A Challenge From Bush to Congress

[rodeodance]

and now will the Repug congress cave?


September 7, 2006
News Analysis
A Challenge From Bush to Congress
By DAVID E. SANGER

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He is trying to rebuff a Supreme Court that visibly angered him in June when it ruled that his procedures for interrogation and trials violated both the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions.

And he is trying to divert voters from the morass of Iraq and to revive the emotionally potent question of what powers the president should be able to use to defend the country.

Mr. Bush must have known that his call for trials would prompt a standing ovation from the relatives of the Sept. 11 victims who were invited to the East Room for the announcement. It did. What he doesn’t know for sure is whether the transfer of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other terror suspects will create the pressure on Capitol Hill to give him the legal latitude he says he needs.

“It’s one thing for Congress to argue over abstract rules’’ about approved interrogation techniques and the rules of evidence at military commissions, said one senior administration official who sat in on the debates over how to respond to the Supreme Court ruling in the Hamdan case last June. “But it’s another to say, ‘Once you approve the rules, we put these guys on trial — but it only happens if Congress acts.’ ’’

In this case, the White House needs Congress to write the rules in a way that would satisfy the Supreme Court while allowing the military to introduce its evidence at trial — even though Mr. Muhammed and his fellow defendants will almost certainly assert that their own accounts of their roles in terror plots were extracted by coercion.

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[ClintonTyree]

1. "Abstract rules".........

any law that stands in the way of the Bush Administration becoming a full blown fascist regime is considered an "abstract rule". Just as the Geneva Convention is "quaint" according to Gonzo, our Attorney General.

The laws of the land are in place to prevent what the Bushies are attempting: complete power in the hands of one branch of government. "Abstract"....."quaint"......these interpretations of our Constitution are alarming and cannot be tolerated.