George Bush's rough justice

[Briar]

George Bush's rough justice

The career of the latest supreme court nominee has been marked by his hatred of liberalism

Sidney Blumenthal

"If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?" "No treaty," replied John Yoo, the former justice department official who wrote the crucial memos justifying President Bush's policies on torture, detainees and domestic surveillance without warrants.

Yoo publicly debated last month the radical notion of the "unitary executive" - that the president, as commander-in-chief, is sole judge of the law, unbound by hindrances such as the Geneva conventions, and has inherent authority to subordinate independent government agencies to his fiat. This is the cornerstone of the Bush legal doctrine.

...

The "unitary executive" is nothing less than "gospel", declared the federal judge Samuel Alito in 2000 - it is a theory that "best captures the meaning of the constitution's text and structure". Alito's belief was perhaps the paramount credential for his nomination by Bush to the supreme court.

...

On the supreme court, as O'Connor's replacement, he will codify the authoritarianism of the Bush presidency, even after it is gone.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1684247,00.html

[AuntiBush]

1. Rough Justice

Must be why so many Democrats are feeling battered and blue.

[Demit]

2. This article is a concise list of just how extreme Alito is,

despite his seemingly mild demeanor. You could see it come out once or twice in the hearings, just the hint of a sneer, how he really feels--which is his identification with the powerful against the powerless. I trust Sidney Blumenthal's assessment here. I think Alito is probably a nasty bit of work.