The analogy to the Roman Emperor is complete. Yes, roman emperors too were elected every four years. Yes, they too were by law constrained in their acts in the homeland. Yes, they too were subordinate to a legislative body. Yes, then too being a citizen entitled one to all sorts of rights on paper. But the theory didn't mean squat. As an elected dictator, all the emperor had to do was use his plenary power over armies outside of italy to amass wealth and power and get reelected. He ruled by fiat in a nominal republic.
We are at the end of our own republic. The forms are still there, toothless and symbolic and populated by the scared and suckup, as they were in the roman empire. There are still debates on what laws should be in Congress as if they will bind the executive. The president still appeals for public support. Bush still tips his cap in the direction of law and the constitution by asserting that he's acting legally in the matter that he will not confirm or deny he is doing.
However, given that we know his legal theory is that the president is entitled to do whatever he pleases (as revealed in the secret torture memos), without informing anyone, and that the republican congress is good with that, we have an elected dictator. Illegal searches, that's piddly. Remember when courts would throw out evidence obtained illegally? Bush doesn't bother with courts, so he doesn't' care what some court would think. American citizens go to jail forever without trial under Bush's law. Money appropriated to one war going to another, or just disappearing, no matter. Congress isn't going to look into whether Bush is obeying Congress. The republican congress either doesn't want to know or doesn't want you to know.
As Digby wrote:
Look, the problem here, again, is not one of just spying on Americans, as repulsively totalitarian as that is. It's that the administration adopted John Yoo's theory of presidential infallibility. But, of course, it wasn't really John Yoo's theory at all; it was Dick Cheney's muse, Richard Nixon who said, "when the President does it, that means it's not illegal."
This was not some off the cuff statement. It was based upon a serious constitutional theory --- that the congress or the judiciary (and by inference the laws they promulgate and interpret) have no authority over an equal branch of government. The president, in the pursuit of his duties as president, is not subject to the laws. Citizens can offer their judgment of his performance every four years at the ballot box.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_12_11_digbysblog_archive.html#113477714899464334Or in the New York Times today:
The bedrock source is Article 2 of the Constitution, which describes the "executive power" of the president, including his authority as commander in chief of the armed forces. Several landmark court decisions have elaborated the extent of the powers.
Another key recent document cited by the administration is the joint resolution passed by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001, authorizing the president to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against those responsible for Sept. 11 in order to prevent further attacks.
Mr. Yoo, who is believed to have helped write a legal justification for the National Security Agency's secret domestic eavesdropping, first laid out the basis for the war on terror in a Sept. 25, 2001, memorandum that said no statute passed by Congress "can place any limits on the president's determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing and nature of the response."
That became the underlying justification for numerous actions apart from the eavesdropping program, disclosed by The New York Times on Thursday night. Those include the order to try accused terrorists before military tribunals; the detention of so-called enemy combatants at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in secret overseas jails operated by the Central Intelligence Agency; the holding of two Americans, Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi, as enemy combatants; and the use of severe interrogation techniques, including some banned by international agreements, on Al Qaeda figures.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/17/politics/17legal.html?pagewanted=1Fascism was based on the old roman order. Is it fascism yet?
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