The Power-Madness of King George

[OneBlueSky]

Is Bush turning America into an elective dictatorship?
By Jacob Weisberg
Slate
Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2006

http://www.slate.com/id/2134845?nav=nw

It's tempting to dismiss the debate about the National Security Agency spying on Americans as a technical conflict about procedural rights. President Bush believes he has the legal authority to order electronic snooping without asking anyone's permission. Civil libertarians and privacy-fretters think Bush needs a warrant from the special court created to authorize wiretapping in cases of national security. But in practice, the so-called FISA court that issues such warrants functions as a virtual rubber stamp for the executive branch anyhow, so what's the great difference in the end?

Would that so little were at stake. In fact, the Senate hearings on NSA domestic espionage set to begin next month will confront fundamental questions about the balance of power within our system. Even if one assumes that every unknown instance of warrant-less spying by the NSA were justified on security grounds, the arguments issuing from the White House threaten the concept of checks and balances as it has been understood in America for the last 218 years. Simply put, Bush and his lawyers contend that the president's national security powers are unlimited. And since the war on terror is currently scheduled to run indefinitely, the executive supremacy they're asserting won't be a temporary condition.

(snip)

Twisting vague statements into specific authorization is a stretch. But it is in inverting specific prohibitions into blanket permission that Gonzales reaches for the genuinely Orwellian. The Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 not only does not authorize Bush's warrant-less snooping but clearly and specifically prohibits it by prescribing the FISA court system as the "exclusive" method for authorizing electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes. With a little help from the white paper, however, that protection goes aumf as well; Gonzales proposes that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act must either be read as consistent with the position that King Zenith can wiretap whomever he wants (thus becoming meaningless) or, alternatively, be dismissed as an unconstitutional irrelevancy.

- more . . .

http://www.slate.com/id/2134845?nav=nw

[izzie]

1. Guess he will not be the first 'mad ruler' a country has had

I like this stuff about the wire tapping because we have to believe what Osama said yet I would swear he just said last week that the man was not important and he never thought of him. Which is it? Any one have those quotes he gave out when we had the stink about not getting Osama? I have faced the fact that this group just can not run any thing. I think it is the Peter Principle run amok or some such thing.

[tom_paine]

2. Take away the "elective"

Imperial Amerikan "elections" are now as trustworthy as Iranian or any other Third-World Nation's.

And we all know...the Leader ALWAYS wins and it doesn't matter how the Useless Eaters punch their quaint little buttons on their "voting simulators".

I wonder who the Imperial Family will select to keep the throne warm between now and when Emperor Jeb decides to claim it?

[izzie]

3. I will be dead but God help you people left to Jeb.

I feel bad for my grandchildren and can not seem to do a thing. Hard to believe that all those egos in Congress has let Bush take over. Greed seems to win in the end.