Scott Horton: This country was a dictatorship from late 2001 to 1/19/09

[tpsbmam]

http://harpers.org/archive/2009/03/hbc-90004488

Archive > 2009 > Jan · Feb · Mar
March 3, 7:16 AM, 2009 · No Comment · Previous · Next
George W. Bush’s Disposable Constitution
By Scott Horton

(snips -- full article at link)

Yesterday the Obama Administration released a series of nine previously secret legal opinions crafted by the Office of Legal Counsel to enhance the presidential powers of George W. Bush. Perhaps the most astonishing of these memos was one crafted by University of California at Berkeley law professor John Yoo. He concluded that in wartime, the President was freed from the constraints of the Bill of Rights with respect to anything he chose to label as a counterterrorism operations inside the United States.

Here’s Neil Lewis’s summary in the New York Times:

“The law has recognized that force (including deadly force) may be legitimately used in self-defense,” Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty wrote to Mr. Gonzales. Therefore any objections based on the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches are swept away, they said, since any possible privacy offense resulting from such a search is a lesser matter than any injury from deadly force. The Oct. 23 memorandum also said that “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.” It added that “the current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.”

John Yoo’s Constitution is unlike any other I have ever seen. It seems to consist of one clause: appointing the President as commander-in-chief. The rest of the Constitution was apparently printed in disappearing ink.

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We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship. The constitutional rights we learned about in high school civics were suspended. That was thanks to secret memos crafted deep inside the Justice Department that effectively trashed the Constitution. What we know now is likely the least of it.

(Horton is a great lawyer -- his info is at this link: http://www.harpers.org/subjects/ScottHorton)

[ConcernedCanuk]

1. doh

.
.
.

[tavalon]

2. We at DU knew and were ridiculed for being conspiracy theorists

and for having overactive imaginations. It seems we were downright Cassandrian.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. That tingling in your head, is the tinfoil transforming into a tricorner hat

we were right


:toast:

And I raise a toast to our vigilance

Now the hard work starts, INVESTIGATE, INDICT, PROSECUTE

[jimshoes]

3. I know it sure felt like a dictatorship

Damn, we were right all along.

[NoSheep]

5. Somebody's gettin with the program