I prefer TOOBIN, but, what they hey, I'll take THIS any day. Transcripts aren't limited to the 4'graphs rule, right? TURLEY's part, only, is quoted in full, but Keith's comments are always worth looking up.
*******QUOTE*******
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12756625/.... TURLEY: Well, you know, this is a pretty impressive rogue‘s gallery. You know, from his very first term,
Bush shocked many people by reaching out to officials who had either been
convicted or pleaded guilty to crimes during the Reagan and Bush administrations, and others who many felt should have been indicted.
They included people like Elliott Abrams, who pleaded guilty to three crimes. They were misdemeanors. John Poindexter, who was convicted of three crimes. Those were thrown out on a mere technicality later. You had Otto Reich, who was accused of a domestic surveillance—propaganda program.
You have a very long list of people. And what emerged through the two terms was that
people who seemed to be accused of violating the law had a rapid ascent in this administration. And one has to wonder whether this is suddenly a criteria, that the presi
dent likes people who are willing to go to the edge of the law and beyond it to achieve what he believes is a worthy purpose. ....
...But the real check and balance for this type of thing but would rest with Congress. And Congress has done nothing. Do you realize that
Congress has not even held a substantive investigation of the NSA operation, an operation that most of us believe was criminal,
that the federal law defines quite clearly as a federal crime?
Now, instead of investigating that, the
Congress actually gave the president a standing ovation during the State of the Union speech
when he promised to continue to violate that law. When he continued—he said he would continue this program.
And the people who are responsible for passing the law that he was violating gave him a
standing ovation. It was the most bizarre thing I‘ve ever seen in my life.
But
now, we have the architect of that program, who‘s been
nominated to head the CIA. Now, that was not a natural choice, because if you look at his record, it was actually fairly mixed. We‘re talking about General Hayden. General
Hayden‘s accused of wasting as much as $2 billion when he was at the NSA on a program called Trailblazer, almost $2 billion.
Normally, that would be an impediment to advancement. ....
TURLEY: Well, first of all, this presi
dent‘s theory of his power is now, I think,
so extreme that it‘s unprecedented. He
believes that he has the inherent authority to violate federal law. He has said that. Not just in the signing statements,
in the infamous torture memo, I, that Alberto Gonzalez signed,
it was stated that he could, in some circumstances,
order federal officials to violate federal law.
And this is consistent across the board with this president. Frankly,
I‘m not too sure what he thought he was swearing to when he took the oath of office to uphold the Constitution and our laws. I‘ve never seen a president who‘s so uncomfortable in his constitutional skin. ....
TURLEY: Well, unfortunately,
civil liberties don‘t swing back like other issues. I, civil liberties is a very precious commodity. When you lose them, it tends to run out of your hand like sand, and it‘s hard to get it back. And that‘s one of the dangers here, that presidents, when they acquire power, rarely return it to the people.
And so we have to be very concerned. This country is changing in a very significant way, and it‘s something that citizens have to think about, because if there is a war on terror, and I believe that we must fight terror, obviously, but we‘re trying to defend that Constitution.
And we‘re really at a point where the presi
dent is arguing about his own presidential power in ways that are and—the antithesis of that Constitution and the values that it contains.
********UNQUOTE*******
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