Third Party & Independents: Archives

“Congress … seems to have left that determination up to the Executive. Where are the checks and balances?”

Indeed. One can make a good argument that it was unconstitutional for the Congress to handover its war-making powers to the will of the executive in the Iraq war resolution from late 2002.

And you have to wonder how the president’s exercise of war time powers can be justified if the Congress has not declared that the nation is at war.

The Congress has been derelict in its duties for over fifty years. The last time COngress declared war was in WWII. There was no declaration of war for the “wars” in Korea, Vietnam, or the first Iraq war. The US government, under the leadership of the Democratic and Republican Parties, has been hijacked by criminally incompetent cowards.

It’s a trickier question than you’re letting on—if the President is in many cases not bound by certain laws, that IS checks and balances in action. Executive privilege is an important check against the unbridled power of the legistlature.

Yes, with every president there is wrangling over the specifics of any case, and every president is accused of grabbing for power—even when it’s the legislative branch that’s doing just that. Sometimes the president really is overreaching (as with Nixon or Clinton who used their office to cover up criminal activity). But sometimes it’s the legislature that’s guilty—as in the current judiciary commitee’s probably unconstitutional circumvention of the president’s authortiy to make appointments. A minority of senators are using arcane Senate procedural rules to trump a very specificly prescribed constitutional process. A very distrubing preceden—if one branch of government can just manipulate its own rules to control all the others.

You mean the way the Republicans have almost completely rewritten portions of Jefferson’s rules for parliamentary procedure in order to minimize the effect and rights of the minority party, Martin? This act by the Republicans is going to come back and bite them BIG time one day when the shoe is on the other foot and their own revised rules are used against them as the minority party.

Of course you could argue the Republicans will always be the majority party, but, history would not bear that supposition out.

If congress acting in the best interest of the nation has given the President the power to make war on terrorism, including the detention of suspected terrorist both inside and outside of the United States, it may be because congress, in its wisdom, recognized that it was a job best not left up to a committee.

I have no doubt that the legislative actions taken and approved overwhelmingly in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks address a real threat, one which congress is not suited to meet. The battle for Iraq is just one element of that war on terror.

Congressional oversite is the appropriate role for Congress to play. Just please stay off the television! It lends to no creditability for any action suggested. The various members playing up to their constituency (both the voting and the payingn kind), leave the final report and its authors suspect.

I really am amazed at the President’s restraint in utilizing those tools given him. President Lincoln, facing similar circumstance, suspended Habias Corpus, ignored a Supreme Court Justice’s ruling, and sagely let a Democrat Senator from Ohio “escape” to Canada when arrest on charges of treason and sedition were warranted.

Bush has attempted NONE of that while facing a steady barage of unseemly, false and hatefilled retoric designed to undermine the faithfull execution of lawfull actions. We did not ask for this war, we did not initiate this war. With Gods help, we will finish this war and put an end to global terrorism with the best weapon in our arsenal, freedom.

Meanwhile, Please enjoy yours!

Martin—

You stated: “if the President is in many cases not bound by certain laws, that IS checks and balances in action. Executive privilege is an important check against the unbridled power of the legistlature (sic).

I fail to see the logic here; perhaps you can explain your reasoning to me in more detail.

Executive Privilege is not codified in the Constitution nor are there any laws that I am aware of expressly bestowing that right of invocation upon the President. And in any case Executive Privilege is not absolute, and is certainly not a shield against Congressional oversight, nor the peoples right to know what their President has been up to in their name. And I hasten to add, historically Executive Privilege has only been the Presidents to invoke; surely you are not implying that ALL constitutional officers be allowed to invoke Executive Privilege in the Presidents name as a means of ducking constitutionally mandated Congressional oversight, are you?

Wadendas—

I have serious doubts about the “wisdom” of Congress given the bodies performance over the last decade and the amount of nonsensical legislation it has enacted. The fact is Congress has abdicated its responsibilities to itself and the American people. The body is so fractured and steeped in partisanship that civility has broken down and the institution may never recover.

The legislation passed after 9/11 was emotionally driven and devoid of serious debate. Query any number of Congressman and they will tell you—albeit reluctantly—that they barley read the bills they were passing, let alone understood the scope and brevity of the acts. Yes the threat was real and it lie in Afghanistan not Iraq. Iraq did not present a clear and present danger to the security of these United States, and I whole reject the President many and changing reason for starting an unprovoked war with a sovereign nation.

Congress has just as much right to be on television as the President.

Many things amaze me about the President, his total lack of qualification for his current posting for one, and his lack of intellectual curiosity about anything, for another. One could argue that the nation was under unprecedented peril when Lincoln did what he did, and that what he did was not lawful under our constitutional form of governance. In any even, the situation we find ourselves in here is vastly different. And I hate to be negative, but Iraq did not initiate this was either we did. And freedom alone will bring the War on Terror to a successful conclusion, foresight, leadership, wisdom, and intelligence will, but these are all qualities Mr. Bush lacks in spades.

