Is It Warm in Here? We Could Be Ignoring the Biggest Story in Our History

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0118-33.htm

Commentary: Wondering just how far back the Bush administration would roll our constitutional system?

By Nick Turse
January 6, 2006
Mother Jones

What might happen to an "often cruel and treacherous" national leader who "ignored and contravened the traditional" norms at home and waged "expensive wars abroad [that] were unsuccessful"?

On June 15, 1215, just such a leader arrived at Runnymede, England and --under pressure from rebellious barons angered by his ruinous foreign wars and the fact that "to finance them he had charged excessively for royal justice, sold church offices, levied heavy aids," and appointed "advisers from outside the baronial ranks"-- placed his seal on the Magna Carta. The document, which was finalized on June 19th, primarily guaranteed church rights and baronial privileges, while barring the king from exploiting feudal custom. While it may have been of limited importance to King John or his rebel nobles (as one scholar notes, "It was doomed to failure. Magna Carta lasted less than three months"), the document had a lasting impact on the rest of us, providing the very basis for the Anglo-American legal tradition. [...] Read the rest at http://tinyurl.com/9zxuz


© Virginia Metze

Democratic Alchemy

Leading analysts -- and Rahm Emanuel -- sound off on how Dems can reap the biggest gains from GOP scandals.

By Greg Sargent
Web Exclusive: 01.12.06
The American Prospect

In recent days, as the Jack Abramoff story has detonated in slow motion across official Washington, Dems have been debating ways of converting the muck of the GOP scandal into political gold. The short-term strategy appears to be twofold: Argue in unison that the GOP is the party of corruption, while aggressively countering GOP efforts to cast the scandal as bipartisan by hammering away at Abramoff’s exclusively Republican donations and spotlighting the GOP-built K Street Project machine.

A few polls suggest this early strategy is yielding short-term results. But it nonetheless begs a big question: Can Dems really expect this argument to translate into the lasting gains they’re hoping for? Or should they be trying to formulate a strategy that goes beyond merely tarring the GOP as the corrupt party and looks for ways of weaving the mushrooming scandal into larger arguments about the Republican Party’s most conspicuous domestic failings?
[...]

Indeed, after a decade of Dem worshipping at the altar of Clintonian incrementalism, it’s tempting to think that the time is ripe for Dems to make a bigger case, to tell a bigger story, to weave the scandals into an overarching class-based argument. Consider the current political atmosphere. It’s dominated by, among other things, exploding deficits caused by tax cuts for the rich, growing economic insecurity as pension plans are put on the block by even healthy corporations, and even the Sago mining disaster, which has spotlighted Bush’s failure to police the mining industry even as Appalachian mine workers endure hardscrabble and dangerous lives. It’s tempting to imagine that such developments – taken together with the GOP’s failings on health care and energy, and its willingness to hand over to corporate lobbyists the keys to Congressional committee rooms -- might accumulate and reach a kind of tipping point, making both working- and middle-class Americans more receptive to the argument that Republicans have broadly failed them as a class in ways that consistently benefit the wealthy. [...] Read the whole thought-provoking article at the American Prospect web site: http://tinyurl.com/786f7


© Virginia Metze

Alito Confirmation Would Soon Establish Unitary Executive Theory (Fuehrerprinzip) As Law, Then Make Bush Dictator

We can stop this process right now, by not confirming Samuel Alito.
by Rev. Bill McGinnis
January 16, 2006

Wake up, America! It's happening right now, while you are sound asleep! If Samuel Alito is confirmed to the Supreme Court, President Bush gets one more vote he needs on the Court to prevent Congress from stopping him as he disregards the anti-Torture and anti-Spying laws already passed.

Using the "signing statement" technique developed earlier by Samuel Alito, Bush has already announced that he has the power to disregard the anti-Torture and anti-Spying laws. Then when Congress goes to the Supreme Court, trying to make him stop, Alito would already be on the Court, waiting to decide the case for Bush. Bush would win, on the grounds that he has the Unitary Executive (Fuehrerprinzip) "inherent powers" in "wartime" to do anything he wants to do, to "protect Americans from harm." [...] Read the rest at the Oped News web page: http://tinyurl.com/an5do


© Virginia Metze

The Green-Dog Democrat
January 15, 2006

Have you heard lately the term "unitary executive" relative to George Bush's imperial presidency and to the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, Jr.? Do you know what the term means? Are you straight on how Bush's imperial presidency and Alito relate to the term?

If you're unsure about the answers to any of these questions, this Green Dog and that planned for January 16, 2005 might be helpful.

As Jennifer Van Bergen points out below in her FindLaw's Writ analysis of the Bush imperial presidency, the term "unitary executive" is a code word for a doctrine that favors nearly unlimited executive power. "The doctrine violates basic tenets of our system of checks and balances, quietly crossing longstanding legal and moral boundaries that are essential to a democratic society," she wrote. [...]

Read more about Alito and presidential powers in this article and two that follow:

The unitary executive: Is the doctrine behind the Bush presidency consistent with a democratic state? and
An imperial presidency based on constitutional quicksand.

