Bush Considered Scrapping First Admendmant

[Me.]

Cross-posted from GD as this is so important, and scary. Aslo why DOJ should push for investigations.

Extraordinary Measures

A new memo shows just how far the Bush administration considered going in fighting the war on terror.

“In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department secretly gave the green light for the U.S. military to attack apartment buildings and office complexes inside the United States, deploy high-tech surveillance against U.S. citizens and potentially suspend First Amendment freedom-of-the-press rights in order to combat the terror threat, according to a memo released Monday.

Many of the actions discussed in the Oct. 23, 2001, memo to then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's chief lawyer, William Haynes, were never actually taken.

But the memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel—along with others made public for the first time Monday—illustrates with new details the extraordinary post-9/11 powers asserted by Bush administration lawyers. Those assertions ultimately led to such controversial policies as allowing the waterboarding of terror suspects and permitting warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens—steps that remain the subject of ongoing investigations by Congress and the Justice Department. The memo was co-written by John Yoo, at the time a deputy attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel. Yoo, now a professor at the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, has emerged as one of the central figures in those ongoing investigations.

In perhaps the most surprising assertion, the Oct. 23, 2001, memo suggested the president could even suspend press freedoms if he concluded it was necessary to wage the war on terror. "First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully," Yoo wrote in the memo entitled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activity Within the United States."cont…

http://www.newsweek.com/id/187342

[YOY]

1. If their vision of the threat was accurate (the one they wanted) this would have been necesary.

Of course we're talking about the paranoid daydreams of the far right: people on the roadsides shooting rocket launchers into rush hour traffic in Des Moines, Iowa and little children blowing up their gradeschool classes and shit only the most insane and inane would dream of.

Of course "the facts have a liberal bias." Thank you Mr. Colbert. I truly consider you the turning point in that mess of a former presidency.

[BOSSHOG]

2. Gosh, then right wing radio couldn't whine about the fairness doctrine

But right wing radio wackos and run of the mill conservatives are so patriotic they'd hand over our bill of rights to the likes of cheney and his assistant.

[moundsview]

3. Bill Clintons' justice department investigated

convicted and either executed (Mcveigh) or imprisoned (the blind Sheik) the criminal terrorists. That's what will keep this country safe. If Al Gore had taken his rightful place in the White House 9-11 would have been averted and the dreadful nightmare of Bushs' denial of our basic rights could never have happened.

[Peace Patriot]

4. Yoo, Gonzales & brethren need to be disbarred. nt

[OutNow]

5. Let's Thank the ACLU and CCR Again

The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) fought the Bush crime family every step of the way. By getting the facts out and pushing hard for judicial review, both groups won in case after case up to and including the Supreme Court. The right to counsel, habeas corpus, civil trials rather than military tribunals, the right for librarians to keep book lending histories out of the hands of the feds, the right to demonstrate against the war, the right to belong to a peace church without being investigated by the feds, etc. etc. etc.

It's time to send these folks a contribution. Again.

[PM Martin]

6. So those who feared the worse about what Bush would do

have been vindicated.