“I really am amazed at the President’s restraint in utilizing those tools given him. President Lincoln, facing similar circumstance, suspended Habias Corpus etc.”

Perhaps Bush has been so “restrained” precisely because, unlike Lincoln, Bush has not been handed a declaration of war by the Congress. If you were waging an unconstitutional war, wouldn’t you want to keep a low profile?

“The body is so fractured and steeped in partisanship that civility has broken down and the institution may never recover.”

There is nothing wrong with the congress as an institution. Democrats and Republicans like to pretend that the blame for government error, when they admit to its existence, lies in the institutions themselves and not with their governance over them. How convenient that they exculpate themselves from any possible blame. Again, the problem is not with the constituional government, but with the hijacking of that constitutional government by two tyrannical political parties who pretend to opposition as they work in collusion to exclude any and all who attempt to resist their strangle hold on positions of power and influence.

Thank goodness for the internet; otherwise, we would not have been able to read the memorandum. I can’t see how anyone—even a lawyer, perhaps particularly a lawyer (and I am one)— could have written that pathetic and “tortured” argument that the executive can order, or maybe just condone, torture in the name of the “War on Terror.” It’s hard not to acknowledge that if we had read it without any clues to where it came from, we would have thought it had been unearthed from some Nazi archives. Executive privilege cannot be allowed to protect the administration from accountability for potentially catastrophic departures from the behaviour expected of the United States as part of the “civilized” world.

Shrubs policy failures are secondary to the failure of Congress to exercise authority and responsibility by declaring and funding war. Perpetual Politiking has displaced best interest of the nation based policy making. Stupid policies like misdirected military effort, bureaucratic refusal to enforce existing immigration laws, strip searching little old ladies, and orange alerts are wasteful, if not dangerous.

The “war on terrorisim” is only dealing with the symptoms and not the cause. Only talking to the Arabs and fair settlements will save many future needless deaths. Also, these Trillions of wasted dollars ought to be spent in other areas, e.g. world overpopulation, the underdeveloped world, clean energy development…..
People should look to “who benifits”, and the inherant “conflicts of interest”.
Only “Word of mouth” can beat the “current agenda”.

Familial duties called; sorry it has taken so long to respond.

The memo in question raises a number of ‘what ifs’, ‘whys’ and ‘here is what others say’. It is an interpretation of current national, international and treaty laws and conventions covering a number of situations. Further as a statement of what a reasonable interpretation of law is, it is covered by that legal recognition of attorney client privilege. As the executive’s attorney this relationship would devolve to all involved in the executive branch party to the items being discussed.
Of course there has been a huge debate on this, firing up every time someone wants an invitation to dance.
In the course of deliberating the actions taken and sanctioned by the US Military it is necessary to know the legal opinions regarding detainees, and combatants (legal and otherwise) to provide the firm foundation for policy. To do otherwise is negligence.

Please note that the executive branch (President Bush presiding) of the government of the United States, determined to treat Detainees and others within the framework of the Geneva conventions, and recognized that torture (as defined in all its glorious subtleties by various codes and collections of legal briefs and decisions, in the memo), was rejected for use by the US except in those cases when the action is approved by persons authorized to do so.

What was going on in Abu Garab, was not sanctioned, and justice is being served. The Memo also shows that it is the intelligence officers who are responsible for the proper training of Prison guard personnel and for the conduct of any actions intended to aid in the interrogations. As a matter of course the Commanding officer is responsible for the conduct of his troops. And the troops are responsible for their own behavior. Were any orders given, unlawfully these members of the armed services definitely had the information they needed to determine if they were going to obey. I think no order was given, or even inferred. Their actions are a part of human behavior when placed in a pressure cooker without release valves. The actions of some are wrong, they are being handled.

Congress has just as much right to be on television as the President.

But when congressional committee members grandstand wasting money, not to mention valuable television time, to infer that the aberrant behavior of a few is indicative of everything wrong in the world, well…, why can the time not be used to ask important and substantive questions or just to make a pertinent point.
Sen. Biden is a bad actor, and I don’t like the irreverent tact he displays when making the evening news. Running down people to no good end, is more an insult to the people of the US and his direct constituents, than to the persons he subjects to his own twisted form of torture.
Oh if he were the only one.

As for Iraq not being a part of attacks on the US, That Boeing airplane shell in the dessert was not put there for use by a daycare. WMD’s were but a part of the argument, although way over done. I know of few Iraqis who believe they are not better off with Saddam gone, and there are plenty of bones to condemn us all, with a haunting “What took so long?”

…Perhaps Bush has been so “restrained” precisely because, unlike Lincoln, Bush has not been handed a declaration of war by the Congress.

