once again, crown the asshole. the AP seems to be leading the call...

[acroyear]

slacktivist:

Coronation

It's hard to imagine a lead sentence more perversely undemocratic than this, from Gina Holland of the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON -- His wartime powers undercut once before by the Supreme Court, President Bush could take a second hit in a case in which Osama bin Laden's former driver is seeking to head off a trial before military officers.

Oh, that meddlesome Supreme Court, always going about undercutting the wartime powers of our wartime president. Those whiny justices, always worrying about whether or not the executive branch's claims of unchecked, absolute power are constitutional. It's always "blah, blah, blah, rule of law, blah, blah, blah" with them.

If they keep this up, eventually they'll undercut everyone's power to break the law with impunity. And then where will we be?

Seriously, is this really how Gina Holland understands the role of the Constitution? As some kind of threat to the president's otherwise limitless power? This is the framework she presents. Read that again:

His wartime powers undercut once before by the Supreme Court ...

Are there no editors at the Associated Press who remember fourth-grade social studies?

Comments

[scaleslea.livejournal.com]

"Wartime Powers"? Since when did Congress pass a declaration of war?

Doc

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Apparently telling Bush to deal with 9/11 was in actuality telling Bush to take over like Caligula.

I can't get over the breathtakingly obvious maneuver of declaring a war and then declaring that the President is untouchable and uncheckable because he's a war President.

[scaleslea.livejournal.com]

But the President of the United States DOES NOT have the power to declare war. ONLY Congress can issue a declaration of war.

And while the country can go to war without a declaration in the event of an attack by a foreign power, no foreign power has been connected to the attacks on September 11, 2001. So a legal declaration of war is needed.

Doc

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

i've already had my rant on that. i think congress really abdicated their right (and more specifically, their responsibility) in this matter.

this, like gulf war one, was an exercise of the emergency powers act (yes, it was less 90 days from first shot to "mission accomplished", and that's the reason he declared m.i., so that his actions could still legally qualify as being compliant with the law and avoid the impeachment risk on those grounds).

everything after that has been "cleaning up operations", support operations, and active protection of civilian personnel that just happen to be in hotspots.

of course, none of that latter would be necessary if he didn't lie his way into activating the emergency powers act in the first place.

at any rate, it doesn't matter to the statement presented in the AP article: there are no such things as "wartime powers" recognized anywhere. There is nothing that can change the responsibilities or rights of the president during a time of conflict. There is nothing that says a president can ignore congressional law signed by the current any previous president.

that this president has openly and flagrantly declared "i don't give a shit" to congress *should* have received a far worse recation than a partisan-influenced censure. He holds this constitution in total contempt.

and regardless of what happens in the next 3 years, he will be forever remembered for that. we're not going to forgive him the way Reagan and Nixon were forgiven years after their worst offences. we're going to remember him as the one who almost destroyed everything the constitution stands for.