A shining city on a hill can't have dungeons in its basements

[babylonsister]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/galloway/story/63372.html


Commentary: A shining city on a hill can't have dungeons in its basements

By Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers


It turns out that even the most paranoid among us were right to be afraid of what George W. Bush’s White House and Justice Department were up to in the days and months after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

This week the Justice Department declassified and released two memos and seven so-called legal opinions that, taken together, informed President Bush that, as a wartime chief executive, he had unfettered dictatorial powers.

We already knew that Bush dispensed with the Fourth Amendment, suspended the right of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures and ordered warrantless wiretapping and surveillance of untold billions of e-mails and telephone calls to and from American citizens.

But who knew that his political appointees in the White House counsel's office and the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel were telling him that he could also suspend the First Amendment in a nation that was founded on guarantees of freedom of freedom of speech and of the press?

The Republican legal vultures — John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury — told the panicked cowboy president that he could do anything he chose, anyway he saw fit, and not only was it legal, it also wasn't subject to any congressional or judicial oversight.

In other words, the United States of America — the home of the free — was for a time on the brink of falling into the hands of a dictatorship.

snip//

We cannot be the shining city on the hill if our gleaming buildings have dungeons and torture chambers in their basements. We cannot be a beacon of hope in a chaotic world if our hands are bloody and our ears still ring with the screams of helpless prisoners.

It’s time to get to work cleaning up those dark corners in the White House and the Justice Department and all the other departments that had a hand in George W. Bush’s excellent adventure.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

1. see, well, DC ain't on a hill

so that means....

[navarth]

2. D. C. was built on a swamp

if that means anything....

That's why it's SO fucking humid in the summers. Aargh.

Very nice in the spring, though.

[babylonsister]

4. I never knew you were so literal! You get the drift, I hope. nt

[navarth]

3. "A shining city on a hill can't have dungeons in its basements"

DAMN that is right on.