Neither was Lincoln. To do so would have been to recognize the CSA had a right to secede, and act as a soverign nation. The powers Congress handed Lincoln amounted to little more than confirming his constitutional duty to put down armed rebellion, which on the border states amounted to a terrorist campaign to certify slavery.

On the coast of So. Carolina it was open rebellion, with a southern aristocratic twist.

As members of the United Nations the countries comprising the Axis of evil have certain obligations to the rest of the “civilized world”. That Iraq continued to toy with UN inspectors, continued to deny confirmation that the WMDs had been destroyed (there is the rub, we still do not know) and worst of all continued to systematically deprive Iraqis of basic Human rights and necessities, (of course the dead don’t need rights and have no necessities) are damning enough. The attempted assasination of a former US President, links to terrorist organizations including $35,000 paid by Saddam to every family of Palistinian and other martyrs, ought to have been considered when making the case against Iraq.

If we are resolved to never let a Holicaust again blacken our collective conscience then we must act. If we are human at all we must continue to oppose, by force if necessary, those groups that sadistically debase and kill by the thousands and millions.

We must also encourage the conditions that will allow others to stand up against such tyranny. In the Post Cold War World the choices are between pointless rhetoric (read surrender) and the judicious use of diplomacy and force.

Martin and David, Kennedy consistently and pointedly asked Ashcroft, “ARE YOU INVOKING EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE?” There was a reason he did so—because if Ashcroft did, then legally, Kennedy would have to back down or find another way to get what he wanted. However, for the Bush administration to invoke executive privilege at this time, would be politically damaging. Ashcroft came up short of specifically invoking “the privilege”, but also said that because we’re at war he shouldn’t have to play by normal rules. He barely came off sounding like a grown-up doing so, and it was utterly embarrasing for him. It was like falling on a wet noodle instead of falling on his sword, for the administration.

The political game here is one of nuance. If the opposition gets the administration to reveal all the memos and the entire body of opinions, it might score political points by catching more damning revelations, more administration hands in the constitutional cookie jar; but on the other hand, it might also be some bait and switch by the administration, whereby some actual strategic operational detail might be in the body of the memos, and the whole exercise can be spun as the “left wanting to derail the war on terror”. And then the gunrack crowd votes early and often against the likes of Ted Kennedy (even more than before).

This tense, taught, yet serene dance between the players is almost like watching Samurai warriors in the first moments of a fight. They’re sizing each other up, looking for clues of weakness, signals of what they’re about to do, veiled movements toward a furtive strike—is it a real strike, or a feint?

Don’t you love politics?

The “we are at war” excuse has indeed, of course, been used in the past, and in fact one instance of it under Woodrow Wilson has been cited by some conspiracy theorists as the Root of All Ills in modern America: the Trading with the Enemy Act. They weave a thread between this and FDR’s confiscation of gold, and how it gets from there to the Illuminati, they kind of lose me, but they still believe firmly that the whole Big Conspiracy mainly happened as an excuse during WWI. Fortunately, few of them take it even further back, to the Greenback Act, or the Whiskey Rebellion. Oh hell, why not all the way back to pre-America, with Bloody Cromwell, eh?

Bad acts under shaky justification as political moves for power, are nothing new under the sun. Neither are ways in which political opponents capitalize on them to gain the upper hand. It’s no anomaly that in martial arts, the primary strategy is to use an opponent’s strength against him.

Ciggy,

One thing us rifle rack types appreciate is the appropriate use of the weapons at our disposal. As a general rule, we don’t shoot into the brush (or at shrubs) blindly, and we don’t respect those who do. That may be the reason Kennedy won’t ever get any of my (or my ancesters) votes.

Playing the game just for the sake of playing the game is great for baseball, chess or dancing. But at the congressional level it is no longer a game. There was nothing to gain by the display of Sen.s Kennedy and Biden. Unless they really misunderestimate the opponent (which I doubt given the years of service on all sides) it was an exercise of posturing for the TV.
As a matter of showing who is boss (even if preparing the way for a future showdown), it was a pitiful display as long as questions of who in the chain of command allowed this situation at Abu Garab to arise contrary to lawful orders and the UCMJ.

Was it contrary to lawful orders? Not in the “solicited opinion” of the DOJ, according to the memo. This was why Kennedy was trying to get at other memos. This was also why Ashcroft was saying “no way”. This was also why Kennedy was saying, “why, Executive Privilege?” Which was also why Ashcroft was saying, “no, because of the War of Terror” (the free pass out of anything smacking of Constitutional governance).

Are you with me so far?

Oh, and the “showing who’s boss” by Kennedy was in the form of asking Ashcroft if the memo’s opinion was also HIS opinion, and he couldn’t get a simple yes or no answer. That made a few things “click” in my mind, just speaking for myself.