Trying to make sense of the doublespeak

[babylonsister]

http://www.findingavoice.com/mt/archives/000402.html

Finding A Voice
Ann Davidow

July 26, 2007

Trying to make sense of the doublespeak with which this White House afflicts the public is an exhausting task. In the area of taxes, closing loopholes that allow companies to hide taxable income in off-shore entities becomes a “tax increase”. And according to the administration, Iraq is the hub of our “war on terror” although our presence there seems to serve more as a terrorist recruiting tool than otherwise.

Most stunning of all the bewildering interventions undertaken by the president, however, are his far-ranging claims of executive privilege, his endless executive orders and his descriptions of what Al Qaeda is and where it operates. Discrepancies in presidential analyses of how things work are never adequately explained, and not in recent memory has failure been so shamelessly reconstructed to pass for success.

snip//

For every question raised by Congress, the media or the American people there are non-answers, obfuscation or actual lies from the administration or those who serve it. The spectacle of Alberto Gonzales testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee and refusing to answer a direct question, forgetting or seemingly just ‘making stuff up’ was astonishing. The refusal in general to hand over requested materials pertaining to the fired US attorneys and other matters is something quite beyond disrespect for a co-equal branch of government, and the distinct possibility that the Attorney General perjured himself is a stunning indictment of what the justice system has become during the Bush presidency.

Tony Snow angrily asserted at his press conference the other day that “executive privilege” was a basic presidential right yet, decisions from early on suggest otherwise. In fact the precedent for privilege is hardly settled and judicial opinion over time has been that “…the executive cannot decide unilaterally what is and is not privileged.” (USA Today on line, 7/16/07) And in the unanimous opinion re the Nixon tapes, the Supreme Court held that while presidents have a right to confidentiality in their “high level communications” they do not have “blanket immunity from the judicial process, especially when…executive privilege was based on a broad, non-specific interpretation” of what (in the case of Nixon) “the president claimed was in the public interest.” The current president seems to feel he can extend what has been called a “presumptive” claim beyond himself to anyone within shouting distance of his office.

Similarly, a new executive order issued by the president referencing “enhanced interrogation methods” for the CIA makes it clear that those “few bad apples” at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere were in fact fruit from the poisoned Bush in the White House. Guidelines so imprecise and indistinct leave plenty of room for on-site interpretations and almost limitless options.

Thus this president and his administration expect Congress to accept the right of the executive to decide which practices and laws it will support and how it wishes to construe the Constitution. With so many claims based on so little proof this president has over-stepped his authority; the American people should make it clear that this is still a country based on the rule of law and that their representatives in Congress speak for them and must not be ignored.

[jimshoes]

1. Perhaps a unanimous declaration

of the fifty states to king george might start the ball rolling.