY.
If BHO gives up the exec powers, that would leave the ball over on the bought-and-paid-for Hill where Pelosi and Reid have caved and enabled many times.
Gotta trust Barry's Mom and Grandmother...and Michelle...and keep up the noise.
At the movie theater tonight I sat through a National Guard recruiting commercial that seemed to last two minutes. Commercials are typically 30 seconds, right? Scariest thing I've ever seen. Rock band, "hip", "cool" action scenes inspired by war films, stunning visuals, spectacular all the way around. You are to feel comradery with your peer recruits on screen. Please suspend your disbelief during this commercial, ok? Get comfortable with war, please. The NG must have paid a premium price to get the best of the best to accomplish the goal: To glorify war, to develop some kind of motivation for the recruit to kill the enemy, the enemy of the elites who run Washington without public consent. But never mind that, recruit. The NG isn't talking about it, so anything negative that you hear about the elites' warfare must come straight from the enemy. It's an ugly world out there and we have to defend the righteous USA from the ugliness that spontaneously erupts without the help of US capitalism, imperialism, militarism, zionism. Would you please show some patriotism? They hate us for our freedom. We are God-Blessed Americans. We're cool too with our electric guitars and digital effects. We need an imperial commander in chief. Thank you for your votes, now please join up and risk your damned life and become a glorious hero. You can't get laid until we create unnecessary, dangerous hoops for you to jump through to impress the women. Islamic Caliphate to conquer the world! To arms!
Sioux Rose
RT DRURY: With the budget it has, the military can embed its messages everywhere to soften people to get into lockstep with the homeland security-Mars rules state. Here peace advocates as we have seen ample evidence become "the enemies."
"Not only should opinions be made public after publication...."
silly me - thinking this is what "publication" already meant.
Orwell would be proud.
As for presidential pardons: bush hisself has set the precedent of "un-pardoning".
"He is already reading more daily security briefs than Bush and beginning each day with a barrage of fearful intelligence, hinting at dangers that largely never materialize. Submersion in that flow of intelligence will wrenchingly change his sense of the world's risks."
Dismantling the Imperial Presidency is going to be a monumental task of legal motions supported by the supreme court.
I say this because there are many agency's that have been given unconstitutional powers by the Patriot Act.
I am talking about the Nation Wide Warrant less Surveillance network built by Bush/Cheney cronies.
If you go no further than investigating Infragard, the International Association of Firefighters, and EMS first responders and their connections to one another for conducting Warrant less surviellance using community watch groups, you would soon uncover the depth,scope,and participants of illegal imperialistic warrant less surviellance .
Its 23000 companys all toll in Infragard, and 1 million IAFF members coupled with community watch groups across the county and world.
Can you say police state?????
Why is it going to be difficult to dismantle the imperial rulers?
Because the people guilty of this police state imperialism are the whos who in every community.Doctors,lawyers,police men, EMS responders,Firefighter, elected officials, community watch leaders, business men, Verizon,Cable company's, service company's,teachers, principals,bankers,etc..
In a rush to provide community and national security, your trusted community servants bought into the Bush/Cheney doctrine of no constitutional rights or civil liberties exist. " Your either with us or against us" , "Freedom isn't Free".
We own you.
The problem is that absolute power corrupts absolutely. These very same trusted servants are guilty of creating suspects to grow their power, and worse yet, employing Gang Stalking Torture Tactics with their unchecked power of electronic surviellance to destroy their enemy's or unwanted citizens.
The internet is filled with accounts of abuse of power by community gang stalkers.
If the lawyers and judges are involved in community warrant less surviellance , how are we going to stop the police state imperialism that is in full force nation wide.
President elect Obama must repeal the Patriot Act, and unfortunately , give these organizations and trusted servants immunity for their illegal behavior.All should become accountable to constitutional law going forward.
The only exception to immunity is in the case of severe psychological torture committed by community watch groups conducting gang stalking and slander campaigns. People might not go to jail, but damages should be paid to victims.
The only way to kill Imperialism is to slay it with Constitutional Law. And our Supreme court and Lawyers at large must wield the sword of justice and stab Imperialism through the heart.
BornFreeMen
Community watch,gang stalking warrant less surviellance torture victim,Bradenton Florida since DEC 2006.
We have them out-numbered 100-1. And their 401K's are down by half, too. And their buddies are coming home changed from I and A and can't get care.
Even these surveillors may "get it" after a while...
Yeah I was stopped by the cops in Bradenton... chased me down... had his hand on the gun... thought I looked suspicious in His neighborhood... told him I lived in Florida too. I gave him permission to search my car and after all the cops in Bradenton Showed up, they let me go... Probably somebody told them I was a Sleeper.
But don't be too paranoid of your friendly Dentist because he is workin with the National security homeland State!
They are looking for you to tell them who the bad guys really are because they don't have a clue and every day now your friendly dentist is wondering... "maybe we are killing the wrong folks"...
My letter to my Senators and Congressman:
Accountability needs to be brought back into government. When elected officials break the law, as the Bush administration has done, they cannot be allowed to get away with it. This is the reason for impeachment. But impeachment, as the Speaker of the House has said, has been taken off the table and it seems increasingly likely that the president will pardon many, if not all, possibly with far-reaching, blanket pardons even. Where is the incentive for elected officials to obey the law if they are not ever going to be held accountable for their actions? Here are two possible ideas:
1. A Constitutional amendment exempting elected officials from receiving pardons for their time spent in office.
2. A federal law that states that anytime a Federal official speaks publicly that they are under oath and risk perjury if they lie.
I leave it to you to come up with appropriate wording.
The wording is good...maybe add something like maximum penalty equal to that of an ordinary citizen when the lie leads to crimes against Humanity...
Or actually "Minimum penalty" better wording!
Congress must reassert its power as a co-equal branch. This won't be easy because too many people really idollize Obama for what (they believe) he is going to do. Two comments:
1. If there are blanket pardons, this will make a Congressional investigation easier. They can be told to testify and, having been pardoned, cannot claim Fifth Amendment protection because they can't incriminate themselves. Bujt they can be held in contempt of Congress. They will be sub ject to the laws on perjury. Such an investigation, if properly handled, could be very educational to the public as to why the Constitution is important.
2. Signing statements. We can't prevent a president from making them, but Congress could mandate thatg all signing stgatgementgs must be submitted to Congress and ratified by both Houses. Then any time Congress failed to act the signing statementgs woujld be legally invalid.
I sure do hope that the reason for his present cabinet choices are to keep those mean minded sons of bitches close so that he can pull their teeth one by one in an environment which he controls.
I hope.
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
Absolutely nothing will "change" until the proverbial child yells: "the emperor Obama wears no clothes"!