Read all three articles on this important topic at http://tinyurl.com/dmu64

There is also a great edition of the Green Dog Democrat newsletter about these topics on January 16. It is at this location: http://tinyurl.com/clchd You can get to an archive of these newsletters at http://tinyurl.com/8ze6t It appears he does not have his own web site ...


© Virginia Metze

Columns
Harvey Wasserman
January 16, 2006
The Free Press
Speaking Truth to Power
Wed Jan 18 2006 edition

No matter what you think of George W. Bush, he is staking out his claim as a bona fide Horseman of the Apocalypse.

With his Hand of Hell in Iraq already yielding countless dead, $200 billion wasted and a global war against Islam well on its way to Armageddon, Bush has definitively established his ability to wreak unparalleled disaster on a global scale with zero positive outcome.

By drowning New Orleans and turning its alleged rebuilding plan into a sinkhole of corruption and disarray, he has shown he can lay waste to an entire American city.

And now he is visiting disease and death on tens of millions of our elderly and ill with a botched Medicare/Medicaid drug plan that has plunged the nation's pharmacies into total chaos while driving the states even closer to bankruptcy. As you read this, millions of Americans are without medications that may be life-sustaining because of what Bush has done to "improve" their pharmaceutical plan. [...] Read more about the disastrous turn of events in America at
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2006/1298 or
http://tinyurl.com/b9h24 Also reprinted at TruthOut:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011706O.shtml


© Virginia Metze

FINALLY a congressman has noted the fact that Congress can limit jurisdiction of the federal courts!

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk, a weekly column
January 16, 2006

The Senate hearings regarding the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court demonstrated that few in Washington view the Constitution as our founders did. The Constitution first and foremost is a document that limits the power of the federal government. It prevents the president, Congress, and the Supreme Court from doing all kinds of things. But judging by last week's hearings, the Constitution is an enabling document, one that authorizes the federal government to involve itself in nearly every aspect of our lives.

The only controversy, it seems, is whether the current nominee will favor the power of one branch over another, or the preferences of one political party over another. Last week's hearings were purely political, because the role of Supreme Court justices has become increasingly political.

Nearly all of the Senators, witnesses, and Judge Alito himself spoke repeatedly about the importance of respecting Supreme Court precedents. The clear implication is that we must equate Supreme Court decisions with the text of the Constitution itself, giving them equal legal weight. But what if some precedents are bad? Should the American people be forced to live with unpopular judicial "laws" forever? The Constitution itself can be amended; are we to accept that Supreme Court rulings are written in stone?

Also troubling was the apparent consensus among both the Senators and Judge Alito that Congress has no authority to limit federal court jurisdiction by forbidding it to hear certain types of cases. This is completely false: Article III Section 2 of the Constitution plainly grants Congress the authority to limit federal court jurisdiction in many kinds of cases. It is perfectly constitutional for Congress to pass court-stripping legislation to reflect public sentiment against an overreaching Supreme Court. [...] Read the rest at Ron Paul's website: http://tinyurl.com/e3llg Ron Paul is a Republican, but seems like the old time Republicans we agreed with on some issues in the past. Incidentally, there doesn't seem to be a D or R beside a congressman's name on the main list. I could have sworn there used to be.


© Virginia Metze

There is still a lot of sentiment, especially among progressive Democrats, that many Democrats do not really sufficiently oppose the Republican party. Here is a letter by Josh Mitteldorf (josh at mathforum.org) on the markcrispinmiller blogspot on January 16, 2006.

DINO alert

That's "Democrats In Name Only."

Here is an important email from Josh Mitteldorf, urging that we take a long hard look into the "opposition party," to find out why it's not an opposition party.

MCM

Dear Mark,

The reason our republic is in crisis is not that we have a ruthless, criminal administration in power; it is not that the press is controlled by self-serving corporations; it is not because rampant bribery has overtaken the Congressional agenda; and the massive, devious and sinister program by Repuglicans to subvert democracy is still not adequate explanation for the crisis. The reason our republic is in crisis is that we have no opposition party.

Without proof, I offer the following hypothesis as a possible explanation for softness of the Democrat opposition: the Democratic party is thoroughly infiltrated by well-paid, under-cover agents of the Right.

It is awfully convenient for the junta that controls America that mainstream Dems are not screaming, "Crisis! Crisis!" In abandoning a great mass of disaffected voters on the left to pursue a tiny sliver of swing voters at the ever-shifting right, the Dems have forsaken their majority status. With their silent acquiescence to election theft, they have helped Repuglicans hollow out the foundation on which Democracy is built.

Perhaps the Democratic surrender should not be attributed to stupidity or incompetence. Rather than puzzle about all this behavior that runs dramatically counter to the Democrats' self-interest, we should be asking, In whose interest are these policies being pursued? This line of reason leads to the hypothesis that the Democratic party has been deeply infiltrated. Many of the weak candidates that run and win in Democratic primaries are posing in this role in order to subvert the party; and trusted advisors who are whispering in the ears of top Democratic leaders are double agents, generously funded by the Right to infiltrate and subvert the Democratic strategy machine. [...] Read the rest at http://www.markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/

Incidentally, another interesting article follows this one on the MCM blog: "Say NO to Alito, damn it!"


© Virginia Metze