The End Of Unalienable Rights

[Doctor_J]

a very nice summary of why * had to have 9/11, and what it's meant to him:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/012406.html

"Ironically, too, Bush’s accumulation of power since the Sept. 11 attacks has gone hand-in-hand with his failures connected to Osama bin-Laden. For instance, if Bush had finished off al-Qaeda’s leaders in Afghanistan in late 2001 and early 2002, he would have a weaker foundation for his new authority now.

By letting bin-Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders escape when they apparently were cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, Bush kept alive a plausible scenario for additional al-Qaeda attacks inside the United States and thus the justification for his unrestrained powers as Commander in Chief."

[Mithras61]

1. You'll want to change the title of the thread to...

"The End of 'Unalienable Rights'"

[Doctor_J]

2. TNX - done

[Mithras61]

3. No problem...

Excellent article, by the way. I was thinking of sending it to my ultra-conservative brother who thinks Alito would be good for the country because he "believes in the constitution" or some such...

Problem is that if I send him one article, I'll get a deluge of RW crap from him...

[xchrom]

4. thank you!

if people would start THINKING about the terror alerts, plunging poll numbers, no osama, etc -- you could see the fairly obvious patterns.

no tin foil even -- just bushco taking advantage of the obvious -- you can be more sinister -- but it doesn't even take that.

[UpInArms]

5. "unitary executive"

a very important read:

The “unitary” theory of presidential power sounds too wonkish for Americans to care about, but the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court could push this radical notion of almost unlimited Executive authority close to becoming a reality.

Not as bad as Nixon, but bad enough

excerpt:

In the late 1940s and the 1950s, the Cold War and fears that the "Red menace" would sap American resolve from within led to myriad anti-subversive programs, with tens of thousands of Americans losing their livelihoods as a result. Finally, during the Nixon years, the president's paranoia about opposition to the Vietnam War and to his policies fuelled a pattern of abuses that eventually brought about his resignation in disgrace.

The Nixon administration's legacy is particularly instructive in assessing the Bush record. Though Americans tend to lump Nixon's violations of civil liberties together under the heading of "Watergate," much more was involved than the break-in at Democratic Party headquarters and the subsequent cover-up. The participants in those events included the "Plumbers," a personal secret unit established by Nixon and so named because one of their tasks was to eliminate leaks of information that the White House did not want to disclose.

Another secret assault on civil liberties was Nixon's adoption of the "Huston Plan" which authorized political surveillance by burglary, electronic eavesdropping, and the use of the military to spy on civilians. Nixon used these methods against political opponents, journalists, and government employees suspected of disloyalty to the president.

As far as we know, Bush has not gone that far. Nevertheless, electronic eavesdropping without court authorization, of the sort Bush ordered starting in 2002, played a particularly important part in Nixon's downfall. One of the three counts against Nixon in the vote to impeach by the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee was based on eavesdropping.

In fact, Bush pursued his policy despite a 1978 law - adopted in response to the Nixon-era abuses - that specifically requires judicial approval, and in contradiction to his public assurance that no such eavesdropping takes place without a court order. Now that his electronic surveillance program has been exposed, Bush's Justice Department has launched an investigation into how the news became public, threatening the journalists who reported the information.

...more...